We performed a comparison between Fortra's JAMS and Redwood Software - Workload Automation Edition based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Fortra's JAMS is highly regarded for its impressive job dependency tracking and visualization, as well as its automation features such as File Watchers. Redwood Software is praised for its robust job definition capabilities and user authority restrictions. It also excels in error handling and integration with multiple systems.
Fortra's JAMS product has room for improvement in various areas such as its client interface, search capability, handling of exceptions, ACL area, troubleshooting, encryption code, and PGP engine. Redwood Software could enhance its reporting features, monitoring and alert service, user interface, cloud-native features, documentation, customer support, value-added features, security standards, UI, application integration, data pulling, and graphical user interface.
Service and Support: Fortra's JAMS product has excellent customer service. The team is responsive, knowledgeable, and helpful, providing quick solutions. Customers appreciate the documentation and training. Redwood Software's customer service is generally positive but can be improved. The support team delivers good service, but Fortra's JAMS stands out for its responsiveness and comprehensive support.
Ease of Deployment: Users found the initial setup for Fortra's JAMS to be simple and efficient, with clear instructions provided on the webpage. Tasks were deployed quickly. Redwood's setup was described as complicated and time-consuming. Some users struggled due to the large number of jobs and the complexity of the existing system.
Pricing: Fortra's JAMS has a setup cost for the first year, with an additional annual maintenance cost. Users find this pricing fair and reasonable compared to other solutions. Redwood offers a unique pricing model based on the number of job executions. While the setup cost may be slightly expensive, users believe it is worthwhile due to the product's value and user framework.
ROI: Fortra's JAMS has been shown to be a budget-friendly solution that enhances efficiency and saves time. Evaluating Redwood Software's ROI is challenging, but users have noticed favorable outcomes and given it high ratings.
Comparison Results: Fortra's JAMS is the preferred option when comparing it to Redwood Software - Workload Automation Edition. JAMS is praised for its ease of setup, ability to handle job dependencies, automation capabilities, extensive troubleshooting logs, and user-friendly interface. Users also appreciate the reasonable pricing, positive return on investment, and highly rated customer service.
"We looked at other companies, like VisualCron, that were cheaper, but one of the main sticking points was the fact that they wouldn't have provided a central location for us to monitor across all servers. That was one of the biggest selling points of JAMS."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"The overall product is fantastic. I love it. It has been a fantastic, solid product. If I have one tiny bit of a problem with it, the support team gets in touch with me right away. I don't know if I've had another service that has been as fantastic as the JAMS support team."
"The ability to sequence jobs is excellent; it means we don't have to schedule them individually, and if one fails, it doesn't unwind the entire workflow."
"We also use the solution’s Interactive Agents. If we need to push something to our dealer portal, we can just drop a file in a folder and it goes. Running interactive tasks helps me users focus on business processes since I don’t have to take care of running the jobs manually."
"I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events."
"Our company is based on data. Everything we do is data-driven, so it has been very valuable having one place where we can process all of the data and do batch schedules with chunks of data."
"I didn't know about JAMS because I don't have a person with any challenges with the purchase administration. The feature or the user interface is user-friendly because of the readable icons or very descriptive icons. Though I'm a beginning user of JAMS, I had no issues using it."
"Error handling and the recovery feature ensure that my job processes are not stopped if any error occurs."
"We can achieve anything that anything that we would like to do. In SAP, it's not generally possible with just with SAP. So we have solution manager as an option, but run by job."
"It is very easy and easy to use, and minimal supervision is required to run it."
"Installing and configuring Redwood agents are easy, and scheduling jobs on Redwood helps in triggering the batches as per business requirements."
"Multi-platform scheduling makes it easier this way rather than accessing one platform at a time."
"Its monitoring and alerting features are what I found the most valuable."
"It conjures simplicity from the depths of complexity, effortlessly shouldering burdensome workloads."
"It's a very powerful tool. It has a lot of flexibility for how you can define jobs and build them. There are different ways in which you can construct jobs depending on your specific needs and requirements."
"JAMS handles exceptions fairly well but there are some areas where it might improve a little bit. It has to do with being able to automatically handle exceptions, out-of-the-box, rather than having to code them."
"The client is horrible. Every time JAMS puts out a survey on what they can improve, I always say, "The client: When you are setting up jobs, it is quite horrible." The response has been, "Well, we are just using the Windows foundation," and I am like, "Why isn't it only your product?" We can get around it now that we know its quirks, but it is not the most user-friendly of tools out there. The UI is completely unintuitive. We had to go and open up a support ticket with JAMS just to get something back. It is not user-friendly at all."
"As an admin, I would like to have a web-based GUI instead of a client application that we have to install on our PCs."
"The only thing that they could improve on is the fact that they don't have a browser version of JAMS. They've got all the bits and pieces there if you want to build your own web version of it. It does come with a web client, but it's pretty clunky. They could improve on that."
"If there were a softcover book on how to really take advantage of all of JAMS' tools, I would buy it. I do better with training books than online searching, so a book would be helpful."
"The tabs in the JAMS file transfer could be clearer. It would help us demonstrate to our client that JAMS not only automates jobs but also does fast transfers, and it's an alternative that supports and filters different kinds of platforms. Filtering file transfers will be highly beneficial to them."
"Improvements could be made in the service desk's knowledge and communication skills among engineers to better address customer needs and ensure issues are fully resolved."
"The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen."
"The product could be better in terms of its monitoring and alert service."
"Currently, our developers aren't able to access their own objects in the user acceptance testing server and production system server as they are assigned the developer access role, which is kind of a solid role, and no changes or additions can be made to it."
"The dashboard provided can be made more visually appealing and could include more critical data that would help associates in one glance get the required information."
"We need the ability to pull data into an Excel format."
"Redwood Software has a high price tag, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that might not have the funds to engage in a complete automation system."
"The job log has a size limit."
"Customer support should be enhanced so that we can automatically raise tickets and incidents in customer service."
"They should be made more cost-effective in comparison to similar software services."
Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 27 reviews while Redwood RunMyJobs is ranked 3rd in Workload Automation with 30 reviews. Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.0, while Redwood RunMyJobs is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Fortra's JAMS writes "We can scale up our organization's scheduling and automation without having to add staff to the department". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Redwood RunMyJobs writes "Simple to use, increases CPU speed, and reduces the cost of machine time". Fortra's JAMS is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal by Redwood and VisualCron, whereas Redwood RunMyJobs is most compared with Control-M, Stonebranch, Tidal by Redwood, AutoSys Workload Automation and IBM Workload Automation. See our Fortra's JAMS vs. Redwood RunMyJobs report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
We monitor all Workload Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
