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IBM Workload Automation vs VisualCron 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
6.6
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VisualCron
Ranking in Workload Automation
24th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (18th), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 3.0%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Workload Automation is 4.3%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VisualCron is 1.9%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS3.0%
IBM Workload Automation4.3%
VisualCron1.9%
Other90.8%
Workload Automation
 

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.
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.
Sourav-Dutta - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead - Database Administrator at SMART ENERGY SYSTEMS LLC
It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process
We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"Fortra's JAMS helped us centralize job management across our platforms and applications. This is critical because we schedule tasks across multiple applications and operating systems, using triggers and start dates to coordinate their execution."
"The most valuable feature of JAMS is its user-friendly interface, especially after upgrading from version six to seven."
"The built-in triggers are great."
"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 aspect of JAMS is its robustness."
"JAMS saves us on the order of thousands of hours per year."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable."
"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."
"The support from Cisco is very good. I was with them as a company for 40 years"
"I have supported this product in literally 100s of different environments and its unmatched in its ability to scale to any size."
"Technical support from IBM is very good."
"The solution helps automate processes so that the workload can be handled on a daily basis."
"Using the Windows Task Scheduler means you have to do some coding while using VisualCron means the tool takes care of the coding from the backend; you're just using the visual interface of VisualCron, creating the logic, and telling the tool what actions need to be performed, so VisualCron would take care of everything on the backend for you, which helps you manage time better."
"The ability to clone jobs to shorten the time it takes to implement a process has been invaluable, but its flexibility also gives us the ability to create a job that can handle a multifaceted process with a complex workflow."
"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."
"We don't have to do any coding. We just plug and play and it works."
"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."
"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."
"Support is AAA+, fast, and very detailed."
"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"For scalability, I would rate it as seven because when we have a huge volume, sometimes the tool is not so responsive."
"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."
"For the most part, JAMS is very stable. Occasionally, if you leave multiple windows open over a period of time, it is necessary to end that task and restart."
"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."
"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."
"TWS lacks sophisticated predictive analytics capability. The limited analytics it does offer is predicated on user-defined variables such as job run duration estimates, which if miscalculated render outputs unreliable."
"Customer service is 7/10; technical support is virtually impossible to get via direct phone call, as you have to rely on trouble tickets, wait several hours for a return call, and keep constant follow-up because your ticket can slip through the cracks and go unnoticed for days."
"8.5.1 is not stable, we've since moved to 8.6 but the front-end GUI was very slow."
"There were real stability issues. The WebSphere process gets hung on TWS masters running TWS 9.1."
"I think that is a good and modern development, but the first v9.x releases (and maybe also the latest, I don’t know) lacked the event-driver WLA functionality that was already available for years in older on-prem versions of the product."
"Other solutions like Control-M are better than this solution. IBM should have better integration with the cloud. It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"The performance of the previous versions could be better."
"Control-M had a far superior user interface and also had a notification system which TWS lacked."
"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition."
"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition. This is an improvement that could be useful. For example, some people put "invoice" in the subject and others put "invoice" in the body. If I want to make a trigger for everybody whose sending invoices, I have to make two jobs for this now."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."
"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface."
"The error timeout and info could be better. When making web request calls, it will time out sometimes and we won't get any useful info out of the error response."
"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler."
"I would like for VisualCron to expand audit log to show who changed job variables that are initialized per job run."
"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"There are no additional costs other than the license for Fortra's JAMS which is affordable."
"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."
"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"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."
"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."
"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."
"JAMS is close to the lower end of the pricing models for enterprise scheduling solutions. They are much cheaper than Control-M, as well as some other products that I've used. I also don't know of another solution where you can actually get true, unlimited licensing, where you can have as many instances and as many agents as you want."
"Pricing depends on the number of agents that you install."
"To my knowledge, IWA is the only WLA product that will provide "parallel tracking" capability to assist in upgrading from one platform to IWA."
"The solution is a little bit expensive."
"We transitioned from a server license to per job license, and that saved us a lot money."
"The solution's pricing is affordable."
"It is about one-third of the cost of a controller."
"The contract is with the customer with whom we are working, so IBM is not directly involved in this."
"The price is a bit high."
"ROI is 95 percent."
"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."
"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."
"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."
"ROI is one month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
5%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise30
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

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...
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...
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Also Known As

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

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Standard Life Group, Banca Popolare di Milano, A*STAR, ArcelorMittal Gent
7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Workload Automation vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.