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Control-M vs VMware Aria Automation 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.9
Control-M boosts ROI by automating tasks, reducing costs, improving efficiency, and enhancing data management for large enterprises.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware Aria Automation enhances efficiency, reduces workload, decreases VM creation time, improves productivity, and positively impacts business operations.
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.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Control-M's support is praised for effectiveness and resources, though some users face delays and require issue escalation.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware Aria Automation's support is responsive and knowledgeable but sometimes inconsistent; premium plans offer faster resolutions.
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.
We never had major issues to report or request support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Control-M is scalable and adaptable, efficiently managing complex operations across industries, despite occasional server load and cost concerns.
Sentiment score
7.5
VMware Aria Automation is praised for its scalability, supporting large enterprises effectively with easy expansion and robust performance.
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.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Control-M is praised for stability and reliability, with minimal issues often linked to external factors and resolved quickly.
Sentiment score
6.8
VMware Aria Automation is stable, with occasional issues during integration, upgrades, or rare service failures, generally efficiently resolved.
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.
 

Room For Improvement

Control-M users desire better reporting, lower costs, improved interfaces, enhanced integrations, simplified upgrades, and offline capabilities.
Users seek improved VMware Aria Automation integration, streamlined UI, enhanced documentation, and better cloud service pricing and interoperability.
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.
It operates for both of my products, however, as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers face high costs with Control-M, but many find its comprehensive features a worthwhile investment despite complex licensing.
VMware Aria Automation is cost-effective for cloud stability and integration, though pricing and licensing models can be confusing.
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.
 

Valuable Features

Control-M enhances workflow management with intuitive interfaces, robust automation, and seamless integration, improving flexibility, efficiency, and productivity.
VMware Aria Automation streamlines multi-cloud operations, enhancing efficiency and agility with automation, customization, and intuitive user capabilities.
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.
It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method.
We have strong regulations for maintaining compliance and mitigating risks with this product.
 

Categories and Ranking

Control-M
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (2nd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (3rd), Workload Automation (1st)
VMware Aria Automation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (2nd), Configuration Management (6th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (16th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Control-M and VMware Aria Automation aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Control-M is designed for Process Automation and holds a mindshare of 4.6%, up 4.1% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Automation, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Management, holds 9.8% mindshare, down 11.7% since last year.
Process Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Control-M4.6%
Camunda24.8%
Temporal7.4%
Other63.2%
Process Automation
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Aria Automation9.8%
Morpheus7.7%
VMware Aria Operations6.8%
Other75.7%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows
It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise113
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

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?
Pricing for Control-M depends on the licensing model, with different options such as the per-agent model or the per-job model. BMC is phasing out the per-agent model in favor of per-job licensing, ...
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

Control M
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, BMC, Temporal Technologies and others in Process Automation. Updated: August 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.