We performed a comparison between Fortra's JAMS and Rocket Zena 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 job dependency tracking and visualization, while Rocket Zena is praised for its user-friendly interface. JAMS offers robust automation features, while Zena excels in cross-platform job scheduling and FTP file transfer.
Fortra's JAMS client interface can be more user-friendly and efficient in terms of options retrieval. Rocket Zena lacks clarity in displaying connections between applications/components. Fortra's JAMS could enhance its accessibility by introducing a browser version and providing more comprehensive documentation. Rocket Zena would benefit from a more intuitive user interface and the availability of RPM packages for installation.
Service and Support: Fortra's JAMS customer service is commended for being quick, knowledgeable, and helpful, offering prompt solutions and comprehensive resources. Rocket Zena receives positive feedback, with responsive and knowledgeable support, although obtaining higher-level assistance may be more time-consuming.
Ease of Deployment: Fortra's JAMS initial setup is described as straightforward and easy, with users quickly deploying tasks by following webpage instructions. Rocket Zena's setup varied among users, with some finding it easier as new users but others finding it complex and requiring an understanding of different components. Integration with SAP posed a particular challenge for Zena.
Pricing: Fortra's JAMS has a setup cost in the first year, along with a yearly maintenance cost. Users see this pricing as reasonable and budget-friendly when compared to other options. Rocket Zena is recognized as a cost-effective and affordable choice, particularly suitable for small businesses.
ROI: Fortra's JAMS and Rocket Zena have both delivered positive results in terms of saving time, increasing productivity, and offering cost-effectiveness. Fortra's JAMS also provides ease of use and visibility into job failures, while Rocket Zena has improved accuracy and alleviated stress for engineers and administrators.
Comparison Results: Fortra's JAMS is the preferred choice when compared to Rocket Zena. Users appreciate JAMS for its easy setup, ability to handle job dependencies, extensive automation features, user-friendly interface, and excellent customer support. JAMS is favored due to its overall functionality and ease of use.
"The most valuable feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."
"It has definitely drastically improved our capabilities to scale our automation. Before JAMS, there were a lot of manual processes. We had a couple of operators who spent all day doing that. A lot of the time with human intervention and human processes, it is as good as the person who may be following a procedure and human error is a big problem."
"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."
"The planning capabilities are most valuable."
"The product is easy to use."
"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."
"The most valuable feature for us is that it's DR-ready. With respect to disaster recovery, it has the built-in capability for failover to our DR site. If all of the required ports are open, it can be done seamlessly."
"The feature or capability to import a job is most valuable. We can import an existing job from different platforms, and all the configurations get migrated as well without modifying the code, job schedule, etc."
"In the latest upgrade, Zena added a web-based client. The more I use it, the more I like it. It's an excellent interface. They do a good job of steadily improving the solution to make it more useful."
"From a Linux configuration point of view, Rocket Zena is straightforward. It's fairly easy to set up the server and agents once you know how to do it."
"I like the whole product, but specifically, I like the license part. It's very easy to acquire a license for this product."
"Its FTP feature is very good, as is scheduling any process or task with the Zena client. I have found it to be very helpful. If a task fails, it gives you a prompt."
"You can click Ctrl-G and bring a diagram view. You're able to view in a diagram format. The view that it provides is easy, and you can move to the left, up, or down. You can double-click on a certain process. It'll drill into that process and all of its underlying components. You can double-click on an arrow or a component, and it'll bring up a screen that'll have all the variables that are assigned to that particular piece, as well as the values at run time. So, the diagram feature of it, at least for me, is pretty valuable."
"I have used other tools with similar capabilities; it's the ease of use."
"We haven't had any problems since we installed it. It runs as expected, we haven't had any critical problems. It helps keeps the business running 24/7."
"I have found the scheduling feature the most valuable. I can map dependencies by using ASG-Zena. It gives a nice, quick visualization as to where things are."
"I'm not sure if they have fixed it in a newer version, but there is no global search in the version I have. If I have multiple sub-folders that are named for business units, like HR or IT, and I have to search for a job, I cannot search from the top. I have to go to the HR folder to search for a particular job, or to the IT folder."
"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
"The biggest area with room for improvement is the area that my organization benefits the most from using JAMS, and that is in custom execution methods. I happen to have a very good C# developer. Ever since we got JAMS, he has spent a lot of time talking to JAMS developers, researching the JAMS libraries, and creating custom execution methods. He's gotten very good at it. He is now able to create them and maintain them very easily, but that knowledge was hard-won knowledge. It was difficult to come by, and if I should ever lose this developer, then I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could create JAMS custom execution methods quite as well as he can since there really isn't all that much help, such as documentation or information, available on how to create custom execution methods."
"There could be a better simulation for banning the termination. You have to simulate every one of the processes in order to have an idea for better planning. This kind of simulation is broken and needs improvement."
"The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."
"All my machines at work are Macs. JAMS client is a Windows-based thing. It is all built on .NET, which makes perfect sense. However, that means in order for me to access it, I need to connect to a VPN, then log onto one of our Azure VMs in order to access the JAMS client. This is fine, but if for some reason I am unable to do so, it would be nice to be able to have a web-based JAMS client that has all the exact same functionality in it. There are probably a whole bunch of disadvantages that you would get with that as well, but that is definitely something that would make life easier in a few cases."
"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."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"Another one that is probably a little bit bigger for me is that when there is an issue or there's an error, it writes on a different screen. I have to find the actual process name and go to a different screen to view the alert that got generated. On that screen, everyone's processes, not just the processes of the folks in my department, are thrown. It takes me a while to find the actual error so that I could go in there and look at the alert. It could be because of the way it was set up, but at least for me, it isn't too intuitive."
"Rocket Zena is a mainframe-based job scheduler. I would like it to be more open so that we can use it on a distributed platform."
"In the next release, I would like to have an alert feature to indicate when an agent is down. Rocket Zena is not capable of sending alerts that the agent is down. As of now, you have manually monitor to see when the agent is down."
"The UI is not intuitive, and it would be nice if there was a web interface."
"The scheduling mapping is a little disjointed. There is no wizard-type approach. There are a lot of different things that you have to do in completely different areas. They could probably add the functionality for creating all components of a mapping or an OPA schedule. The component creation could be done collectively rather than through individual components."
"In the next release, I would like the user experience to be improved. The user interface should be more appealing to gen-z."
"In the web interface, it stacks the tasks across the top, and they accumulate until you close or clean those out. That seems a little cumbersome. You must right-click and close all tabs constantly to keep the console clean and manage your views."
"One area where it could be improved is communication between the different servers. Sometimes there are processes that have already been completed but we get a status notification that they're still active."
Fortra's JAMS is ranked 5th in Workload Automation with 27 reviews while Rocket Zena is ranked 12th in Workload Automation with 9 reviews. Fortra's JAMS is rated 9.0, while Rocket Zena is rated 8.4. 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 Rocket Zena writes "A continuously evolving, stable solution, with responsive support". Fortra's JAMS is most compared with Control-M, AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal by Redwood, Redwood RunMyJobs and VisualCron, whereas Rocket Zena is most compared with Control-M, Rocket Zeke, IBM Workload Automation, AutoSys Workload Automation and ActiveBatch by Redwood. See our Fortra's JAMS vs. Rocket Zena report.
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