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HCL Workload Automation vs IBM Workload Automation comparison

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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
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
HCL Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
33
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 HCL Workload Automation is 1.9%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 4.7%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
JAMS2.8%
IBM Workload Automation4.7%
HCL Workload Automation1.9%
Other90.6%
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.
reviewer2783334 - PeerSpot reviewer
SME at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Automation has streamlined critical workloads and has reduced manual reporting efforts
In the future, I would like to see enhancements, particularly in the GUI console, the TDWC GUI console for the end user. We do not have many complaints, but I believe there is some slowness, which may be due to network connectivity. However, in some cases, we do experience lag in the TDWC console, which I think needs to be considered for improvement to speed up the end-user console. As of now, I do not have much clarity on any additional features that I would like to see included in HCL Workload Automation in the future or any functionality that requires enhancement at the moment.
reviewer2701716 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Dynamic workload balancing facilitates efficient job scheduling and ensures continuity with a master-slave setup
One valuable feature of IBM Workload Automation is the ability to combine different applications and platforms to organize jobs together, creating dependencies. It's akin to an orchestra. Another feature is dynamic workload balancing, which I find enhances efficiency by automating job setup to run daily. Moreover, having a backup setup allows for immediate recovery if the master setup fails.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The built-in triggers are great."
"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."
"The user-friendly and adaptable scheduler allows us to manage various scheduling scenarios."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"The ability to sequence jobs is excellent; it means we don't have to schedule them individually, and if one fails, it doesn't unwind the entire workflow."
"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."
"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."
"JAMS has improved my organization by taking a myriad of manual processes and allowing us to automate them. It enables our folks to focus more on tasks that require their human intelligence and their creativity and less on just mundane tasks. It increases efficiency, accuracy, and consistency."
"The scalability of HCL Workload Automation is essentially limitless, as I have worked with corporations running over a million flows per day without performance issues when scaling according to HCL's documentation."
"Easy to set up, it doesn't require a lot."
"HCL Workload Automation is more stable and secure, helping to avoid incidents and meet SLAs, making it a dependable tool."
"We have good features, good utility, and excellent feedback from all our stakeholders and end users."
"Technical support from IBM is very good."
"The support from Cisco is very good. I was with them as a company for 40 years"
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Workload Automation is its holistic view, which helps me find technical solutions quickly. For instance, if a customer has an issue completing their workload within a specific time frame, the tool provides enough information to identify and resolve the issue. One of the main challenges is dealing with data infrastructure problems and pending updates. Workload Automation helps me leverage current AI capabilities to recommend architectural updates to avoid these issues. It also allows me to balance CPU usage effectively, ensuring service level agreements are met. The interface is user-friendly and facilitates this process smoothly."
"This solution has a request feature where users can request the added features they need to have developed. Based on client voting for those features, these are developed and released."
"Provides a robust, full spectrum enterprise-wide WLA platform."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The solution helps automate processes so that the workload can be handled on a daily basis."
 

Cons

"As an admin, I would like to have a web-based GUI instead of a client application that we have to install on our PCs."
"I want JAMS to implement a global search function."
"The only thing that they could improve on is the fact that they don't have a browser version of JAMS. They've got all the bits and pieces there if you want to build your own web version of it. It does come with a web client, but it's pretty clunky. They could improve on that."
"The product does not allow the users to cut and paste the job names from the screen."
"The biggest area with room for improvement is the area that my organization benefits the most from using JAMS, and that is in custom execution methods. I happen to have a very good C# developer. Ever since we got JAMS, he has spent a lot of time talking to JAMS developers, researching the JAMS libraries, and creating custom execution methods. He's gotten very good at it. He is now able to create them and maintain them very easily, but that knowledge was hard-won knowledge. It was difficult to come by, and if I should ever lose this developer, then I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could create JAMS custom execution methods quite as well as he can since there really isn't all that much help, such as documentation or information, available on how to create custom execution methods."
"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."
"The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me."
"JAMS doesn't allow us to implement SOC controls. We are a company that trades stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, so all our transactions are audited. It has a feature that saves the file for only a month but doesn't segregate the data between finance and SOC-related compliance."
"In the future, I would like to see enhancements, particularly in the GUI console, the TDWC GUI console for the end user."
"To improve HCL Workload Automation, I recommend focusing more on testing new features before release, as the aggressive roadmap has resulted in some features not being properly tested and working as expected."
"The interface needs some improvements."
"For increasing infrastructure or adding users, while the application is good, I do not think its current capability can handle the large volume of scripts at HDFC because critical applications require high performance when many scripts are running at night."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"There should be more custom documentation, specifically around Java APIs. There should also be more training. In terms of features, we are currently using only 50% of its features. We don't use all features that are available, but there is always room for improvement in all of the tools."
"The performance of the previous versions could be better."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"The solution's installation could be improved because the customers have to do it all the time."
"Slow down on the releases a bit. I fully understand that IWA functionality is increasing at an amazing rate, but trying to keep up with the upgrades is rough."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"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."
"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"It was $10,000 for the first year. Then, there is a maintenance cost for licensing every year that we get billed $5,000 for every year."
Information not available
"To my knowledge, IWA is the only WLA product that will provide "parallel tracking" capability to assist in upgrading from one platform to IWA."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."
"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."
"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
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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
19%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
9%
Recreational Facilities/Services Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

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 Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise29
 

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 needs improvement with HCL Workload Automation?
In the future, I would like to see enhancements, particularly in the GUI console, the TDWC GUI console for the end us...
What is your primary use case for HCL Workload Automation?
I use HCL Workload Automation for several use cases. In 2022, we had a migration where we needed to upgrade from 9.4 ...
What advice do you have for others considering HCL Workload Automation?
Regarding the impact of using HCL Workload Automation on reducing human error in operations, there is a checkpoint fe...
What needs improvement with IBM Workload Automation?
IBM Workload Automation could be improved by reducing its cost. The maintenance charges have increased significantly,...
What is your primary use case for IBM Workload Automation?
We use IBM Workload Automation ( /products/ibm-workload-automation-reviews ) as a scheduler. We install agents on the...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Workload Automation?
I recommend IBM Workload Automation as it's a well-established and stable product. However, the cost is a concern. Th...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, IBM TWS
 

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
Information Not Available
Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent
Find out what your peers are saying about HCL Workload Automation vs. IBM Workload Automation and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.