It was related to encryption. The encryption had to be disabled on all clients including the cell manager. The cell manager didn't disable from GUI (we are on version 9.04) or the command line. So the config file located in C:\Program Data\OmniBack\Config\Server was renamed so that the service could created a new config file. The same was done for the config file under C:\Program Data\OmniBack\Config\client.
Also, " -encryption 1" parameter was removed for the cell manager from the "cell_info" file located in C:\Program Data\OmniBack\Config\Server\cell.
The command line worked after this upon restart of inet service. The clients were all disabled. A test backup worked. So, re-enabled the ECC. The jobs are running so far.