We performed a comparison between ActiveBatch Workload Automation and Fortra's JAMS based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: ActiveBatch Workload Automation offers a versatile and user-friendly experience with prebuilt jobs, real-time monitoring, scalability, and support for a wide range of platforms. Fortra's JAMS stands out for its strong job dependency tracking, automation capabilities, warnings, support, and emphasis on code-driven automation.
ActiveBatch could enhance its managed file transfer, user interface, trigger reliability, documentation, support services, software setup process, customization options, and pricing. Fortra's JAMS would benefit from improvements in client interface, search functionality, training resources, documentation, UI responsiveness, integration capabilities, source control features, and access permission management.
Service and Support: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has received positive feedback regarding its customer service, specifically highlighting the helpful and reliable technical support. However, there are concerns regarding the service model and availability of the hotline. Fortra's JAMS is highly praised for its responsive and knowledgeable support team, promptness of responses, and availability of documentation and training resources. Customers express overall satisfaction with JAMS' customer service.
Ease of Deployment: The initial setup for ActiveBatch Workload Automation was straightforward, with a minor need for additional documentation during file import. Configuring it on different operating systems like Windows and Linux proved to be slightly complex. Fortra's JAMS had a simple and easy setup procedure, with users easily following instructions on the webpage and swiftly deploying new tasks. Although some users encountered confusion or difficulties, they were able to seek assistance from JAMS support.
Pricing: Users find the setup cost for ActiveBatch Workload Automation to be quick and simple, with reasonable and competitive pricing. Users consider the pricing of JAMS to be fair and affordable.
ROI: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has been highly regarded for its positive impact on net revenue. Fortra's JAMS is admired for its cost-effectiveness, time-saving features, and improved productivity, all achieved without requiring additional staff.
Comparison Results: ActiveBatch Workload Automation is the preferred choice when compared to Fortra's JAMS. Users praise ActiveBatch for its versatility, easy-to-use interface, prebuilt jobs, and user-friendly configuration. It stands out in scheduling, monitoring, and providing valuable insights.
"As far as centralization goes it's nice because we can see all these processes that are tied to this larger process. The commissions, FTP processing, the reporting, the file moves to the business users — all that is right there. It's very easy to read. It's easy to tie it together, visually, and see where each of these steps fits into the bigger picture."
"Since I started using this product, I have been able to easily track everything as it mainly monitors, alerts, and looks after all the services - even across platform scheduling - which has helped me immensely."
"The REST API adapters and native integrations for integrating and orchestrating the software stack are very flexible."
"We leverage the solution's native integrations regularly. We have to get files from a remote server outside the organization, and even send things outside the organization. We use a lot of its file manipulation and SFTP functionality for contacting remote servers."
"We use the main job-scheduling feature. It's the only thing we use in the tool. That's the reason we are using the tool: to reduce costs by replacing manual tasks with automated tasks and to perform regular, repetitive tasks in a more reliable way."
"Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis."
"Error Handling is one of the best standout features of ActiveBatch."
"ActiveBatch has reduced work by providing automated workflows across several different applications."
"The code-driven automation for more complex scheduling requirements frees up time because it's really easy to use... It's almost like a stand-alone software that we can't live without."
"JAMS is easier to use and cheaper than our previous solution. The installation is more straightforward, and JAMS has a graphical user interface, so it's more accessible."
"The most valuable feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."
"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 alerting in it is really targeted... you can set specific alerting so that if jobs in a given folder fail, certain people are alerted. You can also set security at the folder level, so that only people in those areas can go set them. That means that the alerting and security can be set at a very granular level."
"The scheduling and execution of jobs are the most valuable features. The scheduling is important because if there is a task we want to execute at 4:00 AM, there's no way we will have someone who can manually run the job. In addition, we execute 100 to 200 jobs per day, and manual intervention is not an option."
"I like how you can add new execution methods on the fly. It isn't overly complex to add Python script support to an execution method in the JAMS system. The scheduling is excellent. You can schedule a maintenance window and take that resource unit out of everything. It halts all of the jobs."
"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."
"ActiveBatch UI could use a little more help, and video tutorials would be greatly appreciated for user guides."
"I have faced struggles to understand, set up the tool, and implement it in my early days as a new user."
"A cloud option is not provided as a free feature, making it a costly solution for smaller organizations."
"ActiveBatch is a little complex."
"The UI could potentially offer a more refined and user-friendly experience, fostering smoother interactions and facilitating easier navigation for users engaging with the application."
"A nice thing to have would be the ability to comfortably pass variables from one job to another. That was one of the things that I found difficult."
"Providing some detailed training materials could be very helpful for new users who have very limited technical information about the tool."
"There is this back and forth, where ActiveBatch says, "Your Oracle people should be dealing with this," and Oracle people say, "No, we don't know anything about ActiveBatch." Then, it all falls back on me as to what happens. Nobody is taking responsibility. This is the biggest failing for ActiveBatch."
"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."
"Sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used. But because it does its job, I don't complain."
"We have had a lot of people working from home who can't always connect to the JAMS server. We use VPN, as most companies do, and we have it set up so that everybody can access the JAMS server. But many times, our people cannot access it... JAMS could do a better job of telling you what the problem is when you try to log in to the server."
"One thing that I know that the JAMS people said that they were working on that would be huge for us is a search capability so that you could search for tasks. It may be available in version 7 or in a future release of 7. I think that's on their roadmap. But right now, for us to do a search, we have to search through database queries."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"The ACL or access permission area needs to be improved. When it comes to defining and providing security permissions, it's a bit confusing if you are new to JAMS. JAMS needs to improve the features for security access or permissions."
"When looking at a folder in JAMS with many jobs, it would be good to have better information in the list display of what's inside those jobs. We get some information, but other important details are missing."
"The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."
ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked 4th in Workload Automation with 35 reviews while Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 27 reviews. ActiveBatch by Redwood is rated 9.2, while Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of ActiveBatch by Redwood writes "Flexible, easy to use, and offers good automation". On the other hand, 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". ActiveBatch by Redwood is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal by Redwood, Redwood RunMyJobs and IBM Workload Automation, whereas Fortra's JAMS is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs, Tidal by Redwood and VisualCron. See our ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Fortra's JAMS report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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