Control-M and IBM Sterling File Gateway compete in the IT automation and data management category. Control-M has the upper hand in job scheduling and integration with third-party applications, while Sterling File Gateway excels in secure, high-capacity data transmission.
Features: Control-M offers cross-platform scheduling with integration capabilities for SAP, DB, and Hadoop through robust control modules. It provides a centralized tool for complex scheduling across multiple platforms, making it a go-to for enterprise-level automation. Additionally, its GUI enhances user experience by offering a graphical representation of workflows. IBM Sterling File Gateway focuses on secure data transfer, using AS2 protocols and PGP encryption to ensure secure transmissions. It efficiently handles large volumes of data, automating processes and providing logs for error handling and performance monitoring.
Room for Improvement: Control-M could benefit from enhancing its output analysis capabilities to support arithmetic operations. Offering more customizable reporting options could improve its usability. Its high resource consumption and version compatibility issues also need attention. IBM Sterling File Gateway's complex user interface is challenging to master, which can lead to difficulties in training users. It requires improvement in API offerings and a more streamlined setup process for distributed environments.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both Control-M and IBM Sterling File Gateway support on-premises and cloud deployments. Control-M is praised for its technical support, though response times can be slow. Its robust community and web resources provide users with autonomy. IBM Sterling File Gateway's support is generally well-regarded but is criticized for its complexity, demanding a high level of expertise for effective issue resolution.
Pricing and ROI: Control-M's pricing is considered high but justified for its enterprise-level capabilities and substantial ROI from reduced manual tasks. It may be cost-prohibitive for smaller organizations. IBM Sterling File Gateway also has a high price point, with some justifying the cost due to its secure file transfer capabilities. However, the ROI is often seen as niche, relying heavily on specific use cases.
The main return on investment with Helix Control-M has been a reduction in downtime and minimization of manual interventions, which has improved our operational efficiency.
You can run a million batch jobs or tasks at night when all of your highly skilled people are at home sleeping.
By implementing automation tools, you can minimize human errors and improve efficiency.
They quickly evolve with changing technology trends, easily adopt new features, and incorporate them into the product.
The technical support is very polite, helpful, and available 24/7.
If something fails at 3 AM in the morning, you need to fix it and get it back up and working really quickly.
Our license doesn't limit our ability to configure Control-M as needed, allowing us to easily create new agents or environments.
It can absorb more workload wherever needed.
As the workload on Control-M increases, its scalability is much higher.
The downtime is higher compared to AWS.
The testing and development phases need to be more rigorous before releasing patches.
Once properly implemented, the system becomes very stable, which is one of its strongest attributes.
They could provide more documentation and tutorials to make the initial setup easier to understand.
We've experienced main problems with MFTE where having one setup means when an error occurs, the entire service goes down.
Documentation should be maintained for all versions since they provided the application.
The licensing cost is very high, and they often consider switching to IBM Workload Scheduler or other options.
Control-M tends to be more expensive compared to other solutions, but users get great value from it.
Control-M is among the highest-priced solutions in the market.
Automation is more advanced, deployment is fast, and version control has been simplified.
The user interface is comprehensive and lets me view all my jobs on one page, monitor everything, and access the job history.
It is easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for data ops or DevOps processes as things change, and it is not complex compared to other workload automation tools available in the market.
Product | Market Share (%) |
---|---|
IBM Sterling File Gateway | 9.3% |
Control-M | 4.6% |
Other | 86.1% |
Company Size | Count |
---|---|
Small Business | 24 |
Midsize Enterprise | 12 |
Large Enterprise | 113 |
Company Size | Count |
---|---|
Small Business | 3 |
Midsize Enterprise | 4 |
Large Enterprise | 12 |
Control-M by BMC is engineered to manage hybrid cloud workflows, offering orchestration capabilities starting at $29,000 annually. Aimed at helping growing teams, it efficiently supports cross-environment scheduling and automation needs.
Control-M offers robust cross-platform scheduling, automation, and integration with applications such as SAP and Informatica. Users appreciate its ease of use with a graphical interface, centralized management, and monitoring capabilities. Advanced features, including Managed File Transfer, automated error handling, and real-time alerts, enhance productivity. The ability to unify workflows and support diverse environments makes Control-M a trusted tool in many sectors. While improvements in reporting flexibility and API integration with tools like ServiceNow are needed, addressing performance issues during upgrades could enhance its value. Offering improved support for new technologies and cloud environments is beneficial, with cost-effectiveness being a consideration.
What are the key features of Control-M?Control-M is leveraged in industries like finance for enterprise scheduling and data management, supporting mainframe, Linux, Unix, Windows, and cloud platforms. It contributes to workflow orchestration and workload automation, improving operational efficiency and enhancing IT infrastructure across those environments.
Securely manage transfer files with authentication, encryption and audit trails while you retain administrative control of data using a library of templates.
Sterling File Gateway can help you increase secure and dependable file transfer with your trading partners. It consolidates disparate centers of file transfer activity and facilitates the security-rich exchange of file-based data over the Internet. It helps companies avoid the risk and operational issues that can result from using loosely controlled file-transfer servers.
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