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Keeping up with the complexity of IT automation requires knowing how to optimize job scheduling and workload automation with a centralized, streamlined, and cost-effective approach. Yet with the significant investment of time and resources in solutions like ActiveBatch, it may seem overwhelming to consider moving from one solution to another. This sunk-cost effect may be interfering with the ability to objectively recognize the limitations of your current solution.
Or perhaps it is propelling you to consider evaluating other enterprise workload automation providers that can help you do away with costly products and licenses, and to embrace a more centralized solution that reduces complexity and streamlines IT automation. Wherever you are in your enterprise automation journey, it is essential to compare alternatives, including JAMS enterprise workload automation, and learn how to leverage a more streamlined, seamless approach that modernizes your overall IT infrastructure.
While it is important that every organization chooses the right workload automation solution for their needs, it’s also critical to understand where differences exist so you can select the right solution for your business. Below we will examine ActiveBatch and JAMS at a high level, specifically in relation to three key differences—support, developer extensibility, and product experience. We will compare and contrast both solutions, including where they rank to customers, and also provide some practical takeaways as you consider migrating solutions.
Solution Overviews: Exploring ActiveBatch and JAMS
While there are many tools available for workload automation, JAMS and ActiveBatch from Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc. (ASCI) are two of the most well-known job scheduling tools in the market. Here, we will take a quick look at the high-level history and characteristics that define each solution.
ActiveBatch Overview
ASCI began in 1981 and its flagship product ActiveBatch is now highly recognized in the market. ActiveBatch’s low-code approach allows users to build and report in real-time on cross-platform, end-to-end workflows. The product appeals to less technical users by leveraging low-code GUI to hide underlying complex functionality. Unfortunately, users are not able to see ActiveBatch code and cannot ‘look under the hood.’ If something does not work properly or breaks within the tool, customers are required to engage with ActiveBatch support.
While ActiveBatch offers a single unified console designed for operational efficiency, it requires users to conform to its platform constraints. Overall, ActiveBatch is best for organizations looking to employ low-code assembly, management, and orchestration of automated IT and business processes across hybrid-computing.
JAMS Overview
JAMS was originally developed by MVP Systems Software in 1985 and is now part of the Fortra family of solutions. JAMS is a highly recognized enterprise workload automation solution, offering centralized workload automation and job scheduling to run, monitor, and manage jobs and workflows that support critical business processes.
JAMS is purpose-built for highly-skilled DevOps teams with an intentional focus on code-driven automation. It enables IT users to go beyond GUI, providing automation code so users can define business logic in their jobs. The JAMS solution offers a centralized console to automate across all platforms, APIs, and scripting languages, and shows the evolution of how jobs are built with the full detail of its history down to the code level.
Examining JAMS as an Alternative to ActiveBatch: Three Critical Differentiators
Whether you are an ActiveBatch user or are currently examining JAMS and ActiveBatch as part of a vendor comparison, there are three areas that are obvious differentiators between the products that may influence your decision—support, developer extensibility, and overall product experience.
#1: Customer Support
While ActiveBatch provides solid customer support, JAMS offers support that is higher ranked and better valued across the customer base. When assessing the two solutions, reviewers on G2 indicated that JAMS had a better quality of ongoing product support and was the preferred support provider.
One example in outstanding support offered by JAMS is successful implementations. Experienced consultants work closely with customers to ensure each implementation balances flexibility with performance and security. With expert, highly-ranked implementation services, users count on JAMS for extra guidance and confidence.
JAMS also offers 24/7 support. Whether it’s verifying connection prerequisites, supporting the initial set up of a development environment, or helping explain the client, JAMS ensures customers are truly supported with the expertise to back it up.
Finally, when it comes to support and ongoing partnerships, JAMS ranks higher than ActiveBatch. While both solutions are listed in the Leaders Quadrant on G2, JAMS outperforms and outranks ActiveBatch based on customer reviews and experiences.
#2: Developer Extensibility
While ActiveBatch targets average business users with GUI-driven automation, JAMS is built for developer extensibility and provides a solution that conforms to users. ActiveBatch relies on drag-and-drop job development. It combines no-code steps with code-based actions, integrating existing scripts into no-code workflows.
For IT professionals, JAMS offers a superior technical product because it is the only job scheduling solution engineered on the .NET framework and is architected on current technologies that are continuing to evolve. The JAMS .NET Class Library exposes each capability of JAMS to applications, providing endless opportunities for automation. All JAMS automation capabilities are accessible to custom applications.
JAMS also enables users to work more efficiently with applications running on the Windows platform with robust automation, and leverages PowerShell unlike any other job scheduling solution. With a custom PowerShell host, JAMS provides better error control, improved parameter passing, host to script communication, and detached UI capabilities.
Finally, the JAMS REST API provides users with programmatic hooks into jobs and the scheduler. This enables users to create, update, and delete objects within the scheduling environment directly from any applications. Programming interfaces allow for virtually unlimited integrations between JAMS and other technologies used within an environment. With JAMS, organizations can quickly scale their deployment across any system, platform, or application.
#3: Product Experience
Ease of use and administration is an essential component of any workload automation solution. Many users have discovered that the JAMS solution when compared to ActiveBatch is easier to use, easier to set up, and easier to administer. According to users on G2, JAMS is the preferred tool for usability, with those same users reporting they prefer doing business with JAMS overall.
Users also indicate that JAMS meets the needs of their business better than ActiveBatch. In relation to feature updates and roadmaps, reviewers also emphasize their preference for the direction of JAMS over ActiveBatch Workload Automation.
JAMS evolves workload automation with code-driven, future-proofed centralization. It stores and secures all job definitions into one repository and can execute jobs on any operating system (OS). JAMS can also combine jobs into powerful sequences and provides fair and flexible licensing to organizations seeking to maximize a return on their investment. Perhaps most important, JAMS experts offer a continuous connection with customers, including ongoing reviews, high rates of retention, and incredible responsiveness to users.
Practical Takeaways As You Consider Converting from ActiveBatch to JAMS
With so many essential business operations at stake, it may seem overwhelming to move from one solution to another. Your experiences with ActiveBatch probably make you think there is significant time, cost, and services required to move to a new solution. But migrating from ActiveBatch to JAMS is easier, more common, and more predictable than you might think.
One of our primary goals is to minimize the impact on your business and effectively migrate your solution quickly and effortlessly. Using our conversion technologies, we can easily and accurately convert anywhere from a handful of jobs to thousands of jobs in JAMS. The JAMS conversion utility makes it easy for organizations to migrate batch processes and workflows out of their existing system and into JAMS. Our conversion utility can pull the core properties—schedule, exceptions, credentials, and job source—directly into the JAMS scheduler. This
process is completed in days—even when countless batch jobs are involved.
If you are considering converting to JAMS, you can be sure that our automation experts have the know-how and experience to streamline your ActiveBatch migration. We offer comprehensive solutions and services to assist you—making your migration to JAMS seamless. Best of all, your organization will have significantly reduced its job scheduling maintenance costs once you have converted to JAMS. We use a proven, repeatable methodology to convert scheduling processes into JAMS and help you itemize and prioritize the scheduling features you actually use.
Converting from ActiveBatch does not require long consulting engagements—just a streamlined, straightforward plan to get you where you need to go. It’s time you gain confidence to move toward a better supported, more extensible, and better product experience in IT automation. Look to the highest rated workload automation solution offered by JAMS to take your enterprise automation to the next level.
