Control-M vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

The compared BMC and VMware solutions aren't in the same category. BMC is ranked #2 in PA , with an average rating of 9.4, and holds a 4.2% mindshare in the category. VMware is ranked #1 in CM , with an average rating of 7.9, and holds a 11.8% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Control-M

Read 114 Control-M reviews

4,140 Views
1,563 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 168 VMware Aria Automation reviews

7,738 Views
4,122 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Control-M

VMware Aria Automation

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Control-M and VMware Aria Automation based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, BMC, Appian and others in Process Automation.

To learn more, read our detailed Process Automation Report (Updated: August 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Process Automation

August 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Control-M

Average Rating

8.8

Number of Reviews

114

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (2nd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (3rd), Workload Automation (1st)

VMware Aria Automation

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

168

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (1st), Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (15th), 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 4.2%, up 4.1% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Automation, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Management, holds 11.8% mindshare, up 11.7% since last year.

Process Automation

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Issam OUASSOU

Senior Consultant IT at Société Générale Maroc

Mar 2, 2023

Good reporting, stable, responsive and thorough support

Compared to similar technologies, AFT takes a lot of time when transferring a large file from server to server. The history module only contains a maximum of 10 days, but we would like to have access to more. For example, it would be helpful to have 30 days or two months of history available. There should be more granular control available for monitoring applications and sub-applications. For example, when we want to monitor a job, we can specify the application, but we want to have the option to only specify sub-applications that are related to it. As it is now, all of the sub-applications are monitored.

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Lekan Ogunwale

CEO at Ultrasightconsulting Limited

Feb 13, 2024

Ability to exectute tasks quickly but the process to automate is predominantly manual

Currently, our usage of VMware Aria Automation is relatively light, mainly focused on automating VMs. However, we aim to broaden our use cases to include more complex scenarios, such as integrating with ServiceNow for end-to-end automation from request to execution. Our goal is to transition…

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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

"It has a very good GUI. We can search for a job very easily. The web interface, user account creation, and access control are very good. From an access control point of view, we can provide access to as many users as we want. A second group of users can be given a certain number of features, according to the requirements. The web interface is very easy for end users to login and use. A lot of features have been added, e.g., adding jobs. They can add jobs to their stuff, whatever they want, then get it validated by the scheduling team and work it into production."

"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."

"BIM is a good tool to monitor SLAs, and being a financial organization, this is a very good feature for us."

"The web interface is handy. It's easy to use, and Control-M provides you with the necessary materials to understand the features and perform various tasks."

"In the client, it provides a unified view for me. I can alter the view that I want to see jobs and conditions. This is nice to have. The fact that you can see everything in one space is very important, especially these days where everything is about data and monitoring as well as because we are working from home on a global basis. So, I can monitor jobs in real-time, along with any failures or anything that might be stuck. The real-time monitoring and the ability to see everything in one place is important for us because we operate 24/7."

"Most of our tasks also deal with databases, and Control-M's purpose-built module for the databases comes in very handy when handling database components."

"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."

"We value Control-M mainly for the ability to control multiple nodes in a coordinated manner. Control-M has the ability to really coordinate across a lot of nodes."

More Control-M pros

"The setup is getting better with each version."

"VMware Aria Automation supports integration with ServiceNow, Kubernetes, and other tools. It is cloud-agnostic, making it a stronger platform than Ansible."

"We've seen that typically, the people who are provisioning VDIs and server VMs can now utilize most of their time towards other projects and moving the environment forward, instead of just hammering out virtual machines all day."

"We also use it to pre-install the applications that the people selected when they ordered the machine, so they get a fully functional machine."

"It's much more stable than the highest available variant."

"The IT support for developers is nice as well because they are able to manage the environment themselves."

"The benefits are that it gives you a heads-up display and dashboard of the way everything's running. The ability to automate around those tasks is really where we get the value."

"The DevOps for infrastructure capabilities has saved time for our developers by automating processes and reducing provisioning time. Task time has been reduced by 40 percent."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"Their technicians should be more involved when we're applying new technology to Control-M, such as cloud. We're working with cloud right now, with AWS, and getting the attention of a technician, sometimes, can take some time. It would be nice if they had somebody assigned to it. Dedicated support."

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see more audit report templates added, and perhaps more customizability in terms of reporting."

"Its operations and infrastructure can be improved."

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

"I would like to have a web version of Control-M to replace the client. Currently, our support and jobs-creation teams are using the client and that needs to be installed on a PC. It's very heavy, consuming a lot of resources compared to the web portal. I know that they're trying to improve the client with the latest version, but for me, there hasn't been enough improvement yet."

"When it comes to supporting cloud services, Control-M is a bit slow. We are not advancing with the technology because we don't have the modules that can interact or use the new application services provided by the cloud technologies."

More Control-M cons

"When you start to do a deployment where you need higher availability and more resiliency, then the complexity goes up drastically."

"It is difficult to set up."

"In terms of usability, It has had its challenges. It requires a lot of custom code to integrate into our environment. It can take a little while to get it to do what we want, takes some code instead of having built-in functionality. Part it is how we use it. It would be a lot easier to use in a greenfield scenario versus brownfield, which is the way we using it."

"With the workflow aspect, which has manual intervention, a policy needs to be approved by somebody. There could be better management of that piece with better templates. It is like a workflow engine, but does not have enough example templates to do certain things. A lot of people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing, and everybody is trying to figure out the same thing, e.g., how to make a MySQL cluster in a Windows environment?"

"The stability needs a lot of work. The troubleshooting component of vRealize is a pain. The administration and the upgrades are not up to the mark. If they were able to improve on that, that would be the best thing and would make it much easier to run it in the enterprise."

"The upgrade experience is horrible. It's not straightforward, there are a lot of failures, a lot of support interactions. It's not something that we are able to pull off ourselves. I've been with vRA since it was termed vCSA. We've gone through multiple rounds, and it has never been easy."

"The initial setup is very complex because we have a bunch of customization workflows. They were built-in features that we had to program as code with Orchestration."

"We have seen some issues with upgrades or installations. This means we have to raise a call every time with VMware."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have account based licensing. There are two or three types of licensing. One of them is based on the number of jobs, so we a license close to 4,000 jobs per day. The cost is based on the different modules, which we buy from them. If we a buy a hardware module, which we are presently using and integrating, that is an additional cost, but I'm not sure of the amount. Each module comes with a different cost."

"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."

"The pricing is reasonable. It's not an exorbitant amount. The licensing is pretty reasonable for the number of jobs that we run."

"There are human costs in addition to the standard pricing and licensing of this solution."

"The pricing of Control-M is reasonable."

"Pricing can be steep, but you get what you pay for."

"It works on task-based licensing."

"This is an area where it is a little difficult to work with BMC. They want to do licenses by job, which is what we have. For example, the simplest is to license by job, but they can also license by nodes. While the licensing is simple to use, it might not be the correct licensing model for the customer. It is okay because we want to license by job, which is something measurable. At the end of the day, licensing by job is the most important."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."

"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."

"It is an open-source product."

"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."

"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."

"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."

"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."

"It is pricey for what you get."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Process Automation solutions are best for your needs.

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801,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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...

See all answers

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?

The product price is reasonable. I rate the pricing an eight.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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 ...

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Comparisons

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 22% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 9% of the time

Automic Automation vs Control-M

Compared 7% of the time

Rocket Zena vs Control-M

Compared 6% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Control-M

Compared 5% of the time

More Control-M Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 21% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 10% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 8% of the time

vCenter Orchestrator vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Control-M

September 2024

Download Control-M product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

August 2024

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Control M

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

Learn More

BMC

VMware

Overview

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.

VMware Aria Automation is a cloud management tool that allows companies to simplify their cloud experience through a modern automation platform. The solution is designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based security and infrastructure management. It helps organizations improve IT agility, efficiency, and productivity through its various features.

VMware Aria Automation has multiple use cases that include the following:

Self-service multi-cloud: VMware Aria Automation can be used to deliver consistent self-service consumption. Another use case in this area is for delivering infrastructure across VMware Clouds as well as public clouds.
Multi-cloud governance: The solution can be used to manage cost, performance, networking, configuration, and security at scale for multi-cloud environments. VMware Aria Automation offers all this with an everything-as-code approach.
DevOps for infrastructure: Through VMware Aria Automation, companies can enable a powerful infrastructure as code platform with support for iterative development and infrastructure pipelining.
Kubernetes automation: Users can utilize VMware Aria Automation to automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.
Security operations: VMware Aria Automation facilitates event-driven automation to deliver full-service IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

VMware Aria Automation Features

VMware Aria Automation has various features that allow users to easily perform operations. Some of the solution's capacities include:

VMware Cloud agnostic template: This feature allows organizations to use a single cloud template to deploy with Infrastructure as a Code. Deployment options include VMware Cloud as well as major public cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more.
Extensibility and customization: This VMware Aria Automation feature allows users to get full extensibility and customization. This can be achieved through Aria Automation Orchestrator, Action-Based Extensibility (ABX), and built-in integrations with common third-party tools.
Self-service multi-cloud: This feature enables users to request and provision infrastructure resources. It can be done across clouds using a unified and consistent Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) consumption layer, idempotent REST API, and self-service catalog.
Centralized policies and governance: VMware Aria Automation offers a feature for users to manage multiple clouds with templatized cloud and policy definition, automated remediation, and cloud environment visibility.
Configuration management: Through this feature of the product, day 1 and 2 control can be achieved for virtualized and cloud environments. This can be done with intuitive configuration automation, compliance enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.
Infrastructure pipelining: Through this feature, organizations can access user-friendly release automation pipelines. They can be specifically tailored for CI/CD in infrastructure use cases.

VMware Aria Automation Benefits

VMware Aria Automation offers its users various benefits. Some of the biggest advantages that the solution brings to companies that utilize it include:

VMware Aria Automation provides faster time to market for companies through offloading manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating.
The solution offers high levels of security and control.
This product is suitable for beginners, as it offers a self-service consumption experience for users.
VMware Aria Automation accelerates innovation through Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles.
The product provides users with flexibility, as it is compatible with the most popular public cloud solutions.
The solution offers fast deployment because of all natively integrated functions.

Reviews from Real Users

Awais J., CTO/CEO at a tech services company, likes VMware Aria Automation because it saves a lot of time, provides more visibility, and has extensive automation capabilities.

An IT consultant at a government rates VMware Aria Automation highly because the product gives you flexibility to analyze and consume resources.

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, Appian and others in Process Automation. Updated: August 2024.

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