BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer Reviews

We are using the solution for maintaining the infrastructure jobs like database Genesys and NICE. All jobs have been integrated into a single frame and a BMC Control-M readme page. Basically, we create jobs and modify the jobs. We have to analyze if any jobs fail. We settle the issues so that the jobs are up to date and should run.

The solution can communicate with the cluster. It can redirect any alarms or failures, and we remediate those actions.

We create new job scenarios and workarounds. We have special access to incidents and monitor controller operations. 

The solution is good in terms of working with other products. The integration is useful. 

Once you understand the solution, the initial setup isn't too bad. 

The solution is stable. 

It's scalable. 

We need the updates to be able to maintain interoperability. We still want to be able to verify testing in production and the environment and want upgrades to go smoothly so as not to disrupt our applications. The more seamless it can be, the better remediation will go. 

We'd like it to be easier to maintain the administrative side. Transferring files should be easier. There are a lot of dependencies. We'd also like there to be less space consumption.

There's a bit of a learning curve for new users.

When we pull job applications, if we configure multiple tenants under multiple environments with a single frame while we are logging into the applications, it sometimes freezes and takes too much time. 

I've used the solution for about one year.

From what I have seen so far, it is stable and reliable. 

We do have frequent version upgrades and maintenance and therefore haven't seen many issues.

It's a scalable product. I'd rate it eight out of ten in the ability to scale. 

We have 11 people on our team and about four people who handle administration and maintenance tasks. We're in four regions: Australia, Singapore, India and New Zealand. In these regions, there are two configured clusters - one in Australia and one in New Zealand. 

We have an administrative team that has the privilege of raising technical support. We will do the Genesys part, however, for BMC, they run the people. They will take care of coordination with the vendor and the business unit.

We use a lot of different solutions, including Genesys, NICE, Control-M ESPL, WFM, and workforce management. All are interoperable.

The company has used this solution for about seven years, and I have only been around for one. I'm not sure why they first initiated usage.

The initial setup is easy once you have some experience. It can be somewhat difficult otherwise. 

We have four people that are able to handle maintenance tasks.  

Once our teams have tested and validated the scenarios are working fine, then they will move from Genesys into services. Once Genesys services have been integrated, Genesys engineers will come and will monitor everyday operations for Control-M. If they identify any files or any jobs that have instability, they'll look for a permanent fix.

We are mediators between the vendor and customers. 

We are using around version nine. I'm not sure of the exact version number. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. I do need more time with the product. However, I haven't seen the product causing many issues. It's been sustainable, and we've liked having all operations in one single cluster.

I believe that the API should be upgraded with security control from the DM. There is Currently no security for the app API solution.

I have been using the solution for more than 10 years.

The solution is stable. I can say that in the previous version there was a problem. However, it is a stable solution.

The scalability of this solution is very good.  The current solution is used wide spread in my company, but I don't have any plans to expand.

I rate customer service and support a ten because it is the greatest.

Positive

I used a different solution called Computer Associates. I switched because my client switched to that solution. I never went against the solution or suggested to switch over again, because I like BMC.

The solution is complex, but it is very easy to administrate all the components from this solution.

The administration is currently done by two people. 

It pays for itself. In the last two years, I switched for mainframe to distribute systems. 

I switched to this solution within the last year. I switched from the servers payment package to the job payment package, and it is very expensive. 

I rate BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer nine out of ten.

We use the solution to transform essential files into an accessible format.

The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to reduce the number of jobs by passing various variables. It saves a lot of time for maintenance.

The solution's price could be better.

The solution is very stable.

I rate the solution's scalability as seven. Our team of around 30 monitoring executives uses the solution.

We contacted the support team for a failover issue. They fixed the error remotely.

The solution's deployment process took a day to complete.

We implement the solution with the help of a consulting company.

The solution is expensive.

I rate the solution as a seven.

The solution is mostly used for scheduling batches and file transfers.

The GUI is good if I'm comparing it to other scheduling products. All the add-ons are very useful, including the MFT databases, SAP plugins, and so on.

The cost of the license could be improved. 

I'd like to see MFT included as part of the overall product and not a cost add-on as AFT used to be included and they stopped supporting that and now have come up with MFT and you now have to pay for it separately.

I've been using the solution since 1998. It's been a while. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

I've used the solution in small sites and sites that run hundreds of thousands of jobs a day. It's pretty scalable. We have about 50 users, including developers and platform engineers, using this current iteration. The client is planning to increase the usage and the new licenses will be scaled accordingly.

Technical support has been very good. We are satisfied with the level of support.

Positive

I've worked with different clients and used different solutions. 

In terms of the ease of the initial setup, I'd say it depends on the use case, however, it can be quite complex, especially the on-prem version.

I'd rate the process a four out of five in terms of complexity.

We were able to deploy it within a month.

I am a consultant, so I can handle the initial setup myself.

The solution is a bit expensive. My understanding is that they offer yearly licenses, however, as a consultant, I don't directly deal with pricing. 

While the solution is currently on-premise, we are moving to the Helix Control-M on the cloud.

It's an excellent product. It's the best scheduling system out there, so I would recommend it.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

Our primary use cases of Managed File Transfer are monitoring jobs, transferring files, and doing some encryption and decryption. We work on insurance-based clients, so we have a lot of files that come in every day. The business does some manipulation on that, which, in turn, reflects in the New York Stock Exchange, so we use Managed File Transfer for all SLEs and things like that. 

We are using the version before the latest update. This solution is deployed on-premise. 

One of the most valuable features is the encryption and decryption which happens within the job. Usually, with other tools, we do a file transfer and then we have to encrypt and decrypt it, but in BMC Managed File Transfer, we can do it in one go. Another great feature is the ability to manipulate a file during a transfer. I think that with the new version, they also have a dashboard which gives a GUI-based view of what's getting transferred—how many files, how much time, and all that—so, from a single point, you can look at what's happening within the organization. If someone asks, "Where is this file?" or how much time it takes, you can just go to the dashboard, search for that file, and your information is there. 

Managed File Transfer could be improved with some more cloud features. Things have been moving to cloud, and the modules of AWS and Azure are there in Control-M, but we still end up writing codes to do that. If there were some embedded modules, it would be really helpful. 

As for additional features, we have been looking to integrate with SharePoint. This feature is not available. 

I have been using this solution for 12 years now. 

Managed File Transfer seems pretty stable. At times when it is not, the vendor does release some patches and stuff like that, which we might end up installing, which helps with the stability. We had faced some issues and reached out to them, and they said that there was a newer version that we had to update it ourselves, so we did that and it was fine. 

For maintenance, it requires you to apply the latest fix packs and patches, while at the same time keeping the database updated. We handle maintenance on our own. We have around eight people in our company who are working with Managed File Transfer. 

This solution is definitely scalable. 

BMC technical support is really good. Their turnover time is within one hour, which is pretty good. 

I worked for about six months with two similar tools, one of which was called JAMS. JAMS was more related to Windows, whereas with Control-M, it doesn't really matter which operating system or which environment you're trying to connect to. So with any distributed system, it's a very easy setup—with others, I have felt that it was a task, since it took some time to do. 

The initial setup is a simple process now. With the new versions, it's pretty simple—depending on the size of it, I believe it should take somewhere between twenty minutes to one hour to deploy. 

We implemented this solution through an in-house team. 

The pricing of Control-M is a bit on the higher end, compared to any other tools that we have seen. Pricing will depend on the sales approach and agreement between the companies, but I think they give some discounts. They have their standards, but the pricing can be negotiable, and they are flexible regarding certain features. 

I rate Control-M an eight out of ten, so there's some scope for input. 

To those considering implementation, I would advise you to have a good plan of what you need to set up—what does your environment really look like? Because to change your environment or database midway into something is a hefty task. So before starting it, I would advise you to check what your company's database looks like. Some use Oracle, some use Microsoft SQL, but BMC comes with a default one as well. It's better to plan that out because changing it midway is a task in and of itself. 

The primary use case of this solution is workload automation in a batch environment, in clients' environments. This tool extends support to a number of applications and can be integrated with plugins like PeopleSoft and Informatica. It's a centralized monitoring system, so from the controlling client, you can monitor the entire batch environment of your client. It can also be used for disaster recovery. 

This solution is deployed both on-prem and on the cloud. We are using the latest version. 

This solution has a vast amount of features and with every new release, there are lots of new features introduced. The application has high availability—we have multiple customers and it's highly available. On an application level, if something goes down with the primary, then the application goes over to the secondary, so it's very, very easy to do disaster recovery. 

From an application integration point of view, it has a lot of APIs, rich APIs. Every month, they are releasing new APIs and new updates, like Java, but more than that. Now they are introducing a couple more APIs, which you can use to integrate your controlling environment with any applications you want. 

The only improvement I would suggest is the license pricing should be a little reduced. Apart from that, I don't see anything else as a major concern with the tool right now. 

I have been using this solution for more than 11 years now. 

This is a stable product. 

This solution is scalable. We have more than 200 clients using Control-M.

I've been working in the production environment for more than 11 years, but we created a high priority ticket for BMC when we first introduced it. They went all the way to resolve it and help us find a solution. Not only that, but they also helped us identify and analyze the root cause. In terms of customer support, BMC is at the top, in my rating. 

I have raised seven tickets and, within 15 minutes, we would get a call from their technical support. They never leave us in the middle of an issue, they go all the way to help us resolve it. Their support is the best. 

The installation is pretty straightforward. Anybody who has just two or three years of experience in this tool can do the installation. Their documentation is really nice. If you have a little experience in these tools and installation, then you can easily install Control-M. The installation took 10-15 minutes, maximum, and you can do it yourself. 

I implemented this solution myself. 

The licensing is a bit more expensive than other tools, so if a client is focused on the cost, that would be something to consider. The licensing should be cheaper. 

I don't have experience in AutoSys, but my team also operates in AutoSys. 

I rate BMC Control-M a nine out of ten, because of the stability and the customer support. The only reason I wouldn't rate it a ten out of ten is because their licensing is a bit expensive. Otherwise, BMC Control-M is the best tool I have ever worked on. 

I would absolutely recommend this solution to new clients. Lots of new clients are converting to this Control-M tool because of the stability and the support model. So I wouldn't only recommend it externally, but, internally, we also recommend it to our clients. If they can compromise on cost a little, then this is the best tool to go with. 

I'm a Control-M analyst and we use the product for a data warehouse, for secure bank payments, banking applications, an externally accessed economics database, database housekeeping and various housekeeping tasks. We use it across Windows and Unix in lots of different areas where we need to coordinate the platforms, and also areas where the jobs that are running are critical so that if there's a problem we can know if they're not running correctly.

MFT takes a lot of activity and gives us a central point of control. You can do a lot of these activities without Control-M, using bespoke scripts, but the overhead is huge and simple changes become a nightmare. Control-M gives us a standardized solution.

The product works very well with the modules. For example, if you have  MFT, Managed File Transfer, or the old AFT, you can link that to processing jobs. You can use other modules as well and sort of control them for SAP or various other products. The alerting is very good, so you can send out SMS messages or emails to people if there's a problem overnight and they get an immediate alert. It has many, many features and is also very flexible. If a user came along and said, "I don't want to use it the way you're doing it, I want to do something completely different," that would be possible as there are many different options of ways to use the product.

The structure between the Control-M/Server and Control-M/Agent could possibly be improved. It would also be helpful if the deployment of Control-M/Agent could be simplified. Sometimes you can spend a lot of your day just doing the maintenance work to keep the system running. So that's something that could be improved. I think they could also improve the basic engineering of the server. The product has been around for a long time now, it's 30 years old, so most of the big issues were fixed a long time ago. Any issues now are not serious. The API that they recently introduced is very good and lots of people are using that. It's really about development for the future, which means improving the API. 

I would go back to the API in terms of additional features, in that they should expand the possibilities of the API. Not everything is possible with the API, and you've got utilities in all the controlling systems that are very powerful, but they're not all opened up to the API yet. I think they should really just expand the API to catch up with the rest of the system. 

I've been using this product for about 20 years. 

It's a stable solution, you very rarely get any serious outages. That's something they have improved a lot. Obviously it depends on the way people implement it. If the Control-M Server keeps falling over then that is obviously a problem but it will be an issue with the underlying platform itself, not Control-M. They have improved high availability now as part of Control-M, out of the box (if installed within certain parameters) so stability can be very good. 

The product is scalable. The licensing can be an issue, some people have licenses based on the number of agents. If that's what you have then that can be a barrier to the scalability. I know sites that are running maybe a million jobs per day, even more than that, and they don't report any problems. So yes, it is very good.

I don't often have to refer to the technical support because I know the product very well myself. Where I am located, they send us to Italy for support and Italian support is sometimes not so good. In general, there is a very good knowledge base on the product, and you can usually find your problem inside the BMC system or even on the website. So actually opening a ticket is almost a last resort option. 

We used Cron and Windows Task Scheduler, i.e. the platform supplied solution. They are not the same as using a centralized scheduler but they don't pretend to be.

The initial setup is very straightforward now, that's something they have improved. The installation is much better now and it's fairly simple. Basically you can download setup files and have the basic server installation done within maybe two hours. But if you want to use it correctly, the configuration is what takes you a long time and they should probably improve the documentation that they provide for administrators on that side. They have various programs where you can go and sign up as a new user, it's called the AMIGO program, and they will help you. They team you up with an existing user from another company and you can get advice with any problems you might be having. 

We used in-house expertise.

The product paid for its initial cost within 6 months of purchase and repays its annual license fee within 8 weeks.

Sign up for BMC Software's AMIGO program (help for new installs and migrations) and go for the license where based on number of total tasks.

Yes, we tested $Universe, Tivoli Workload Scheduler and the solution from Tidal Software.

The work is really on the configuration side. Installation is not a problem these days. Push it out as much as possible, to have a dedicated team and to decide that you're going to investigate enterprise completely and figure out where the automation will pay the quickest dividends because the return on investment is very quick on these kinds of products. Once you start to use them and you realize how useful they are, then you really make a big difference to the company and it can save a lot of money for many large organizations. Obviously there will be some situations where it doesn't make sense to use it because you're happy with your setup. But there are numerous elements of the business that would benefit that you might just have to get out to your users and ask how you can help improve the way day-to-day work is dealt with.

I would rate this product a nine out of 10. 

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer has a scheduler and what they do is capture the steps based on the script, and then they put it into the Control-M job, or task. Any system that has the script behind it the solution can do it.

The GUI needs to be improved, they cannot provide a good GUI. That's the first improvement they should do.

I used BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer within the past 12 months.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is highly stable. It is enterprise-grade software. Doing a job of 10,000 to 20,000 the solution is very stable.

The solution has very few bugs.

I have contacted the support from BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer. We have contacted them a lot, but only for technical aspects of the solution.

Their level two support is not very good. My team was able to solve a problem before they were able to. Level one support is us, the local support, in my country. Level two is usually from, India or another location because their R&D is in India. Level three, I don't know where the level three team is located, but the level three agents are the best. Level two support is not the best.

The license model is based on the number of tasks or jobs required. The price overall is expensive. In my country, we don't have any choice but to use them because no one can match their capability.

I rate BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer a nine out of ten.