Likelihood to Recommend JAMS is well suited for centralizing schedules. We have hundreds of databases, and JAMS has allowed us to centralize the scheduling of all of the individual jobs related to each individual database. This allows certain teams to follow the activity of specific jobs without having to access the individual servers on which the databases reside.
Read full review I've used ICM in the past which has been a very Microsoft product with everything thrown into a blender. So, PD implementation is a breath of fresh air with focused pages to achieve the end goal. If the goal is to collaborate on issues across the organization, PD might not be the best solution but within specific teams, PD excels at it.
Read full review Pros Watching for files Running Power shell scripts JOB notifications of failures to teams Being able to interface / run other programs as either dos window, Power shell window, Python window through configurable execution methods Purging JAMS history by Parameters, like dates and # of copies to keep of a job Being able to configure a hot backup to take over in the event a Primary JAMS Server goes down, the backup automatically kicks in after 3 minutes. - High Availability mode Being able to set up variables that can be used in JOBs / Sequences to hold login information (encrypted), date ranges or other Job Parameter values. And be able to programmatically updated by Power shell scripts to track progress between runs of the same job: count of orders processed, API Skip values when retrieving orders, when the API call only returns X amount per call and you need to get all available orders with multiple calls JOB logs can be put anywhere on network for other users to access - IT allowing of course. With the high availability option, this is Great, since you don't have to check each of the JAMS Servers for a log when a fail over occures Read full review Alerting notifications is its best attribute; it will continue to make contact until the alert is acknowledged by a user. The calendar view provides valuable information regarding who is on call by the team and their full contact information. The application also lets you initiate a tech bridge meeting instantly and notifies all on-call users. Read full review Cons Prior to JAMS I organized various batch job runs with a user friendly naming process (job, machine, date, etc). I had to jump through hoops to get JAMS to replicate by having a post-completion job rename and copy the log. Natively support JAMS commands in Powershell7. Failsafe guard to prevent runaway jobs that submit other JAMS jobs that were improperly coded. i.e. A throttle setting for new JOBS. I once had production go down when hundreds of jobs used up our daily license allocation in under a minute. I have similar (but different) Execution Methods that would benefit from a shared template. Current setup is awkward to change. I'd love my job Definitions to be natively linked to github for version control. Read full review When getting a phone call, PagerDuty doesn't seem to allow acknowledgments of alerts through the phone, which it says it does. I constantly receive a message that it was updated by another person - when in reality, it wasn't. Smarter notifications. If an alert was snoozed for a time, when it comes back, it sends out another alert. It should, I think, send a message asking if the alert is still an issue and give the option to close. Make schedule changes more intuitive. One button to acknowledge and close an alert. Read full review Likelihood to Renew JAMS is an essential application within our organization. There is no chance that at any point in the foreseeable future we would migrate off of the platform or stop our maintenance contract. HelpSystems (now rebranded Forta) releases frequent updates which always add value to the product. The system's reliability and extensibility has earned our trust that it will scale with our organization.
Read full review They have been rock solid for us thus far and are not very expensive and to be honest no time to evaluate other software at this point.
Read full review Usability At first its not 100% obvious what each item is meant for. When you look at the list for the first time there are a lot of objects, its taken some time to figure out what each one does. Once you figure out what each one does it makes more sense.
Read full review The UI is more complex than I would like. Part of the challenge is that most users use PagerDuty infrequently; I don't remember how I changed a policy last time. Another part of the challenge is that some users expect alerting to be a trivial feature, and are reluctant to invest any time in reading the documentation.
Read full review Reliability and Availability JAMS has been super reliable in our implementation. The only reason it isn't a 10 is the web client isn't fully functional so the availability suffers very mildly there
Read full review Performance JAMS performs well but the client some times take a little longer than normal to display logs and new views.
Read full review Support Rating We had a very aggressive timeline to look for a new batch job processor that is compatible with our new server that could help us maintain and improve our current data processing procedure. The JAMS support team was there to address our inquiries promptly. On average, their response times have been within 24 hours, ensuring that we receive assistance when we need it
Read full review PagerDuty is reliable and easy to set up. It gives an effective way to notify the team about critical incidents which results in a faster turnaround time on issues. users can customize their alerts rules based on their preferences. Overall it's effective and easy to use which adds great business value.
Read full review Implementation Rating I Was not part of the original Implementation, and the persons did that are no longer with the Organization. But I was part of the recent Upgrade process a year ago and I am the JAMS admin and was very pleased
Read full review When I setup notifications to PD thru the Python API I was impressed with the ease with which I could set up the software/service.
Read full review Alternatives Considered JAMS is easier to use, provides more features and was easier to manage form a central location. simple features in JAMS were missing from
VisualCron such as a projected daily schedule. The install setup with a client and agents was better suited for us too
Read full review I have not use the 2 technologies for as long as I have used PagerDuty but in my opinion PagerDuty makes things a lot easier. The other tools got the job done and got alerts out but PagerDuty just seemed to make the setup for on-call alert schedules and integrations easier than the others. This isn't to say the others are difficult, just that PagerDuty was slightly better. I also have noticed that more tools have options to integrate to PagerDuty over the other tools.
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model i didnt have any involvement in the sales process, however we purchased the product so it had to be decent.
Read full review Scalability I can only speak in in regards to scalability in the volume of jobs we have created. Many of our jobs exist in multiple environments, with each environment having its own unique folder names, connection strings, etc. We incorporate parameters on the folder level that contain the unique environment information. The jobs reference these values from the folder they are contained in, so we can easily copy a job from DEV to TEST and the source is the same but the values passed from the parameters are not. This makes it very easy to create many new jobs and copy them across multiple environments and have them work
Read full review Professional Services i didnt have any involvement in the sales process, however we purchased the product so it had to be decent.
Read full review Return on Investment JAMS was not the most cost-effective solution to the original program we were implementing at my Agency; but we were able to expand on the services we do provide using it's power and flexibility to enhance other program areas. The cost-model from MVPSI has been great in allowing us to deploy a DEVELOPMENT, STAGING, then PRODUCTION scheduler integrating the platform into our SDLC. Read full review Allow our service to be available 24/7 with minimal downtime, improving customer experience Monitor incidents and allow us to customize/schedule alert notifications, making engineers' jobs easier and preventing turnover Prevent SEVs that could deteriorate, bring down our service, and cost us millions of dollars from loss in bookings Read full review ScreenShots