If at First You Don’t Succeed… One of the simplest Workload Automation tactics is the retry. The retry is, by no means, a permanent solution for a failing job. But, if your entire schedule of critical batch processes is made better by a successful execution – albeit later than you would have liked – then Read More
Waiting indefinitely, whether for the coffee you ordered 5 minutes ago, or for the date who is an hour late, causes one to question whether the expected outcome will ever happen. A well-designed Workload Automation strategy minimizes this type of uncertainty by establishing policies for runaways – jobs that should have completed within a set Read More
False starts eat away at an enterprise schedule. So many cycles of computing, database querying, and VM provisioning are wasted because some file wasn’t available yet, or some variable wasn’t set. No matter how perfect your part of the process was executed, the output remains valueless. And, the time invested is a loss to your Read More
Q&A with Dan St. Jean MVP Systems Software has helped many Direct Commerce customers automate their all-channel commerce systems with JAMS. We’ve been in the game so long that it’s not uncommon to hear our customers refer to Ecometry, Red Prairie, and even Escalate Retail, when they call. Whatever you call it, Direct Commerce continues Read More
Reining in the source of all your jobs is an essential step in your transition to centralized workload automation. Even if you are not writing code all day, you must think of yourself as a developer. Your “application” is the business. And, the features of your application are its automated workloads. Silos are for Farms, Read More
The latest build of JAMS V7 provides users with a new database option – Azure SQL. For most enterprises, SQL, or even SQL Express, has plenty of horsepower to handle data on the back end of JAMS. We specifically designed JAMS to consume as few resources as possible – an efficient database structure, small payloads, Read More
We often think of invoice processing as the responsibility of our accounting department and their ERP system. They should have this process locked up, right? But, IT teams can be deeply involved, especially when invoicing involves multiple platforms and systems. To generate invoices repeatedly and accurately requires a holistic view of every step of the Read More
Let’s face it. Scheduling batch jobs with native batch automation tools isn’t easy, or flexible. Whether you’re wrestling with the complex format of cron, or dealing with the limited features in Windows Task Scheduler or SQL Agent, it is never as easy as 1-2-3. Let’s break down some real-world examples of scheduling batch jobs with Read More
According to Forrester, 70% of customers would prefer to use a company’s website to get answers to their questions than contact companies via telephone or email. Gartner, too, predicts that by 2020, the customer will manage 85% of the relationship with an enterprise, without human interaction. Self-service not only accommodates the preferences of end users Read More
The migration process from legacy job scheduler to modern automation solution can seem daunting at first. By understanding the potential benefits and costs of each method, you will be better able to choose a migration path that fits your needs. Note that if you are consolidating multiple legacy schedulers you will need to select the Read More