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CA Workload Automation iDash [EOL] vs Control-M comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 13, 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
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (3rd)
CA Workload Automation iDas...
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Control-M
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
202
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (2nd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (2nd), Workload Automation (1st), AI IT Support (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

LV
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Automation has replaced nightly monitoring and delivers reliable, unified job scheduling
We have really enjoyed working with JAMS in terms of notifications, alerts, and streamlining. There used to be a process with Automate, which is another product from Fortra, but even before that, the other division of the company that we were merging with had a tool that was built in-house called a file handler or file distributor. It was an in-house developed tool, but it was not as streamlined or as efficient as JAMS is. We literally had to have a dedicated nighttime person monitoring. Although we are 24/7, the divisions of the company that we were using JAMS for have been small scale. While we have automated it, we have streamlined it in such a way that notifications go out and alerts go out, but if there is anything, then we get paged and alerted, and if anything needs to happen at midnight, we can wake up. On the other hand, with the tool I mentioned, the file handler and distributor, we used to have a dedicated nighttime person that had to be sitting and monitoring it to see when a file arrived, whether it met the conditions, and then execute the next particular job. By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this.
NR
Head Of Service Management at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
An easy initial setup with scalability capabilities and good stability
The solution should give commands in a mainly English perspective so that it's easier to configure in the future. The technical support could be improved by removing delays in response times. They should be able to get back to clients faster. If they offered automated migration in the future, that would be great.
RP
Batch Admin at NBC Universal
Brings data together from multiple platforms and optimizes cross-environment orchestration
The features of Control-M that I like the most include the ability to easily integrate or bring in different platforms into Control-M. For instance, AWS, mainframe, TWS, and something that's running on Autosys can all be brought into Control-M, converted to how Control-M runs it, and then the batch can be executed. This centralizes various applications in Control-M, which doesn't just have to handle batch processes, but also other tasks like reporting on required data. I find this functionality very useful and the setup is impressive, with more advancements yet to come. With Control-M, my company has achieved several measurable improvements since I started. The metrics indicate that the number of failures has dropped, and we have addressed the issue of excessive false alerts that I encountered when I joined. Previously, we received an overwhelming number of alerts daily, but now we manage to maintain that at a normalized level, perhaps around five to fifteen alerts, depending on running core batches and their setup.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is easy to use."
"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful."
"Because we have gone from a lot of manual processes to automated processes with JAMS, we have been able to free up IT staff time, and for just the Technical Operations Center team that I manage, it has saved about 20 hours a week."
"I find the historical tracking feature of JAMS invaluable for reviewing past events."
"In summary, this product is top class."
"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 fact that we no longer need to use Excel spreadsheets is huge."
"JAMS positively impacts my organization because it helps make it easier to manage JD Edwards scheduled jobs and fills the gap that the JD Edwards application has with scheduling, resolving a lot of those issues."
"The solution is easy to manipulate and has good performance."
"The solution is really perfect for a big enterprise using more than 100 or 200 applications."
"The stability of the solution is good. We haven't experienced any bugs or glitches and we haven't had any crashes that I can recall."
"It has absolutely saved us time; it has made us more efficient, and as far as the processing between systems, we don't have as many people because they have been able to focus on other efforts as we have been able to automate more stuff with Control-M."
"It’s a good, easy to use, and automated product."
"Control-M is the most used tool in my current project and is essential for job scheduling and checking job failures."
"The most valuable features of BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer are the ease of use and the ability to watch the files as they transfer called Watch File Transfer. There is a separate monitoring window that is useful."
"BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is highly stable; it is enterprise-grade software, and even when doing a job of 10,000 to 20,000, the solution is very stable."
"The most valuable feature is the automation process."
"Control-M is critical to our business."
"Its stability and the feature list are rich compared to other tools in the market."
 

Cons

"With no programming experience, I find JAMS code-driven automation challenging due to the required PowerShell scripting."
"The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."
"Sometimes the UI is not the most responsive I've ever used. But because it does its job, I don't complain."
"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."
"When looking at a folder in JAMS with many jobs, it would be good to have better information in the list display of what's inside those jobs. We get some information, but other important details are missing."
"It does validations when you try to delete an object and if there are any dependencies in place, the deletion process will not proceed... there is no information provided as to what it was that caused the validation to fail... it's quite a tedious process to find which object is getting in the way."
"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."
"The UI is completely unintuitive. We had to go and open up a support ticket with JAMS just to get something back."
"We have difficulties manipulating the agent for Windows."
"The technical support could be improved by removing delays in response times. They should be able to get back to clients faster."
"Control-M could benefit from incorporating AI features for better job scheduling."
"This solution could be improved by making it possible to better control GUI when interfacing with other systems."
"Sometimes, just to get them to look at it, you have to run a utility called data collector, and you have to give them all this information just to engage them. That can be burdensome."
"It is still a little difficult to get support on Control-M."
"The only thing we would object to are the license costs."
"BMC support is clueless on the new issues that arise."
"I would like not to have to reach out to a third-party application company to do automated notifications. Right now, we still have people manually calling people and emailing people. There's a company called xMatters - and there are others - that has an API through Control-M that can automate any aspect of failure management. I'd like to see it build right into the product. I'd like to see a better notification product."
"The next major release needs to focus on the lightweight web client."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"Take advantage of its scalability. You can start small. The initial cost is very reasonable. Once you have started picking up the tool and adopting it, then you can scale up from there and buy more agents."
"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."
"All licensing models are a little overpriced, but JAMS offers a good value, especially given their support response times and ability to handle unforeseen issues like the SFTP transfers. I hope to find more use cases to get a better bang for our buck."
Information not available
"The license model is based on the number of jobs we run on the SaaS application or the number of executions, unlike the on-premise model options. If we have a handful of jobs, it's always good to consider Control-M, but if it's a large number of jobs, Control-M might not be a great option."
"The solution is not cheap, it comes with quite a hefty price tag. Control-M is the market leader, but we still want the price to be as friendly as possible."
"As we increase the number of tasks or jobs on the system, there are concerns about cost."
"This is an area where it is a little difficult to work with BMC. They want to do licenses by job, which is what we have. For example, the simplest is to license by job, but they can also license by nodes. While the licensing is simple to use, it might not be the correct licensing model for the customer. It is okay because we want to license by job, which is something measurable. At the end of the day, licensing by job is the most important."
"The pricing is moderate, not too low or too high compared to other solutions."
"The cost of the hardware is high. Because you need to license each job, it is costly."
"The pricing of Control-M is reasonable."
"The product price is reasonable. I rate the pricing an eight."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
No data available
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise20
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise163
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the pricing was acceptable. I have gone with JAMS licen...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
I am fine with what JAMS offers and have nothing to suggest for improvement. JAMS' code-driven automation is not wide...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My main use case for JAMS is scheduling, which is the primary usage. I am mainly using JAMS for scheduling various jo...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?
From what I know about pricing, I would probably put Control-M in the expensive category, but you do pay for what you...
What needs improvement with Control-M?
We are not on the latest version of Control-M; we currently have version 20 and 21.
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Control M, BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer, BMC Australia CTM
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
COTA
The Bank of East Asia, LINE Bank Taiwan, Coop, Air Europa, Carrefour, Itau Unibanco, Snam, Embraer, ANZ Bank, EDP, Dominio's, Tampa General Hospital, W&W Informatik GmbH, Veterans General, Up Sí Vale, Sky Italia, REWE digital GmbH, Raymond James, Railinc, Navistar, Management Science Associates, Colruyt, CARFAX, Banpara, Aspiag Service, Amadeus, AG Insurance, ING Bank Slaski
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, JAMS Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.