Aspera Managed File Transfer vs Control-M comparison

IBM and BMC are both solutions in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category. IBM is ranked #13 with an average rating of 9.0, while BMC is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.7. IBM holds a 3.6% mindshare in MFT, compared to BMC’s 4.6% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of BMC users who would recommend it.

Aspera Managed File Transfer

Read 4 Aspera Managed File Transfer reviews

823 Views
587 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Control-M

Read 121 Control-M reviews

1,744 Views
720 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Aspera Managed File Transfer

Control-M

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Aspera Managed File Transfer and Control-M are competing in enterprise file transfer and workload automation. Aspera leads in speed with its data transfer technology, whereas Control-M excels in feature-rich automation and integration.

Features: Aspera Managed File Transfer includes high-speed data transfer, patented performance technology for long distances, and reliability over challenging networks. Control-M offers extensive automation, robust scheduling, and seamless workload management across platforms.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Aspera Managed File Transfer is known for its straightforward deployment and effective customer service. Control-M, while having a more complex deployment process due to its broader capabilities, provides comprehensive support for setup and maintenance.

Pricing and ROI: Aspera Managed File Transfer has reasonable initial costs and quick ROI due to its efficient design. Control-M might have higher initial setup costs but delivers substantial ROI with superior automation and reduced operational overhead.

To learn more, read our detailed Aspera Managed File Transfer vs. Control-M Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Aspera Managed File Transfer vs. Control-M

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Aspera Managed File Transfer

Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Control-M

Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)

4th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

121

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (3rd), Workload Automation (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the mindshare of Aspera Managed File Transfer is 3.6%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Control-M is 4.6%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed File Transfer (MFT)

Featured Reviews

Michele Illiano

Head of Division at Innovery

Beneficial quick protocol, powerful, but limited use cases

Aspera Managed File Transfer should be packaged into another solution. Explaining to customers you need to have multiple solutions from multiple vendors for their use cases can get complicated for them to understand. The best way to propose a suite is to have an integrated suite where the customer could choose to license part of it. This solution could be one solution not two choices between 10 or 12 different solutions. The main feature of Aspera Managed File Transfer is the communication protocol, which is fast. There are a lot of different clients that are offering features related to these fast protocols. It's possible to create one unique suite that can handle this base protocol. It will be quite easy to propose to the customers.

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Pedro Fuentes

System Engineer at Community Loans of America, Inc.

Cost-effective, excellent support, and centralized access and control

They have a department that handles requests for enhancements. I talked to Control-M guys back in October or November when they had a gathering here in Atlanta. We talked about not being able to go back in history in Helix Control-M for more than two weeks. We submitted a request for enhancement. They told us that they are working on it, and they are thinking of expanding that to 30 days. We would like to see it expand to 90 days, but they are working on it. In Control-M, we were able to go back 180 days, but that was on-prem. The storage of that data was on our own servers. We know that storage is money, and we do not expect them to store that much of the data, but at least 30 to 60 days seem proper.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Aspera Managed File Transfer is an optimal solution for customers who want to transfer large files to remote sites with lower bandwidth and in less time."

"The main feature of Aspera Managed File Transfer is that it's an incredibly fast protocol, you can use all the bandwidth available. If I need to send large amounts of data this is the fastest protocol on the market. I have been using it for some minor projects and it is very powerful."

"We were able to effectively nullify the China firewall since the China firewall was disrupting our data transfer."

"Good user interface and ability to set up multiple file transfer jobs."

"It has multiple features. You can plan your execution in Control-M. It provides one single window where you can define workflows regardless of geographic boundaries and platforms. A batch process can be executed from this single window. It provides insights into your processes. Your business people will know what process they are running and what is the state of the process. Instead of knowing that they're not going to meet the SLA the next morning, the business people immediately know the changes in their process. Control-M is very easy. I can tell a non-technical person that this is how it works, and he would be able to easily understand it. Business people can understand the methodology of Control-M and the intuitive features that it has. It has a fantastic graphical user interface and is easy to understand. You just have to drag and drop but in a very intuitive way. Monitoring features are also good. It has different color coding schemes, which can help you to understand the status of your workflow. An operator who is not that technical and is just monitoring the status of the application can see by color-coding the status of a process. If anything goes wrong or a process is stuck, it gives you a hint. You can just right-click and see the logs and the output. Even if the system is not right there in the data center and is located somewhere else, you can monitor it right from there and see the workflows."

"Automation of the batch jobs is the most valuable feature."

"Control-M has helped to improve our data transfers because it allows us to monitor the execution of the process. With other technologies, we cannot do that."

"Our data transfers have improved using Control-M processes, e.g., our monthly batches. When we used to do things manually, like copying files and reports, we used to take three to four days to complete a batch. However, with the automated file transfers and report sharing, we have been able to complete a batch within two and a half days and our reports are on time to users. So, 30% to 40% of the execution time has been saved."

"The Control-M interface is good for creating, monitoring, and ensuring the delivery of files as part of our data pipeline. There's a wealth of information in both the full client, as well as the web interface that they have. Both are very easy to use and provide all the necessary material to understand how to do various tasks. The help feature is very useful and informative and everything is very easy to understand."

"The workflow is much easier compared to the ACS services we were using."

"It has absolutely saved us time. It has made us more efficient. As far as the processing between systems, we don't have as many people. They have been able to focus on other efforts, because we have been able to automate more stuff with Control-M."

"There is a batch monitoring tool called Batch Impact Manager, which proactively warns when processing is behind and SLAs are in jeopardy of being missed."

More Control-M pros

Cons

"The solution's pricing is high and should be reduced."

"Aspera Managed File Transfer should be packaged into another solution. Explaining to customers you need to have multiple solutions from multiple vendors for their use cases can get complicated for them to understand."

"Deployment is complex and it was difficult to get support."

"If you want to do a file transfer between two countries, and one is not China, then you have other more affordable options."

"If there is any failure in the data transfer and it can automatically detect and reinitiate it, that would be great."

"The community and the networking that goes on within that community need improvement. We want to be able to reach out to an SME, and say, "Hey, we are doing it this way. Does that make sense?" Ideally, they come back. and say, "Yes, it does make sense to do it that way. However, if you want to do it this way, then it is a little more efficient." We understand that one solution framework doesn't fit everybody. Depending on the breadth of the data and how broad it is, you may have different models for one over the other."

"Its installation can be better. Currently, we have to install it manually. The file transfer feature can also be improved. It is not very easy to transfer a file from business to business. In terms of new features, they can include new technologies. It can have API integration."

"The next major release needs to focus on the lightweight web client."

"It has a slight issue with daylight savings time while advancing the clock in the Spring."

"I am unsure if Control-M is compliant with Microsoft Azure environment integrations. We have some clients in Azure environments. Specifically, in Canada, government agencies and nonprofits mostly use Microsoft Azure."

"Whenever I pull an S4HANA job to the Helix Control-M tool, it pulls it naturally with all the steps. A job can have several steps, and in this case, it is very easy to control the steps taken. However, in the case of the SaaS IBP tool, it can pull the job but cannot identify the steps. So, when I want to take an action in a step, I have to split the job."

"It is a very strong product, but the reporting could be better."

"The infrastructure could be improved."

More Control-M cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was close to $10,000 to $20,000."

"Aspera Managed File Transfer is not an inexpensive solution. I am not aware of many competitors to determine how affordable the price is overall."

"Pricing varies depending on which components and modules you are using."

"BMC's price is based on the number of jobs."

"This product saves hours in a day based on my experience working here versus other companies with manually operations."

"This is an expensive product compared to other solutions, although I think that it is a good one. We are in a good position with licensing, as we can run 10,000 jobs."

"The solution is not cheap, it comes with quite a hefty price tag. Control-M is the market leader, but we still want the price to be as friendly as possible."

"It works on task-based licensing."

"They are expensive. If we were a small company, it would be complicated because we have to have strong sales and operations to be able to afford a tool of this level. Being a large company, the cost-benefit is covered, but it is not within the level of cheap solutions."

"In our environment, pricing depends on the total number of maximum jobs that can run, which is fine. Therefore, if the number of jobs increases, then the licensing fees will increase."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Aspera Managed File Transfer?

Aspera Managed File Transfer is an optimal solution for customers who want to transfer large files to remote sites with lower bandwidth and in less time.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Aspera Managed File Transfer?

There are other products of Aspera which come as add-ons, however, we haven't purchased those, like report generation, since that was not our requirement. The features we needed were included in th...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Aspera Managed File Transfer?

We have an office in China, and we wanted to transfer data from China to the UK. We have an office in the UK as well.

See all answers

How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?

Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful because nothing gets left unattended since it is all visible in one place, and th...

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What do you like most about Control-M?

First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?

It is a little bit expensive.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 16% of the time

Automic Automation vs Control-M

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 7% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Control-M

Compared 6% of the time

Stonebranch vs Control-M

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Managed File Transfer (MFT)

April 2025

Download Aspera Managed File Transfer product report

Buyer's Guide

Control-M

April 2025

Download Control-M product report

Also Known As

No data available

Control M

Overview

IBM Aspera takes a different approach to tackling the challenges of big data movement over global WANs. Rather than optimize or accelerate data transfer, Aspera eliminates underlying bottlenecks by using its proprietary fasp technology that fully utilizes available network bandwidth to maximize speed and quickly scale up with no theoretical limit. Using fasp, transfers are secure end-to-end and are largely unaffected by file size, transfer distance, or network conditions, making transfer times up to 100Xs faster than TCP-based protocols.

IBM Aspera offers SaaS, on-prem, and hybrid solutions to meet the needs of modernizing infrastructures. All solutions offer robust security and compliance, intuitive file sharing, workflow automation, central administration, and real-time visibility. Quickly and easily initiate transfers across hybrid infrastructures, including support for cloud-to-cloud transfers. IBM Aspera offers unmatched transfer speeds, end-to-end security, reliability, and exceptional bandwidth control.

IBM

Control-M is used for enterprise workload automation, orchestrating finance, retail, healthcare, and supply chain processes. It handles batch job scheduling, managed file transfers, cloud integrations, and compliance auditing across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Organizations leverage Control-M to efficiently monitor and manage business-critical processes like payroll, HR, SAP, Informatica, and database tasks. It enhances visibility, security, and error resolution. Automating and optimizing workflows in data centers, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, Control-M supports diverse technological environments. The platform's robust capabilities make it suitable for effective centralized management of applications and data pipelines, ensuring enhanced collaboration and scalability.

What are Control-M's most important features?

Integration capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with various systems
Automation API: Facilitates automation through APIs
Managed File Transfer: Simplifies secure file transfers
GUI console: Intuitive graphical user interface
Role-based administration: Provides access control
Single-pane view: Centralized monitoring dashboard
Scheduling options: Flexible job scheduling
Workflow orchestration: Coordinates complex workflows
Reporting: Generates insightful reports
Monitoring: Tracks and manages tasks
Forecasting: Predicts future workloads
Self-service portal: Empowers users with self-service tools
Plugins: Extends functionality through additional plugins

What are the benefits or ROI of using Control-M?

Enhanced visibility: Centralized view of all processes
Ease of use: User-friendly interface
Error reduction: Minimizes manual errors
Improved collaboration: Facilitates teamwork
Scalability: Supports growth and scale
Support: Comprehensive customer support

Control-M is implemented in industries like finance to handle payroll and HR tasks, in retail for inventory management and supply chain processes, and in healthcare for compliance auditing and patient data processing. Organizations benefit from streamlined workflows and automated processes across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, ensuring efficient and secure operations.

BMC

Sample Customers

Gwinnett County Public Schools, Evonik, Voith, BITMARCK, Oracle

CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc

Buyer's Guide

Aspera Managed File Transfer vs. Control-M

April 2025

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