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Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow vs OpCon comparison

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Executive Summary

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
Amazon Managed Workflows fo...
Ranking in Workload Automation
20th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OpCon
Ranking in Workload Automation
8th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
59
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 Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow is 1.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpCon is 1.8%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JAMS2.8%
OpCon1.8%
Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow1.7%
Other93.7%
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.
IP
Business and Technology Strategy Lead at Cognix Inc
Operational workflows improve as we address needs but technical support costs affect resources
Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow is easy to use and offers great scalability. The more we include and extend our capabilities, we can easily scale up according to our needs. When we compare it to other tools in the market, such as Control-M and other technologies, Airflow offers a lot of flexibility. Using this tool minimizes costs and maximizes efficiency.
Jose Rivera Hernandez - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior VP of Technology at Triangle Credit Union
Helps automate all kinds of jobs and it's worth the price because it saves a lot of time and money
One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically restart. SMA Technologies automatically gets a notification that the job has failed, and they restart it on their end, so now, we have the job restarting twice. There were times when we came into the office in the morning, and we had two files because the job ran twice. I do not know if the system can prevent a job from running the second time. If a job has run successfully, or it is running, it should not run again.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"While I appreciate the other features, the agent stands out for its ease of installation and configuration for JAMS monitoring."
"Previously, we manually managed file transfers by writing our scripts. The automated MFT feature is great for me and the company. It helps us know where the files are going and enables us to track errors if anything fails. It also makes the connection seamless for third-party vendors."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"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."
"JAMS has been a beneficial monitoring tool for our project in terms of being able to deliver data that is essential for users."
"Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow is easy to use and offers great scalability; the more we include and extend our capabilities, we can easily scale up according to our needs."
"One of the product's main strengths is that it is well-suited for a DevOps pattern, allowing us to automate our CI/CD pipeline."
"It makes everything simpler. Once OpCon is in, it just repeats itself day after day. We don't have to worry about whether a process will be missed. It will run every single time. We are not dropping jobs or missing stuff. When you have multiple institutions, it's very easy to miss jobs. You get on a roll, start doing things, and then forget somebody. With OpCon, everything is done."
"The most valuable feature is the automation in general."
"It seems like it would scale well."
"My favorite feature is the dashboard feature, which shows jobs that are running, and completed, any failures, and provides dashboard reporting."
"We have found it scales very well. We run thousands of thousands of jobs every day, and sometimes thousands of jobs in a few hours."
"It allows us to organize everything into a process flow throughout the day for our different tasks that we have to run. So, it keeps everything organized. It is easy to monitor and adjust, if we need to."
"It can run scripted tasks automatically over and over without intervention. That is what it does and the part that I really like because repetitive tasks need to be done over and over, day after day, no matter what day of the week it is. It is difficult to have staff do these manually and consistently, especially over weekends or through the night. Instead, you can have OpCon do them."
"The solution has freed up employees to do more meaningful work as a result of automation. They don't have to sit there and wait for files to download. They don't have to stare at the screen while a process is running. It all runs in the background, doing it for them."
 

Cons

"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."
"JAMS lacks source control features. Our previous solution had job control language, but JAMS doesn't. When migrating between versions, JAMS doesn't migrate all the data, like job change history, etc. Also, the scheduler doesn't have a way to make jobs invisible, so you can temporarily turn a job off if you decide not to run it today."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It is important to receive notifications if a charged job fails and SQL is halted. JAMS does not provide halted notifications by default, which is a critical feature that needs to be added."
"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."
"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."
"The documentation provided is good."
"To be very honest, technical support from AWS is extremely expensive."
"The initial setup was fairly complex."
"The only downside to OpCon is that its features can be complicated and really must be taught. Most of our users don't have training beyond the free Basic Training that SMA provides, so for fresh eyes, it is kind of difficult to understand some of the language used."
"What can get complicated is if you're doing anything more than just the built-in jobs. If you're using the more advanced features, troubleshooting becomes extremely complicated."
"I believe there's room for improvement, and while I think it's something they are considering, I would welcome seeing OpCon integrate with a broader range of systems and third-party products."
"There are some limitations in the actual jobs that are created and how you're able to rename files. Suppose you're bringing in, say, 10, 15, or 20 reports from a core system, and you're using an "asterisk character" to identify files. For example, if you're grabbing files that start with this, end with this, but the characters in between could be different, it has to retain that same name in the destination. It won't allow you to rename them with a date stamp or the like."
"The only thing that we have been talking about with the vendor is the Solution Manager tool that we have. It is a great tool. It is getting replaced by another tool that is probably called Enterprise Manager. We just had a few complaints about it. The navigation of that new tool is a little bit more arbitrary than what we have been used to."
"The biggest area where there is room for improvement would be integration with their code. They've got a function for embedded scripts and it would be nice if that worked with a code or versioning management system, like GitLab."
"There is one feature that has been a difficult problem, and right now, OpCon can't do it. I'm not sure if it should be expected to, but we have tried to get it to where it could start a process on an external database."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"JAMS is priced competitively compared to similar solutions and offers flexible licensing options to cater to user needs."
"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"For what it does, the product is priced very well."
"The licensing model for JAMS is straightforward and based on the number of agents, not the number of jobs you run. It's cheap and fairly simple."
"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."
"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."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"It is not an inexpensive solution but it is less expensive than other options."
"While the base pricing is reasonable, the à la carte options are making the overall cost more complicated and potentially problematic."
"This solution is slightly more expensive than our previous solution. Right now, we are paying about $40,000 a year. However, we think it's well worth the cost to keep things automated, reducing our staff."
"I have seen some contracts, and it seems that Control-M is a lot more expensive than OpCon, but I do not know the pricing of OpCon. Control-M seems to be four or five times more expensive than OpCon."
"It's definitely worth the cost."
"SMA is big on free training. They do monthly training down at their headquarter office. As long as you own the product, the only thing you pay for is your employees' travel expenses. The training is free. They are willing to train people and give them the knowledge. That way, you are equipped to do what you need to do."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"Annually, we pay $29,000. This is for a blanket policy that covers everything, like licensing and support."
"It used to be per machine, so we had X number of devices licensed. Now it's not. If we had a lot of machines, the new license might've decreased the cost. Unfortunately, we didn't see the same gains."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
39%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Performing Arts
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise18
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise19
 

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 Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow?
I rate the product pricing a five. It is not an inexpensive solution but it is less expensive than other options like...
What needs improvement with Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow?
Customization in general depends on the use cases that we are trying to address, but I don't have a specific thing ri...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow?
Custom Generalizations do not directly correlate with specific sections conventional to reviews. Less clarity on dire...
What do you like most about OpCon?
My favorite feature is the dashboard feature, which shows jobs that are running, and completed, any failures, and pro...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpCon?
I am the one who signs the contract. In the beginning, when I started working here, it seemed very expensive, but aft...
What needs improvement with OpCon?
One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically...
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Information Not Available
LOHR, Carnival Cruise Lines, Herbalife, Digital Federal Credit Union, Synergent, Frandsen Bank & Trust
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow vs. OpCon and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.