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OpCon vs VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator 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
6.9
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OpCon
Ranking in Workload Automation
11th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation Orch...
Ranking in Workload Automation
15th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 2.8%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpCon is 1.9%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator is 1.0%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS2.8%
OpCon1.9%
VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator1.0%
Other94.3%
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.
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.
Mayank-Goyal - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Consultant at MBCOM
Have streamlined multi-cloud provisioning and reduced virtual machine delivery time from days to hours
In terms of Orchestrator as a tool there is a lot of room for improvement, specifically in being more developer-friendly though it has come a long way. From that perspective, certain modern features are missing, especially when compared to developer tools such as Visual Studio Code or other code editors. That's essential, considering it's the primary development tool for VMware. In terms of Automation, there should be more features that align with what public cloud interfaces can provide. Not everyone is a developer; therefore, if they can offer out-of-the-box features for the most common scenarios that customers need, it would be highly beneficial for end users.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The alerting in it is really targeted... you can set specific alerting so that if jobs in a given folder fail, certain people are alerted. You can also set security at the folder level, so that only people in those areas can go set them. That means that the alerting and security can be set at a very granular level."
"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."
"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 dashboard is intuitive."
"The product is easy to use."
"Being able to create a series of chained jobs, which are basically linked jobs is valuable."
"JAMS has helped save IT staff time by automating tasks previously performed with scripts, and its scheduling feature has been particularly useful."
"The planning capabilities are most valuable."
"File Watcher can run jobs when files are made available in a folder."
"There are a lot of valuable features. The version that we're currently casting, Self Service, is going to be the most valuable to us. It is going to allow us to open up the doors, broaden our automation capability and help other business units to be able to automate a lot of the little things that they do from day to day. I'm really looking forward to being able to help other areas with their automation needs. Self Service is really key."
"The stability of this solution is awesome. It's the only product I've ever seen that you can actually build to fix itself if it has a problem. You'll build something and, if you find an issue, you can say, 'Hey, if this happens again, do this to correct it.'"
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the automation in general."
"OpCon has also reduced our data processing times because of the way you can build out workflows. It can run things in sequence. It's not restricted to a linear process, so you can run multiple jobs at once, allowing for multi-threaded jobs."
"Often times there are criteria that cannot be determined by the system, which allows a human to make the determination and use the Self-Service Solution Manager to trigger a job."
"Auto-scheduling is the most valuable feature. We have the ability to schedule [batch jobs on our Unisys mainframes] seven days in advance, so we know exactly how we're running every night."
"Primarily, customers are looking for workflows and day-to-day actions, as well as advanced templates."
"Primarily, customers are looking for workflows and day-to-day actions, as well as advanced templates."
"The best features of VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator include peace of mind and lesser complexity; simplicity is crucial, and there is no complexity in the system."
"With automation, I can provision a virtual machine in just one to two hours; this is a drastic improvement."
 

Cons

"Fortra is getting much better with documentation and examples, but there is still room for improvement."
"I want JAMS to implement a global search function."
"The search capability needs to be improved because when we try to search for a job, it's hard to do."
"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."
"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 UI could be better. There were some things that were not quite intuitive, such as the search tool. When we tried to search for jobs, we had to clear the entire search and then go in and enter the new search query. That's something that wasn't intuitive for a new user."
"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."
"Do your first install, your first upgrade, with SMA. It's simple, it's as per the manual, as per the training, but you need that little bit of confidence."
"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."
"It would be great if you could create physically separate "clients," as I call them. I wish I could have a production client and a testing client and that they would be separate."
"It would be nice to go to a fully thin client."
"The solution has quite a learning curve for beginners. It's challenging. I wouldn't rate it as super-easy to automate processes. It's medium-weight. I've used more complex software, but I've used simpler software."
"Stability is an area for improvement. There are FTP agents that run on the MCP and they are there so that we can transfer a file from the MCP to the Windows environment or vice versa. Sometimes, and nobody has been able to figure out why, it just goes down, and all of my jobs that need it are hanging or failing... It would be very helpful if they could figure out what in the world is happening with that FTP client that's on the MCP."
"I think that they're working on this, but I wish that there was a more centralized area to be able to see what other people are doing... They have a community platform for OpCon users, but I want to see more of where somebody is doing this process in that way. They have a great community platform right now, but I feel that it could be developed."
"At first, it's a little clunky, but once you learn it, it actually is very simple. You have to get over that initial learning hump."
"There are areas of VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator that have room for improvement, specifically in being more developer-friendly."
"Some students, especially beginners, may find the learning curve to be steep due to a lack of requisite knowledge in backend languages like YAML, Python, or JavaScript."
"VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator is a very solid and acceptable product, but after the transition to Broadcom, prices are very high."
"I would like to see improvements related to AI integration, which could make understanding from a language perspective easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"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."
"JAMS is relatively inexpensive, with additional costs only incurred for tags, other services, and optional support renewals."
"It's expensive, to be honest, but it does the job."
"In the end, you'll find that it's really worth the price. There is some sticker shock, but it's worth every dime."
"This is a good product at a fair price."
"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."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"There are different add-ons, like the Self Service or Vision model. It all depends on what agents you have in your environment. We have a mainframe and Windows, and while I think SQL is free, SAP or anything beyond that has different connectors that might need a license."
"This solution is certainly not the cheapest, but we win in time."
"Yearly, it's around $30,000."
"Our license is for 1000 jobs. Including support, the license and upgrades are 2000 euros a month."
"Yearly, we're paying about $62,000. OpCon has an all-inclusive feature and module license, but you pay per task."
"The cost is based on the number of jobs. You pay for what you use. For us, the support cost is between €20,000 and €30,000 per year. It's too expensive."
"It was substantially less expensive than ASG-Zeke... I would suggest that someone who is only looking at price when evaluating workload automation tools take a very hard look at OpCon because it is well-priced."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
33%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise19
No data available
 

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?
My thoughts on the pricing of JAMS are that I won't say it is cheap, but it is cost-efficient, and that should be acc...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
An area that has room for improvement is related to the AWS RDS and database part, where they said that is in progres...
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...
What is your primary use case for OpCon?
In this credit union, we use OpCon for automation. That is the main use of it. We have over 3,000 jobs and schedules ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator?
Currently, I find the pricing to be on the expensive side. After the Broadcom acquisition, the licenses skyrocketed i...
What needs improvement with VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator?
In terms of Orchestrator as a tool there is a lot of room for improvement, specifically in being more developer-frien...
What is your primary use case for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator?
My use case for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator or now known as VCF Operations Orchestrator which is part of VCF ...
 

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
LOHR, Carnival Cruise Lines, Herbalife, Digital Federal Credit Union, Synergent, Frandsen Bank & Trust
1. VMware 2. Dell Technologies 3. Cisco Systems 4. IBM 5. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 6. Microsoft 7. Oracle 8. Amazon Web Services 9. Google Cloud 10. Intel 11. Accenture 12. Fujitsu 13. Hitachi Vantara 14. NetApp 15. Red Hat 16. SAP 17. Siemens 18. T-Systems 19. Verizon 20. AT&T 21. Vodafone 22. Orange 23. BT Group 24. Deutsche Telekom 25. Ericsson 26. Nokia 27. Samsung 28. Sony 29. Toshiba 30. Panasonic 31. LG Electronics 32. Philips
Find out what your peers are saying about OpCon vs. VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.