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ActiveBatch by Redwood vs Rocket Zena comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

JAMS
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ActiveBatch by Redwood
Ranking in Workload Automation
14th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (27th), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (14th)
Rocket Zena
Ranking in Workload Automation
22nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.8%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ActiveBatch by Redwood is 2.9%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rocket Zena is 2.5%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JAMS2.8%
ActiveBatch by Redwood2.9%
Rocket Zena2.5%
Other91.8%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2770605 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Has streamlined complex job scheduling across scripting languages while reducing manual effort
JAMS could be improved with a web client that is accessible and as fast as a normal website, eliminating the need to RDP to the servers to access the JAMS client. A functionality running on the JAMS server to continuously check the JAMS agents would ensure they are working properly. If an agent is not responding, a feature to restart the service from the job server machine would be beneficial. The upgrade process, particularly when switching from V6 to V7, could be clearer in terms of documentation, ideally with screenshots showing exactly what needs to be done on each screen.
AS
Application Administrator Lead at Bluestem
Manages thousands of jobs daily and reduces downtime through secondary node support
The current feedback I receive from my end users regarding ActiveBatch by Redwood highlights issues with the tabs or panes during job modification. When the next user monitors it, they need to close the pane or job and reopen it to see the changes reflected. If the end user makes an update, it will not be visible unless they start from the beginning again. Implementing a refresh button would be helpful for real-time updates when the end user needs to see changes immediately. We currently face issues with the web console of ActiveBatch by Redwood. When users operate through an RDP session, every user has their own ActiveBatch by Redwood application. However, on the web console, users encounter daily activity issues where the job instances do not appear or update correctly, and they cannot view the latest logs. This issue is only present on the web console, as the application itself works without any problems. ActiveBatch by Redwood can be improved by adding more features, as we are not currently handling cloud-based applications like S3 buckets and Azure. Connecting to these cloud platforms would be a helpful enhancement.
JuanGonzalez6 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Solutions Manager at a government with 5,001-10,000 employees
A continuously evolving, stable solution, with responsive support
The visual whiteboard for design and execution included with the solution is very crucial to those who are new to Rocket Zena, especially so that the learning curve is minimized and they can focus on accomplishing the task. We process our system's payroll through Rocket Zena. The fact that it's a multi-process, multi-layered application, means that we can rely on the solution for kicking off processes, notifying user vendors of the steps, completions, error logging, and historic events from the previous run times. Rocket Zena's ability to automate jobs on the mainframe as a distribution workload automation solution is good. The solution continuously improves over time. We're eager to start the latest upgrade this coming year that'll put us on the cloud. Hopefully, this will improve the product even more. We can run things natively without the scheduler if needed. The solution working properly and up to date without the need for a mainframe scheduler is crucial. We use the solution to manage a few complex operational workflows end-to-end across multiple technology stacks. Rocket Zena does a great job of simplifying our cross-platform processes through automation. The solution helps speed operations up and keeps them automated allowing us to focus on other priorities. The solution helps increase our completion rates by working overnight to meet our SLAs. Rocket Zena completes 30 percent of our workload outside of our standard work hours. Rocket Zena's cross-platform job scheduling helped us save around 40 percent of programming time by automating repetitive tasks. We use the solution to transfer our current files and keep up with our infrastructure on a few automated jobs, such as refreshing our database which happens overnight. The solution helped free up around 15 percent of our engineer's time to focus on more value-added work.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The interface is good, and it's very easy to define and create jobs. If a job is not running or there is an error, the solution will send an email. That's all very good and very useful."
"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."
"The dashboard is intuitive."
"I appreciate JAMS for its readily available templates that allow me to create and deliver stand-up presentations within minutes quickly."
"The most valuable feature of JAMS is its user-friendly interface, especially after upgrading from version six to seven."
"The most valuable feature is the easily accessible data in the database because we run a lot of SQL scripting against the database."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is its stability. We've only had very minor issues and generally they have happened because someone has applied a patch on a Windows operating system and it has caused some grief. We've actually been able to resolve those issues quite quickly with ActiveBatch. In all the time that I've had use of ActiveBatch, it hasn't failed completely once. Uptime is almost 100 percent."
"ActiveBatch by Redwood has positively impacted my organization by efficiently managing a significant volume of data and workflow between our database and applications on the web browser."
"What ActiveBatch allows you to do is develop a more efficient process. It gave me visibility into all my jobs so I could choose which jobs to run in parallel. This is much easier than when I have to try to do it through cron for Windows XP, where you really can't do things in parallel and know what is going on."
"Approximately ~20 hours of manual effort have been reduced to ~5 hours with the help of ActiveBatch."
"The user interface is really incredible."
"There are hundreds of pre-built steps."
"The nice thing about ActiveBatch is once we have created a specific job that can be easily be replicated to another job, then minimal changes will have to be made. This makes things nice. Reduction of coding is substantial in a lot of cases. The replication of one job to another is just doing a few minor tweaks and rolling it into production. This decreases our development costs substantially."
"The Jobs Library has been a tremendous asset. For the most, that's what we use. There are some outliers, but we pretty much integrate those Jobs Library steps throughout the process, whether it's REST calls, FTP processes, or file copies and moves... That has helped us to build end-to-end workflows."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the FTP file transfer."
"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 like the whole product, but specifically, I like the license part. It's very easy to acquire a license for this product."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"I would like a simple web interface that I could give to my team to go in and kill jobs or see why jobs died so that we don't have to drill down deeper into the application and know everything about it. It would be good to have a really clean web engine that would say here are the jobs running. We can then click to see the time running and whether any of them fails and other similar things. I know they have one, but it's not very simplistic."
"If around 5,000 or more jobs run at a time, JAMS slows down, and we have to wait around five to 10 minutes or restart JAMS scheduler services."
"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."
"The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me."
"I want JAMS to implement a global search function."
"JAMS has built-in reporting. I've never really used it. I tried using it a few years ago and I couldn't figure it out. It was wonky. It could be improved upon."
"Sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used. But because it does its job, I don't complain."
"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."
"They have some crucial design flaws within the console that still need to be worked out because it is not working exactly how we hoped to see it, e.g., just some minor things where when you hit the save button, then all of a sudden all your job's library items collapse. Then, in order to continue on with your testing, you have to open those back up. I have taken that to them, and they are like, "Yep. We know about it. We know we have some enhancements that need to be taken care of. We have more developers now." They are working towards taking the minor things that annoy us, resolving them, and getting them fixed."
"It does have a little bit of a learning curve because it is fairly complex. You have to learn how it does things. I don't know if it's any worse than any other tool would be, just because of the nature of what it does... the learning curve is the hardest part."
"Except for the GUI, everything looks good."
"I have faced struggles to understand, set up the tool, and implement it in my early days as a new user."
"One thing I've noticed is that navigation can be difficult unless you are familiar with the structure that we have in place. If someone else had to look at our ActiveBatch console and find a job, they might not know where to find it."
"Some improvements can be made to the user interface."
"We currently face issues with the web console of ActiveBatch by Redwood. When users operate through an RDP session, every user has their own ActiveBatch by Redwood application. However, on the web console, users encounter daily activity issues where the job instances do not appear or update correctly, and they cannot view the latest logs."
"The help center and documentation are not that helpful."
"The documentation has room for improvement."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The UI is not intuitive, and it would be nice if there was a web interface."
"In the next release, I would like the user experience to be improved. The user interface should be more appealing to gen-z."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"The pricing is very fair. We have seen very minimal to no price increases over the years. We are not banging down the door of support all the time either. I would imagine if we were a company that submitted a dozen support tickets a week for the last nine years, then it might be a little different because we would be eating up everybody's time. However, for what we get out of it, the pricing is extremely fair. Back when we were originally looking and brought in JAMS, we were looking at a couple of the other competitive products that were in this space, but the pricing from JAMS was far and away better than what the other competitors could offer for the same functionality."
"Definitely check how many single processes you want to run and count them as jobs. That is how you would work out your pricing on JAMS. For example, if you're running a number of commands and you can put them all into one script and run that script, you can count that as one job."
"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."
"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."
"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."
"The pricing of JAMS has not been an issue for us, as it has allowed us to save time."
"It's certainly a lot cheaper than Tivoli and Control-M. In comparison to them, you get a lot more bang for your buck. You get pretty much the whole functionality and more, in some cases, when compared to Control-M, but at a fraction of the price."
"It allows for lower operational overhead."
"I don't think we've ever had a problem with the pricing or licensing. Even the maintenance fees are very much in line. They are not excessive. I think for the support that you get, you get a good value for your money. It's the best value on the market."
"ActiveBatch is currently redesigning themselves. In the past, they were a low cost solution for automation. They had a nice tool that was very inexpensive. With their five-year plan, they will be more enhancement-driven, so they're trying to improve their software, customer service, and the way that their customers get information from them. In doing that, they're raising the price of their base system. They changed from one pricing model to another, which has caused some friction between ActiveBatch and us. We're working through that right now with them. That's one of the reasons why we're why we were evaluating other software packages."
"The price was fairly in line with other automation tools. I don't think it's exorbitantly expensive, relatively speaking."
"I like ActiveBatch Workload Automation's licensing model because they're not holding you down on an agentless model or agent model, where every server needs to have an agent. That's the main selling point of the solution and I hope they stay that way."
"The pricing was fair. There are additional costs for the plugins. We have the standard licensing fees for different pieces, then we have the plugins which were add-ons. However, we expected that."
"If you compare ActiveBatch licensing to Control-M, you're looking at $50,000 as opposed to millions."
"Currently, we are paying approximately $7,000 yearly, which includes support."
"The pricing and the licensing are good. It is affordable and can be used to improve and optimize productivity."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Insurance Company
7%
Performing Arts
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Insurance Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about JAMS?
I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
They recently switched to subscription-based pricing, which increased. The price is fair considering the functionalit...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
As far as we are using JAMS version 6, it looks good and there is nothing major to add about it. Everything is functi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for ActiveBatch by Redwood has been great; we recently renewed ...
What needs improvement with ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
I believe ActiveBatch by Redwood could be improved because the UI could be modernized.
What is your primary use case for ActiveBatch Workload Automation?
My main use case for ActiveBatch by Redwood is file processing. I use ActiveBatch by Redwood for file processing for ...
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Also Known As

No data available
ActiveBatch
ASG-Zena
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Informatica, D&H, ACES, PrimeSource, Sub-Zero Group, SThree, Lamar Advertising, Subway, Xcel Energy, Ignite Technologies, Whataburger, Jyske Bank, Omaha Children's Hospital
Fraternidad Muprespa
Find out what your peers are saying about ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Rocket Zena and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
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