No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AutoSys Workload Automation vs BigFix comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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 Scheduler
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (2nd)
AutoSys Workload Automation
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (5th)
BigFix
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (9th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (21st), Patch Management (7th), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (10th), Autonomous Endpoint Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AutoSys Workload Automation6.4%
Control-M10.1%
Automic Automation4.5%
Other79.0%
Workload Automation
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BigFix2.0%
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.4%
CrowdStrike Falcon5.5%
Other86.1%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

SP
Developer at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
Centralized scheduling has improved automation and reduces manual monitoring for complex workflows
The best features JAMS Scheduler offers are centralized job scheduling, dependency management, and monitoring. I also appreciate the alerts and retry options because they help us handle failures without constantly checking jobs manually. Centralized scheduling makes it easier to manage all our jobs from one place instead of maintaining multiple schedulers or scripts. Dependency management is especially useful for chaining workflows because JAMS Scheduler can automatically trigger the next job only when the required previous step completes successfully. Another useful feature is the monitoring and alerting. If a scheduled job fails or runs longer than expected, we can quickly identify it and take action, which is particularly helpful for production support and reducing manual monitoring. JAMS Scheduler has helped quite a bit with identifying common job failures, missed schedules, dependency issues, and execution errors. The alerts and job history make it easier to identify the failure point and take corrective action without manually checking every workflow. JAMS Scheduler's code-driven automation has been useful for handling more complex scheduling logic and workflows that go beyond simple time-based triggers. It is important for us because we can combine scripts, dependencies, conditions, and parameters to support different production scenarios without creating too much manual intervention.
PK
Assistant VP at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Experience significant automation with robust integration and user-friendly interfaces
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancements in the R24 release. The web UI needs some improvement. Cloud integrations are limited to 25 or 30 configurable plugins and integrations to the cloud. They can improve in that area. They have separate tools, not AutoSys Workload Automation, such as Atomic and other SaaS-based solutions that can run inside the cloud. AutoSys Workload Automation can be configured in the cloud, but it requires a substantial number of VMs depending on the load. For on-premises deployment, it is a very good solution. They need to increase their footprint in the cloud and improve the web UI. They are making excellent progress in the R24 release.
InderjeetSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
End-to-end automation has simplified patching and software deployment across thousands of servers
There is one feature in BigFix called the automation patch policy that requires enhancement. When an action is initiated through the patch policy, it appears on the console but arrives in chunks. When targeting hundreds of servers from the patch policy, the actions come in chunks such as ten out of six, ten out of nine, or ten out of fifteen. This fragmented approach creates a significant challenge for the patching team to monitor the action status. I would recommend that the development team provide a single action or one to two actions instead of multiple actions requiring individual monitoring. A broad status update could be provided to the client indicating the overall progress of the patch policy implementation rather than requiring monitoring of every individual action. This would reduce the bandwidth required by the team to track multiple actions on the console.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 planning capabilities are most valuable."
"In summary, this product is top class."
"The fact that we no longer need to use Excel spreadsheets is huge."
"JAMS saves us on the order of thousands of hours per year."
"The key benefits about JAMS is having the ability to run long running jobs on-premise as compared to products like Azure Data Factory."
"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."
"JAMS offers diverse scheduling capabilities for any kind of job, including Linux, PowerShell scripts, and SQL, enabling automation of jobs, which has proven beautiful after three years of usage."
"The scheduling feature allows us to know when jobs are going to run and makes sure they run in the order needed."
"We get better reports than we use to have."
"It streamlines processing really well, so we're able to cut down on our processing times."
"We don't have to manually run things anymore. We can have the work that a team of 50 people would do, all inside of one platform."
"​We run millions of jobs through it every day using it for financial transactions, banking, credit cards, PeopleSoft, payroll, etc."
"It has improved my organization by automating IT applications."
"We have great faith in the CA tech support website, and their responses to us every time we have a question, even if it's just a question on functionality, never mind it might be a problem that may come up, they respond to us very quickly; so we feel very, very secure with that."
"CA ESP is a solid product and very easy to use."
"BigFix helped us to identify the compliance of devices and has also improved the way that we manage our software inventory for reporting to vendors."
"BigFix is a stable solution; you can deploy it and forget about it."
"It is pretty secure, and it gives extensive vulnerability features as compared to other applications. It supports multiple languages, and the security checks are pretty high as compared to other tools in the market."
"Scalability is also really great."
"BigFix provides tremendous benefits to users and clients and provides a comprehensive view and broad features for users."
"Desktop patching is the most valuable feature, because with servers, we have complete control over them, and we can simply push patches to the servers."
"The most valuable feature is the patching."
"I recommend BigFix to others."
 

Cons

"JAMS notifications for hung jobs could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"The main dislike about JAMS Scheduler is that nowadays in this AI world, the UI they provide is not user-friendly."
"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 cost has definitely gone up tremendously. That is where I do know, as much as the feature sets are there, and if the newly acquired company is going to be doing a pushback, they might just say, 'Do we still need to pay this much? Or at that point, should we look into an alternative?'"
"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."
"Upgrades to the GUI interface would be probably one of the biggest things they could do to improve."
"CA Workload Automation is not part of CA's strategic vision going forward."
"AutoSys Workload Automation could improve in the Linux environment."
"I would like to see two-factor authentication, since you see a lot of companies in the news for security breaches. That is a really big thing for us."
"I'd like to see automation pushed even further, giving us greater looks into other systems."
"The reporting system, currently, could be better."
"It needs improvement in the high-availability side. It needs improvement in WCC console and EEM console to make it user-friendly."
"Note that this product is now a legacy product with a dwindling user base and support."
"I would like to see much better web reporting because as it is now, it's convoluted, basic, it's not modern, and there are limitations to it."
"Around the scalability concern, I would like to see the ability to run teamed, clustered, or hierarchical root servers, in order to provide a more robust, high availability system. The single monolithic root server model does somewhat bother me."
"One aspect that could be improved is the speed of the console. Sometimes it can be slow, which is something that needs to be addressed."
"Maybe the online help could be improved. It'd be nice if you would have a lot more phrases and keywords that you could search for and find answers with the help."
"The new EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) feature, Detect, is new and still needs a few updates."
"I remember doing restarts a few times. So, making sure that it is rock solid from an executable perspective is important."
"Technical support depends on who you get. I deal with some amazing support folks, and then I've dealt with some less-than-amazing support folks."
"The solution needs to improve console speed. I would like to see one console that does everything. It doesn't need to have a big client console."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is a good product at a fair price."
"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"For what it does, the product is priced very well."
"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."
"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."
"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."
"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."
"I don't have information on the exact licensing cost of AutoSys Workload Automation because that's managed by the tools and financing teams. For agents, it's close to $4,00, but for the server setup, it's usually a one-time license initially, and it's AMC which is paid every year and comes close to $8,000 to $10,000."
"It is overpriced."
"The price of this solution is reasonable and there is an annual license required."
"There is an annual license to use AutoSys Workload Automation."
"I certainly think the pricing is worth the value."
"The return on investment would be very high because doing things manually without this product would be extremely expensive."
"The pricing needs to be improved. Some of my client's complained that it was too expensive."
"CA pricing has been a problem, and not looked upon favorably here at all."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"Its price is very reasonable."
"When purchasing, buying with other IBM tools provided us with a very good discount in pricing."
"The tool's price continues to go up. The cost per endpoint can vary, ranging from approximately 30 to 80 dollars per year. Compared to other products, pricing is in the middle. You need to buy an additional database license, but most users already have it."
"You get what we call the Platform Edition, which you get for free. The patch service is maybe $0.50 per workstation per month. Then there's the basic server cost, which is about $1.50 per server per month. You also get into Lifecycle which does power management, OSD remote control, and those types of things, and that might be about 10 times the price - which works out to about $13 per server and, maybe $5 per workstation per month."
"I can estimate the reduced cost of servers maintenance to approximatively $500,000."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is expensive and ten is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing one out of ten."
"So, the pricing is slightly more expensive than the others. I have to keep buying licenses every time I add a new device."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise30
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise79
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise68
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
My experience with pricing for JAMS Scheduler was good. The pricing was reasonable, and the vendor only charged us fo...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
JAMS Scheduler can be improved by sectioning off credentials and also the web functionality and setting that up.
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My main use case for JAMS Scheduler is to trigger integrations as well as send out alerts and reports. For sending al...
How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?
Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful b...
What needs improvement with AutoSys Workload Automation?
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancement...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
I rate the price for BigFix as medium, neither low nor high.
What needs improvement with BigFix?
There is one feature in BigFix called the automation patch policy that requires enhancement. When an action is initia...
What is your primary use case for BigFix?
My current use case involves being one of the products and one of the clients implementing this tool.
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA Workload Automation, CA Workload Automation AE
Tivoli Endpoint Manager
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Gaumont, Mercantil do Brasil, CCEE, Hanwha Life
US Foods, Penn State, St Vincent's Health US Foods, Sabadell Bank, SunTrust, Australia Sydney, Stemac, Capgemini, WNS Global Services, Jebsen & Jessen, CenterBeam, Strauss, Christian Hospital Centre, Brit Insurance, Career Education Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, JAMS Software, Broadcom and others in Workload Automation. Updated: October 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.