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Control-M vs OpCon comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

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

Control-M
Ranking in Workload Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
126
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (2nd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (3rd)
OpCon
Ranking in Workload Automation
8th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Control-M is 19.9%, down from 26.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpCon is 1.7%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Ujjwal Sachdeva - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient automation and boosted workflow but needs better integration methods
Control-M is a bit faster compared to other solutions. The job and coding are easier. Also, my DevOps and Ops teams work collaboratively with it, enhancing its efficiency. The workflow is much easier compared to the ACS services we were using. Automation is more advanced, deployment is fast, and version control has been simplified.
Jose Rivera Hernandez - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps automate all kinds of jobs and it's worth the price because it saves a lot of time and money
One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically restart. SMA Technologies automatically gets a notification that the job has failed, and they restart it on their end, so now, we have the job restarting twice. There were times when we came into the office in the morning, and we had two files because the job ran twice. I do not know if the system can prevent a job from running the second time. If a job has run successfully, or it is running, it should not run again.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The File Watcher utility, cyclic jobs, and email alert notification are valuable."
"Helix Control-M has contributed to the overall stability of our applications and improved user experience."
"We are now able to deliver data to our data warehouses and dashboards promptly."
"It provides a unified view where you can orchestrate and monitor all your application workloads and data pipelines. That's very important because with cloud, software as a service, edge computing, traditional data center, and legacy apps, there are all these environments. If you don't have that single pane of glass or that one place to look at, you're going to invest a lot of time and resources into tracking things down when they go wrong."
"We used Control-M's Python Client and cloud data service integrations with AWS and, as a feature, it was very customizable. It gave us a lot of flexibility for customizing whatever data maneuver we wanted to do within a pipeline."
"The scheduling feature and scheduling tool are the most valuable features. I like the scheduling services that we have in Control-M, which are very beneficial to our organization because they are automating things. There is also less manual work. We can schedule a task without any manual interruptions."
"The scheduling and management were really good. Monitoring was also better. It had a good visual presentation. It showed me charts and all such things. It was really good on that side."
"Workload Archiving is a very good feature for us. It helps with our customer requirements in terms of reporting and auditing... Previously, when we didn't have any archive server, we managed the data in Control-M with man-made scripts, and we would pull the data for the last 365 days, or three or four months back. Since we installed the archiving, we have been able to pull the data, anytime and anywhere, with just one click."
"MAS is by far the best feature, although not a feature of the software specifically. MAS has more knowledge than our employees, so we have been able to develop schedules that are far beyond our own skillset."
"OpCon has also reduced our data processing times because of the way you can build out workflows. It can run things in sequence. It's not restricted to a linear process, so you can run multiple jobs at once, allowing for multi-threaded jobs."
"Manual processing has been automated 99 percent by OpCon. With new processes, we give it at least two weeks manual so we can write down the details of how to do the steps, then we automate it. Within a month, it has been automated, then it's no longer a manual process."
"The most valuable feature is the automation in general."
"There are three features which are valuable: the automated calendar functions; the notification process for failed jobs or unscheduled events occurring, via email and text messaging; and the ability for the scheduling package to communicate across multiple platforms."
"We have found it scales very well. We run thousands of thousands of jobs every day, and sometimes thousands of jobs in a few hours."
"We're also starting to use its Self Service and Solution Manager. My team in the data center and some of the development team use the Self Service. Developers are using the Self Service for upon-request jobs for their testing. They used to have to go through us to schedule testing and now they can just go on and kick it off all they want. They have also really appreciated that they have access to view and/or submit jobs."
"I find OpCon's ability to monitor files and folders, and its integration with other software to be the most valuable."
 

Cons

"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."
"Implementing it is not straightforward. It requires careful installation, customization, and configuration."
"The on-premise setup of Control-M is not that scalable. As our demands increase, it is almost reaching its bottleneck."
"With the current version update, I'm not sure why we needed a separate database upgrade. Why not put it all in one package? Previously, you could do it either via a manual upgrade or an in-place upgrade but it wasn't separate."
"There should be an expansion in storing more data as it currently provides data storage for only up to 60 days."
"We've also had a few database bugs within our organization. I think we are migrating to OpenJDK rather than just regular Java and that has since shown some issues with our Control-M instance, timing out and causing our jobs to stop running. We are still working with BMC to fine-tune that and get that resolved."
"We develop software. More frequently, we are working with microservices and APIs, using our integration tool, MuleSoft. While Control-M is really a good tool to integrate with other tools, it is important for them to continue improving their microservices and API."
"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."
"It would be nice to go to a fully thin client."
"It does not have the ability to interact with third-parties via the web/Internet. We have certain processes where we have to interact with a third-party on a website, and unfortunately OpCon just cannot do that."
"Do your first install, your first upgrade, with SMA. It's simple, it's as per the manual, as per the training, but you need that little bit of confidence."
"Of course they have a RESTful API within OpCon, but they have that new web services agent that we installed because we have some SOAP APIs and we had to interact with SMA to get things running. Our developers did do some tweaks, but we have now been able to get some test jobs running, and understand how the workflow goes back and forth."
"The biggest area where there is room for improvement would be integration with their code. They've got a function for embedded scripts and it would be nice if that worked with a code or versioning management system, like GitLab."
"Usage is a little complex. It's not like you can bring somebody in and they can just use it. They have to be trained... As far as complexity goes, it's right up there."
"I think that they're working on this, but I wish that there was a more centralized area to be able to see what other people are doing... They have a community platform for OpCon users, but I want to see more of where somebody is doing this process in that way. They have a great community platform right now, but I feel that it could be developed."
"I would like more web-based training from SMA. That would be nice. Our primary OpCon representative is phenomenal, but we would like some training opportunities for learning on our own. When I started utilizing OpCon, the sheer breadth of it made for a very daunting task. I was almost fearful to start, not to mention fearful to go change things and possibly hinder a job."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing costs are around $3000 a year."
"Cost-wise, it is good."
"Pricing varies depending on which components and modules you are using."
"The annual licensing within BMC Control-M is on a per task basis. Three- and five-year contracts are also offered. The customer usually buys a bundle of tasks, e.g., 5,000 tasks, then my team configures Control-M for their usage."
"It is not bad. The company can afford it, and it pays for itself. We have those jobs running automatically."
"This is now from my previous years as support for banks and big companies. If it's not enterprise scale, I find that it's too expensive for smaller companies. You really have to be quite big and need to have a dedicated support staff to run it, then you'll be fine. What we've seen at smaller companies, it's too expensive because they want to automate everything. Now, stuff that can literally run once a day for the rest of their lives is costing them $3 a job a day. It becomes too expensive, eventually. They are not seeing the return on investment because it's not business critical. Nobody is going to die or they're going to lose money if that job didn't run exactly at 11 minutes past 4:00. It's definitely for bigger enterprise companies, especially banks or healthcare providers. We have had an instance where Control-M was unavailable due to external factors for 20 minutes and there was a loss of almost a million euros because the solution involved logistics."
"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."
"The price is right because of the licensing schema, which is based on nodes and processes. You purchase what you use, no more and no less, and you can grow with time."
"While the base pricing is reasonable, the à la carte options are making the overall cost more complicated and potentially problematic."
"The total cost of ownership is about the same to our previous product. The costs are relatively similar."
"It is at a decent price for the work that it does for us."
"Compared to AutoSys and ISE, OpCon was a lot cheaper to put in. AutoSys is hundreds of thousands of dollars to just install it because they don't have an interface into our system. You have to teach them what your system does."
"Our license is for 1000 jobs. Including support, the license and upgrades are 2000 euros a month."
"There are different add-ons, like the Self Service or Vision model. It all depends on what agents you have in your environment. We have a mainframe and Windows, and while I think SQL is free, SAP or anything beyond that has different connectors that might need a license."
"The pricing is very reasonable."
"The cost is based on the number of jobs. You pay for what you use. For us, the support cost is between €20,000 and €30,000 per year. It's too expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Computer Software Company
45%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Non Profit
4%
Manufacturing Company
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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?
Its cost can be more competitive. One of the main things customers look at is the cost. It's not affordable. The cost is very high, according to my customers. The licensing cost is very high, and t...
What do you like most about OpCon?
My favorite feature is the dashboard feature, which shows jobs that are running, and completed, any failures, and provides dashboard reporting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpCon?
I am the one who signs the contract. In the beginning, when I started working here, it seemed very expensive, but after I learned everything that it does, I found it worth the price. I would recomm...
What needs improvement with OpCon?
One problem that I had with them when we got SMA Technologies is that sometimes the jobs fail, but they automatically restart. SMA Technologies automatically gets a notification that the job has fa...
 

Also Known As

Control M
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
LOHR, Carnival Cruise Lines, Herbalife, Digital Federal Credit Union, Synergent, Frandsen Bank & Trust
Find out what your peers are saying about Control-M vs. OpCon and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.