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.
"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."
"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."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"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."
"I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events."
"Fortra's JAMS helped us centralize job management across our platforms and applications. This is critical because we schedule tasks across multiple applications and operating systems, using triggers and start dates to coordinate their execution."
"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."
"It's a full-featured job scheduling tool. The part that I liked the best was the support team. This tool was new, and we were all learning it and setting up the different jobs that were complex in nature. Their support team was very responsive in helping us out through the setup and resolving the issues. They have been incredibly awesome."
"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."
"Redwood is more flexible and we can schedule the tasks based on different time zones."
"This product is simple and easy to use."
"By automating the job processes it has saved us a lot of time and resources."
"Redwood is of value to our organization due to of its ease of use and the ability to automate and orchestrate any platform that we utilize today."
"This tool helps us to monitor the job related to SAP modules."
"There are various ways in which you can construct jobs depending on your business needs and requirements."
"The automated alert response is very useful for long-running and failed jobs during off-business hours."
"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."
"The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen."
"I would like to see the ability to interface with Microsoft group-managed service accounts, but they're still in the research phase. They need to ensure everything's legit and safe. The report designer and dashboards could also be improved. We're running 7.3, so I don't know if they have updated the reporting in 7.5, but I think the reports and dashboards could be better."
"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."
"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
"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."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"The documentation is not super... It's not as quick and slick as I'd like it to be."
"Having a graphical user interface for the dashboard would be great."
"The job log has a size limit."
"I have not noted any downsides."
"The reports are downloaded in .CAR file format, which makes it difficult to convert to an Excel file."
"The documentation for this product is limited, which can be improved in the future."
"Due to the abundance of competing automation technologies available on the market, connectivity with any cloud platform can be improved."
"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."
"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."
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.
