Control-M Reviews

Primary use case is automation, and it has performed fine.

I don't think it has actually maybe improved anything. It's a generic product. It just has some nice features. We could use a normal scheduler, like DOS, for the type of work we are doing but that would prevent self-service from users in the business, so that's why we are using BMC.

You can let users access the system and manage jobs: self-service.

I don't think that we're actually looking for new features. I think we are more looking for a better cost/license/performance model because BMC, while we could say it's the best, is also the most expensive.

It's just like anything else in that league. It's very stable. We are not experiencing instability or crashes. These are mature products.

The scalability is excellent.

Technical support is excellent. We called them two times in a year and there was a reply within 30 minutes, so that's good.

The only thing we would object to are the license costs. That is what we are probably most annoyed with. We are paying something like €1,000,000 over three years for having 4,000 jobs running. That's expensive.

If you can afford it, it's good. If you do have an unlimited budget, or budget is not the main concern, and you want stability then I would say go for this. It's easy to use, it's easy to install, it's easy to run, it's easy to operate. I have a student assistant who had six hours of e-learning and she can run the system. That's good. Yes, you need the right student assistant but she doesn't have any IT background. It's very easy to use but also an expensive product.

In terms of criteria when selecting a vendor, if I am to decide the vendor, it would be the biggest bang for the buck and then it would be quality, stability, and support. That is my job as manager of the IT department and therefore I have to ensure that we are getting the most value for the money.

The only reason I am rating it eight out of 10 is simply the cost. From a technical point of view, we could actually make the same jobs run from the DOS prompt, with the same stability. I think that we are paying a lot for having self-service, for having nice monitoring. I think we're paying a lot for that.

It provides a single point of control for the entire organization’s batch processing, helping to shorten the batch processing window and achieve a “manage by exception” operation environment. At my current organization, our batch processing requirement is too technically diversified and has to be supported 24/7. With Control-M, we are able to handle the customer demand and execute 30k-plus jobs through a single window.

I have been using the solution for 10 years, including earlier versions.

I have encountered very few stability issues; it’s highly stable.

Scalability is good.

I find technical support to be knowledgeable and willing to provide assistance for any and all queries.

I did not previously use a different solution at my current organization. However, I have experience working CA Autosys.

The installation is panel-driven and can be used by a relatively inexperienced technician to install it successfully.

It’s well suited for anywhere and anyone, but it comes with a cost; it is quite pricey.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

Control-M is very stable. It is rare to have any issues with the application. Nonetheless, the bigger the workload, the more a tool like Control-M is needed or else it’s too pricey.

The user interface is very easy to navigate.

The batch team is now able to run an average of 1,500 jobs per day with incidents automatically created and routed to the correct team if a job fails or has an error.

The process to apply patches and upgrades is cumbersome. It feels like there could be a simpler or more streamlined way to apply patches.

We have been using Control-M for almost a year.

The deployment went smoothly.

We are having issues with failover working correctly but we are working with BMC Support.

No.

Customer service tries to be helpful. They tend to shy away from many tasks that BMC feels falls into "Customizations". Anything that differs from the OOB is hard to get help with.

Most of the technicians seem to be highly capable.

The previous solution was no longer supported.

We used BMC for the implementation.

ROI is unclear at this time as the software has been in use less than a year.

High availability through software, supported by an Oracle RAC with ASM, is a valuable feature. In operation, it is fantastic.

My clients are happy; the comment that gets repeated is, "Control-M is a very stable tool".

The web console consumes resources to my "high" point of view. Thinking about a totally web management environment is an opportunity for improvement.

• Operator = 2 years
• Scheduling = 3 years
• Administrator = 3 years

Implementation was easy and quick.

We have not encountered any stability issues. BMC Control-M is very stable in any version.

BMC Control-M is an easy-to-run, scalable, robust platform or architecture tool.

Customer service is the best.

Technical support is the best.

Previously, I had version 8, and I migrated to version 9 because of its high availability functionality.

You cannot be an airplane pilot without education; with the right education and training, the solution does what it has to do and makes it fantastic.

Providers implemented it; they were excellent.

I cannot mention ROI.

A good product always has a cost. I think the cost supports the efficiency of the product.

Before choosing this product, we did not evaluate other options.

Is a very good option for the WLA tasks within a company. There is a lot of information on the internet for it. Analyze the costs vs the benefits and if you have the option to invest in a solution that gives you automation of almost everything in IT, acquire it. You will not regret it.

The GUI interface is exceptional, beating any of the competitors’ products I have used. Also, the range of job types and integration with other products such as Hadoop, SAS, databases, etc. is very useful.

With the release of V9, we have been able to better use the features of the Hadoop product, allowing developers to use native Oozie workflows from within the product.

It is probably one of the most expensive solutions available and many of the extra functionality, such as Self-Service and BIM, are chargeable extras. It would be great if these were thrown in for free.

I have used it for 18 years.

Initially, we encountered stability issues with the V9 install, but this could be more to do with the VM infrastructure and networks than Control-M.

We did not really encounter any scalability issues; it is very scalable, especially with agentless technology.

Support has been very good in my experience.

I have used other products in other contracts, but the only experience I have of switching products was removing Control-M in favour of OPC, as it was a lot cheaper.

It is a complex product but for the most part, setup is reasonably straightforward. Some add-ins such as the BPI module can be quite challenging.

I have little experience with the licensing but I know it is expensive!

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options. As a contractor who specialises in Control-M, I tend to work for companies who already use it.

Use it. It’s the best out there from my experience.

• Job scheduling in general
• Self-service
• Workload archiving

We rely on Control-M in our production environment. The automated notification in a case of an error has helped us a lot in reducing downtime and erasing errors.

Support for Z/OS output.

The company has used Control-M since the late 90s.

I did not encounter any issues with deployment.

The GUI had some problems in the early stages, but those seemed to have been solved.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would give customer service a rating of 8/10. They are very good.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10. They are very good.

We did not use a previous solution.

The setup was straightforward.

We implemented via a vendor team and in-house. The vendor teams we had were excellent.

Ask for packages and bundles, so you might get more plugins for one price.

We did not evaluate any other options.

• AFT
• Job scheduling with various platforms
• Blending options for module compatibility

Although I work with various modules for Control-M, i.e., SAP, Informatica, DB, OS, and Windows. We can't do AFT with either Windows scheduler nor with Linux cron jobs. Control-M is the center for all of the applications, where it acts as the mediator between the application and the servers. Not only is it secure, but there are various major applications we can work on.

All tasks related to Windows scheduler and Unix (linux) cron jobs are converted with BMC Control-M scheduling.

Version compatibility is one of the very few areas with room for improvement, but it is a big issue with minimum support. When we need to upgrade the product, we have to follow the exact Control-M prerequisites.

For plenty of applications, there are limits. Control-M uses options for configuring items such as the remote host for servers in the DMZ.

I have used it for 4+ years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Currently technical support is awesome, 100%.

I did not previously use a different solution, such as Autosys and IBM Tivoli.

Initial setup is easy to understand for any end user who does not have any prior knowledge of the product.

Pricing and licensing depends on the infrastructure and the jobs they can purchase.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

It is an awesome product in the automation area, very robust and user friendly.

• The GUI interface with the ability to oversee the whole enterprise in a graphical way
• The ability to create filters for applications and groups
• The ability to zoom in and out within applications or the whole enterprise

These make automation and scheduling troubleshooting easier.

Well, I am no longer with that company, but it gave us the tools to see the big picture and work toward more tightly integrating processes that were unnecessarily dependent on each other.

It allowed us to automate responses and or trigger different processes based on different outcomes of the same job or process.

Version 8 introduced a whole new set of features that required more processing power, creating what I call "dead weights" that, if not interpreted in the right way, can cause duplication of processes. I am pretty confident that, knowing their track record, the issue was addressed in later revisions.

I used it for 15-plus years.

I did not encounter any stability issues. The "dead weights" that I referred to above were in the scheduling development side of the product and did not affect the live processes.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

Technical support was very good, 8/10.

I had a minor issue with their online interface for opening problem tickets. Their website at the time was horrible. (I hope it has been fixed.) I did let them know it would take you in circles without ever actually opening the ticket. This to the point that you had to eventually call and wait for someone to call you back so that the ticket was established. Then, you would send all the doc explaining the issue. Then, they would ask you to provide a ton of stuff, such as logs. Then, once you sent them that, they would tell you that it was an automated response and that they really did not need all that. In their defense, this only happen occasionally; otherwise I would have given them a 4 out of 10.

I personally did have experience with a few different scheduling packages, but none came close to providing the overall enterprise scale of Control-M.

I did not switch, the switch was on when I joined the company.

While I was not involved in its original implementation from scratch, I did arrive in the early stages and once I had a grip on the functionality and its tools, it was fairly easy. I am sure the installation and first implementation came with challenges.

That part can be tricky as I did not handle it. I do know that it may be expensive in the beginning, but, once you have it implemented and use it to its full or close to its full potential, it will save money in the long run.

I was not involved in the process, but the move was from CA7, and I know that ESP, Jobtrac, and Zeke among others were considered.

Go for it.