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Automic Automation vs Control-M vs Stonebranch comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Automic Automation is 8.1%, up from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Control-M is 19.1%, down from 26.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stonebranch is 4.7%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Control-M19.1%
Automic Automation8.1%
Stonebranch4.7%
Other68.1%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Peter Grundler - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to move away from manual tasks and offers wide platform support and web-based interface
Customers want to move away from manual monitoring and checking processes. Automating these processes helps in time-saving and reduces human error. When you automate business processes, it reduces mistakes. It eliminates the risk of manual errors such as typos. There is a 20% to 30% reduction in human error. It fulfills all the needs when it comes to visibility and control across various operating platforms. It is the perfect product for managing processes that span multiple operating platforms. Automic Automation has the widest platform support compared to other products, such as Control-M, Tivoli from IBM, or Stonebranch. It definitely helps with compliance processes. We have had a lot of customers for two years with a focus on compliance, and it works. They were successful. Due to the fact that our customers can automate a lot of things, it reduces operating costs. It is hard to give a number because the savings are different for each customer. If a customer never had any automation, there could be about 80% savings after implementing Automic Automation, whereas for a customer who already has automated tasks, the difference will be less by adding Automic Automation. They might see 5% to 10% more savings. Automic Automation helps improve our ability to meet SLAs. In the recent versions, SLA management has been integrated, which previously was an external component. Because a lot of customers used it and asked Broadcom to implement SLA management into the workload engine, Broadcom included it. We see more and more customers running their SLA management via the Automic Automation product.
Mark_Francome - PeerSpot reviewer
Easily connects to different platforms and ties everything together in a centralized screen
Areas of Control-M that have room for improvement include the reporting feature. The reporting on Control-M hasn't changed much over the years, although it is in a different internal format. It used to be Crystal Reports, and now they've upgraded that. It would be better if that was really flexible where you could define your own reports. You can customize it a little bit, but when people come in with complex questions, you should be able to use that tool and access anything in the database. Control-M has two internal databases that are core to the product. You can go in and do your own SQL queries against the database, but this reporting tool should really be able to do everything that you can do with SQL, and give you good information. Instead, you end up having to export to spreadsheets and then change and update them. It can be very labor-intensive to get this information out. Other than the reporting, they've addressed most things over the years. Control-M is a tool that's been around for more than 30 years, so they have actually fixed most issues that you would encounter. They have a request for enhancement process that most users have sent requests to, but it doesn't move very quickly. The other challenge is they're supporting so many different platforms; BMC just wants it to be a trouble-free release. When users request new features, such as improved reporting, BMC's priority remains maintaining a clean-running system.
Siddharth Matalia - PeerSpot reviewer
Good GUI and has helpful support but needs a mobile app
This was a migration project where we provided our database, the previous one, and there was a tool that automatically converted the awarded job into Stonebranch. All the conversion was done from the Stonebranch side, and we got a person as well from Stonebranch during migration. There was a person who worked with us a decade back for the AutoSys install as well. He was well aware of our environment, so he helped us a lot. It was easy. It was not that complex. It is much more GUI. That said, we are looking for how the various automation can be done since, through command lines, you can create a number of jobs. While you are creating a single job, it takes 15 minutes with the GUI, however, if you go for the command line, within two or three minutes, your job gets completed. We have built our own solution for automation using some REST API and all those various integrations. It is working for our organization right now. However, we are requesting some kind of solution from Stonebranch. They should have been providing that to us already. For deployment, three or four people were engaged with the setup on their side. To manage everything, they provided us with a person who required help to manage it. Eventually, since it was a cloud platform on their side, if there is some configuration necessary, which they do it. They get a notification, and they fix it very immediately if there is an issue. The response time is very good from their side, and we don't have to worry about maintenance.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is easy to manage and customize the system. It performs well."
"It's super easy—drag and drop to manage complex workloads."
"It saves a lot of time and mistakes, because we used to do a lot of manual work. Since we added automation a little bit over a year now, it has enhanced our daily work."
"I like the script engine of CA, where you can build everything you want."
"The solution includes many features and is scalable and stable."
"We do not have different automated silos. We have one view for our operators, which are doing things 24/7, and need just one interface, not multiple ones."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the scheduler."
"It is flexible. We can do additional scripting in Automic script, in combination with JSL language."
"Control-M is useful to automate all critical and non-critical processes. Using Control-M, we can automate application workflows as well as file transfers involved in application workflows. We can also use it to run batches related to applications. Automating these processes reduces the RTO and RPO, which helps in the case of failures. It also helps us to identify bottlenecks and take corrective measures."
"The File Transfer component is quite valuable. The integration with products such as Informatica and SAP are very valuable to us as well. Rather than having to build our own interface into those products, we can use the ones that come out of the box. The integration with databases is valuable as well. We use database jobs quite a bit."
"It's a user-friendly tool."
"The ability to integrate file transfers has been instrumental in allowing us to accomplish the things we need with Control-M. In our industry, we take a lot of data and either push it down to the stores or retail grocery stores. We take files and push them down to the stores or pull files and information from the stores and bring it back to corporate. So, it's two-way communication with file transfers. One of the bigger things that we do with Control-M is scheduling data moves and moving data from one location to another."
"Automation of the batch jobs is the most valuable feature."
"Control-M has enabled true enterprise batch automation, which combined with the other BMC Control products on our mainframe platform, allows us to run a 24/7 site with the lights out."
"We are now able to deliver data to our data warehouses and dashboards promptly."
"We use Control-M for maintenance on our Oracle and SQL Server databases. It automates maintenance on packages, including standard procedures on the databases themselves, snapshots, checking integrity, verifying the RDBMS of the databases, etc. It ensures they aren't clogged and that they are running smoothly and that there aren't any jobs stuck, eating up the performance of the server or any of the CPU cores."
"Stonebranch performs well, and the graphical representation is excellent. Overall, it requires more technical effort from our teams, but the solution is intuitive, so anybody can use it."
"I like the dashboard and the various workflows."
"I have found the agents to be so much simpler, when compared to ESP."
"The most valuable feature is the reliability of the agents, because we need them accessible and we need to run stuff. The agent technology and compatibility are top-notch."
"The ability to monitor tasks that are on the open-system side as well as our mainframe side gives us a one-window view of all our processes."
"The support is good from Stonebranch Universal Automation Center."
"The interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate."
"I can name the aliases on the agent, so if we need a passive environment for an agent, that's one of the nice features. If our primary goes down, I can bring up the passive one and I don't have to change anything in the scheduling world. It will start running from that new server."
 

Cons

"They could improve by providing more control features for schedules. For example, we can hold a job, and then it could stop the job in the actual end application. They could improve such capabilities."
"For the user interface of version 12.1, I cannot find a lot of utilities and objects from previous versions, making me change my habits. This is not good."
"Automic Automation has some disadvantages; it is more simplified, and sometimes it can be complicated."
"There is one missing part in the product concerning recurring tasks. You can schedule a recurring task by a context action, and run it as recurrent, but it creates a time container which can be quit and disappears."
"The versioning and support for the lifecycle of Automic's developed solution is what we were missing. However, this is coming in version 12.2, so I am looking forward to seeing how it works."
"This solution's out-of-box automation sets could be improved. They could be industry standardized out-of-box, or even runbook automation processes could be useful—just some plug-and-play automation processes out-of-box. It has many integration capabilities, from APIs to databases, but if the customer sees some out-of-box automation processes in it, it could be useful."
"In case we run into performance issues, it is sometimes hard to find out what is the real cause for it."
"I would like to see the event engine in the next release."
"The company has been working with BMC on the MFT. There are still some things about MFT which don't work the way that we want with our needs. So, we would like to see that improved."
"I would like to see more auditing capabilities. Right now, it has the basics and I've been trying to set those up to work with what our auditors are looking for."
"The performance could be better. Control-M Enterprise Manager tends to slow the system down even on a server with a six-core processor and 32 gigabytes RAM. The console is Java-based, so maybe OpenJDK 16 or 17 would be a performance improvement."
"I think it's slightly expensive but at the same time it's a good product."
"The only thing that comes to mind is the cost. If it could be more competitive, it would be great."
"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."
"While they have a very good reporting facility, the reports that I'm asked to produce, a lot of times aren't necessarily what we need."
"Consider adding a mobile application for remote management."
"Occasionally, we have an agent that doesn't come back up after patching. That doesn't happen very often... It's really just a restart of the agent and it comes back up. But that might be one thing that could be improved."
"It can be hard to manage the task monitor."
"It would be ideal if they had the exact same features as the CA Workload Automation DE series. It would be helpful to have calendaring options."
"It can't handle negative written codes."
"There is room for improvement with its connectivity with the Microsoft SRS system. It is very weak. They keep telling us it works with it, and technically it does, but it does not provide a lot of visibility. We have lost a lot of visibility migrating to Stonebranch, compared with just running tasks on the SRS server. That's really about the only thing that is a sore point for us."
"Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could improve the analytics."
"The Universal Controller is decent for the money it costs... It needs some work to have full features, compared to other products that are out there, specifically IBM's Workload Scheduler."
"I would rate Stonebranch somewhere in the middle for ease of setup. It wasn't too straightforward for us because our infrastructure is complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Before I joined this company, Automic had a contract with its parent company, and their pricing was very competitive. However, when we split into multiple businesses, the contract increased significantly, becoming an expensive tool."
"Initially, the pricing was competitive but consistently, year over year, its pricing has become more erratic. It increases to the point where even with the positives, it starts to become a longer-term question about how it will fit into the environment."
"There are a lot of new features, but we do not use them because they are too expensive. The price point could be less."
"You do not need any humans to start jobs, so you can save a lot of money."
"We have received a lot of time and cost efficiencies from using the product."
"The pricing was client-wise, but they are changing it to execution-wise pricing. So, we are in negotiation."
"It costs to scale. While, it is scalable, the add-ons are expensive."
"Automatic is heavily integrated in our organization. The cost to change would be a huge factor for us, and we have not found any other product that is better out there."
"As we increase the number of tasks or jobs on the system, there are concerns about cost."
"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."
"The pricing of Control-M is reasonable."
"We have a five-year contract with task-based licensing."
"It depends. It's packaged in such a way that you can buy the base model without all of the fancy stuff. You can try and keep your price similar to competitors. I guess it's natural throughout the world. It doesn't matter whether you're buying cell phones or something else. The best cell phone will always be more expensive."
"For the tooling that you get, the licensing is acceptable. It has competitive pricing, especially with all the value that you get out of it. There are additional costs with some of the additional modules, but they are all electives. Out of the box, you get the standard Control-M experience and the standard license. They're not forcing some of the modules on you. If you decide that you do need them, you can always purchase those separately."
"Pricing varies depending on which components and modules you are using."
"There are two different types of licenses available. The first is based on the number of jobs that we run per day, and the other is based on the number of agents that we install. My current project has a contract for five years."
"Outside of licensing fees, there aren't any other costs."
"When we reviewed this solution against other vendors, Stonebranch blew everybody out of the water in terms of cost."
"The price of the solution is at a medium level compared to the competition."
"I don't have pricing information, but I do know it's cheaper than our old legacy system. Other than the standard licensing fees there are no additional costs."
"Stonebranch is cheaper than Control-M, so many companies are using Stonebranch."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise66
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise112
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Automic Workload Automation?
It is easy to manage complex workloads and use electronic workflow automation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Automic Workload Automation?
The pricing was client-wise, but they are changing it to execution-wise pricing. So, we are in negotiation.
What needs improvement with Automic Workload Automation?
The support and knowledge of incident management could be enhanced. There have been unresolved issues persisting for ...
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 b...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?
Pricing for Control-M depends on the licensing model, with different options such as the per-agent model or the per-j...
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Also Known As

Automic Dollar Universe
Control M
Stonebranch Universal Automation Center
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

ING, Adidas, 84.51, ESB
CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
Nissan, Coop, United Supermarkets, Groupon, CSC, Orbitz, Johnson & Johnson, BMW, Qantas.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, JAMS Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.