Control-M Reviews

The primary use case of this solution is workload automation in a batch environment, in clients' environments. This tool extends support to a number of applications and can be integrated with plugins like PeopleSoft and Informatica. It's a centralized monitoring system, so from the controlling client, you can monitor the entire batch environment of your client. It can also be used for disaster recovery. 

This solution is deployed both on-prem and on the cloud. We are using the latest version. 

This solution has a vast amount of features and with every new release, there are lots of new features introduced. The application has high availability—we have multiple customers and it's highly available. On an application level, if something goes down with the primary, then the application goes over to the secondary, so it's very, very easy to do disaster recovery. 

From an application integration point of view, it has a lot of APIs, rich APIs. Every month, they are releasing new APIs and new updates, like Java, but more than that. Now they are introducing a couple more APIs, which you can use to integrate your controlling environment with any applications you want. 

The only improvement I would suggest is the license pricing should be a little reduced. Apart from that, I don't see anything else as a major concern with the tool right now. 

I have been using this solution for more than 11 years now. 

This is a stable product. 

This solution is scalable. We have more than 200 clients using Control-M.

I've been working in the production environment for more than 11 years, but we created a high priority ticket for BMC when we first introduced it. They went all the way to resolve it and help us find a solution. Not only that, but they also helped us identify and analyze the root cause. In terms of customer support, BMC is at the top, in my rating. 

I have raised seven tickets and, within 15 minutes, we would get a call from their technical support. They never leave us in the middle of an issue, they go all the way to help us resolve it. Their support is the best. 

The installation is pretty straightforward. Anybody who has just two or three years of experience in this tool can do the installation. Their documentation is really nice. If you have a little experience in these tools and installation, then you can easily install Control-M. The installation took 10-15 minutes, maximum, and you can do it yourself. 

I implemented this solution myself. 

The licensing is a bit more expensive than other tools, so if a client is focused on the cost, that would be something to consider. The licensing should be cheaper. 

I don't have experience in AutoSys, but my team also operates in AutoSys. 

I rate BMC Control-M a nine out of ten, because of the stability and the customer support. The only reason I wouldn't rate it a ten out of ten is because their licensing is a bit expensive. Otherwise, BMC Control-M is the best tool I have ever worked on. 

I would absolutely recommend this solution to new clients. Lots of new clients are converting to this Control-M tool because of the stability and the support model. So I wouldn't only recommend it externally, but, internally, we also recommend it to our clients. If they can compromise on cost a little, then this is the best tool to go with. 

Control-M is used for file transfer and batch job scheduling.

Control-M provides a unified view where we can easily define, orchestrate, and monitor all application workflows and data pipelines. This is important because while running a robust environment, and managing and scheduling on individual servers are quite tedious. It has a centralized mechanism where it can schedule jobs on individual components within the environment. In this way, it helps with the ease of administration and achieving business requirements.

Control-M is used to integrate file transfers within the application workflows. Generally speaking, it has helped the business service delivery. For all applications, it has helped to notice bottlenecks, using its dashboard monitoring and alert mechanism. Therefore, immediate action can be taken in the case of failures. When compared to the traditional module or way of operating and scheduling, where the centralized monitoring alert mechanism is not available, Control-M helps in achieve having the application workflow run smoothly.

Control-M is useful to automate all critical and non-critical processes. Using Control-M, we can automate application workflows as well as file transfers involved in application workflows. We can also use it to run batches related to applications. Automating these processes reduces the RTO and RPO, which helps in the case of failures. It also helps to identify bottlenecks and take corrective measures.

1. File transfer.
2. It has an easy configuration. 
3. You don't need to create individual scripts for individual file transfer jobs. This reduces the load on the individual servers, when compared to a local task scheduler running on any OS.
4. The frequency at which it runs; it can be scheduled to run every minute. It is quite fast and quickly completes the job.
5. The online dashboard and job status. 
6. It has an alert mechanism for any failures.

These items are more useful when compared to the traditional way of doing or scheduling things.

It is on the web. This provides ease of administration, where we can manage the service from a central location. Also, can check or view all the jobs on a single dashboard, where we can manage and monitor them. 

In these three areas, I would like to see improvements in Control-M:

1. It is not giving us diagnostic logs during job runs. 
2. I would like them to beautify the dashboards, in terms of the number of jobs processed which have failed or are in progress. 
3. Control-M doesn't have any dynamic reporting facilities or features. 

I have been using it for about 1 year

If you implement Control-M, and configure it properly, it is quite stable. In the last year, BMC has been releasing a number of patches or updates to make it more stable. 

Initially, stability was not good. When BMC released quite a number of updates to fix some bugs, it became stable.

For any environment with about 80,000 of the jobs running per day, at least we require 10 people to monitor it and three people to administer it.

It is feasible to scale. We have not found any hiccups.

For an environment with about 80,000 jobs running per day, it requires at least 10 people to monitor it and three people to administer it.

Centralized monitoring and administration can be achieved

BMC support will be good level with more number or expertise available

BMC support is clueless on the new issues that arise. It seems like 90% of them are escalated to the R&D department, where they research and come back with a solution.

The guides or materials available are quite useful when exploring all the features.

No solution was used Previously, most of them use the traditional way of going through scripts.

Initially, the setup was a bit complex when trying to understand what all the features and settings do. However, when we explored it more, then we understood it and became comfortable with it.

Initial deployment took a couple of weeks. But once explored more the more convenient

The implementation is always with Control-M. Look at how to utilize all the features in Control-M, work out how to use them in subsequent reports, or while designing subsequent dataflows.

Work with BMC support for upgrades and for any issues encountered.

Looking at the rate of the usage, I can definitely see there is a gain. It is definitely profitable for any organization.

Control-M will help improve data transfers by approximately 80%. As an example, if you run any file transfer schedule in the local OS schedulers, compared to Control-M file transfer, Control-M will be better than the traditional schedulers. This is because of the number of features Control-M has and the frequency at which it runs. You can also choose the type of transaction data during a file transfer, which can be helpful for scheduling and troubleshooting.

Depends on business requirement

No other options available

I definitely recommend Control-M. It is quite stable, scalable, and the ease of administration is good as well.

Useful to automate batch scheduling. integrate within applications

Can be streamlined in data analytics applicaitons with Control-M.

I would rate Control-M as an eight out of 10.

We're not using it currently. We just did a PoC on it. We developed two or three use cases, and based on that, I had implemented the PoC.

For our use case, we wanted to schedule a job that will get data from the auditor and put it into Mongo. For that, we needed to do some calculations, and there was a whole workflow behind it.

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.

It provided a unified view to easily define, orchestrate, and monitor all of our application workflows and data pipelines. We didn't have to go inside the box to find out what was happening behind the scenes. All that was easily showing up on the UI, which was a good part of it.

We used it for data transfer within our application workflows. It was very fast and secured.

Its cost should be improved. It is more expensive than other solutions.

Its architecture is old. AutoSys gives more flexibility.

I just started learning it. I saw the demo and started playing around with it.

It has old architecture, so it is sustainable.

Its scalability is fast.

I didn't use their technical support. 

Currently, we have a manual process. We don't have an automated process.

Its setup was straightforward. It was easy for us to host it up because it is a service, and we just hosted it up in the cloud, and it was there.

Its deployment was very fast. It took less than a day. I had to run some commands. I went through the documentation on BMC's website, and it was good.

Its cost is a little bit higher than other solutions such as AutoSys or DAC. For the demo, there were some plans, such as a start plan, scale plan, etc. Pricing was based on the plan.

We are also evaluating AutoSys and DAC. We have used Control-M only for PoC. We haven't decided whether we are going ahead with it or not. Its pricing is high, and its architecture is old. For our use cases, the architecture was a little bit older as compared to others. AutoSys gives more flexibility. 

Control-M's streamlining of our data and analytics projects didn't affect the rate at which we received actionable insights. The rate was okay, and I didn't see a drastic data speed change, but it was reliable.

I used its centralized connection profiles feature that enables you to store all connection profiles in a central database, but it was not really important for me. We already had a custom profile or custom configuration in our services for handling the connection. We were already doing that on our end. If we were not doing that on our end, the use of centralized connection profiles would be helpful for lowering the total cost of ownership.

I would rate Control-M a six out of 10. We only used it for PoC. We have not decided anything yet.

We are using Control-M for workload automation modules for day-to-day operations. We can click for visibility. After getting the information, we can minimize the workload, e.g., if I'm not available today, then I can automate the rescheduling for my operations. If some issues happen, like troubleshooting problems, Control-M identifies the exact error. So, it helps me quickly get into that area and troubleshoot the part.

With this version, we migrated from AFT to MFT jobs to help with SFTP connections. Before this version, AFT modeling was there. But, to utilize it, we would have to use a third-party system or software. When I moved to MFT modules, I didn't need third-party stuff so I could easily get clearance from the compliance team.

We are using the web-based version where we give individual users individual accounts.

We are using Control-M for day-to-day operations only. It is helpful for us in our day-to-day operations. It is a key in our financial sector. We are automating via Control-M in our treasury operations, including any evening updates. Control-M makes things easier and faster by helping our treasury operations go without any interruptions.

50% to 60% of our jobs are automated, like the scheduling part, and don't need manual intervention. The operator will monitor our jobs from that. This also minimizes manpower for updates, and we have already seen improvements in our manpower.

We have automated critical processes with Control-M, like SWIFT, which is a worldwide transfer application. We also use it for everyday backups. 

Control-M helps us achieve faster issue resolution. It lets us see the exact issue by providing error details. For example, one of our applications got stuck recently. We didn't know why it was stuck. When we went to Control-M, it said, "The Java memory is full." When the operator sees this issue, they can immediately call the system administrator to kill the process. This reduces time to resolution because it avoids escalation and contacting people unnecessarily.

If we make drastic changes to the environment, then we can see these changes end-to-end in Control-M. 

We use Control-M’s Role-Based Administration feature. it empowers decentralized product teams to manage their own application workflow orchestration environments with full autonomy. This feature is mostly under the compliance team. The feature is important, because without it, the day-to-day operations of the bank would not run. It is managing all our on-premises jobs, like application cleanups. We are doing everything via Control-M.

The use of Role-Based Administration definitely eliminates the need to submit tickets or requests to the Control-M administrator. The integration part of the Role-Based Administration has become very easy for us. We can integrate directly with Active Directory. This makes it easier for us to do things.

The MFT jobs are a valuable feature for us.

Control-M provides us with a unified view, where we can easily define, orchestrate, and monitor all our application workflows and data pipelines. It centralizes things and does automatic job scheduling.

We use Control-M to integrate file transfers within our application workflows. Nowadays, we depend on this feature for all our applications file transfers. This feature is helpful when you need to manage complicated documents or other files.

We have been using this product for more than seven years.

I haven't seen any issues as of now.

One or two guys are enough for each shift. Daily, there are three or four guys who maintain it.

Scalability depends on the cost. Expanding can be very costly.

Whenever new things come in, we request them to be moved to this solution.

We only use our partner's support.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is relatively easy to upgrade the tool.

We moved everything, including the database. Now, it is the heart of our operations.

We have a partner company. However, we are managing it 90% of the time. 

Our experience with the partner company has been very good. They are very experienced with the solution.

The cost of the hardware is high. Because you need to license each job, it is costly.

We use other tools to streamline our data and analytics projects.

For the past two year, we have blocked mobile access per our cybersecurity guidelines.

I would rate this solution as eight out of 10.

A lot of the things we've done are just based on our needs, not so much because the product allows you to do it. Basically, I can do everything in Control-M. I mean, we've got plugins for Oracle, SQL, and Informatica, and I can go on and on and on. However, we don't use any of them as our developers prefer not to. A lot of what they do is they do the necessary connections through the batch files themselves.

It's used for our daily batch. It handles all the batch processes and a lot of our maintenance processes. I would say most of it is file movement of some sort. A lot of it is daily processing, to get it in. Our data warehouse runs through Control-M. The big impetus behind it, when we purchased it, was due to the fact that the auditors wanted a more robust system and something that they could audit. Control-M gives you everything you need for that.

It allows us to automate a lot of the jobs that used to run manually. Everything is automated. We can automate a lot of different processes using Control-M. You can know where it's at, and you can follow it, follow the job flow, from one job to the next, and whatnot, very easily. 

We used to run a lot of stuff in AT scheduler and Cron which really didn't meet the needs, especially for the auditors. We've taken that, and we've made the system where you know immediately if you got a problem with a job string. Our operations department will page it out overnight if we have a problem, and we take care of it. It's like any other system. If it allows you to do what you need to get done, it's the same every day, you know that you're going to get the same process. It drives the process.

Like most schedulers, you can bring jobs in many different ways. There are different ways to execute things. One of the things we had was when we were taken over. They were using a combination of the CA scheduler that they had, and they were also using SQL scheduler to do a lot of it. Prior to us converting our data warehouse system to Control-M, they were using the Informatica scheduler. None of this met any of the auditors. The auditors didn't like it as everything was spread out on different systems. They couldn't keep track of jobs. Everything's consolidated now. Everything's running off Control-M. You can follow everything through the entire process. We kick off all SQL jobs using Control-M. They were using SQL to launch just batch files, which had nothing to do with SQL - they were just scheduling it through SQL.

The capabilities of auditing have been great. 

The ease of use is one of its great aspects. It's very easy to use and very easy to pick up. 

It's got an excellent graphical interface. I haven't seen that in anything else that I've looked at, however, that said, I haven't looked at many lately. 

I know that in 20 years, I have had probably two problems where I've had to call the company to get immediate assistance from them, where we had a system down or something. Its performance is very reliable.

It integrates with other applications. You can use PowerShell, you can use Perl, you can use whatever. It doesn't really care. It's just running a process.

The product scales quite well.

Technical support is very helpful and available 24/7.

The stability is excellent.

I will say that at one time we used to run on Solaris and not Windows, however, we were taken over by a company that decided that everything had to be on Windows. We put this in when we were the previous company, and then we were more or less given to the current bank by the FDAC, during the 2009 banking crisis. At that point, they wanted us to implement their solution, which was rudimentary at best. It was a CA product that did not meet the needs. I could not convert what we had in Control-M, to run in that system at that time.

While they have a very good reporting facility, the reports that I'm asked to produce, a lot of times aren't necessarily what we need. They need to be better customized. I haven't been able to produce the right reports through their reportings facility. I was a Perl programmer and a C programmer at one time. Perl just worked right in there. A lot of our reports were written in Perl, which right now they don't like at all as Perl's not ideal for our company. 

I can't get to the database tables I want to get to. The database tables they allow me to get to aren't the ones I'm looking for, as, usually, I'm going right into the database, into the raw database, and pulling things out for the reporting I need. I can't do that through their reporting facility, Crystal Reports.

We've been using the solution for two decades or so. It's been about 20 years. We've used it for a long time. We started using it around 2000 or 2001.

We've had issues only twice in 20 years. It is very stable. I will say that they have improved it. Originally, when we put in a Windows version of it, we had problems with the database that they were using at the time, which was a Postgres database. Then, at one point, we decided to go to Solaris and run it on Solaris. We had it on Solaris for six years. In six years, I don't think we ever rebooted the server. It ran for six years without any hiccups, any problems. The Solaris system was rock solid. 

Now, the problems we run into, if we run into any problems, are Windows-based problems. Those Windows-based problems are, for example, if you don't reboot a server once a month, which, thank God we do, you can have issues. We reboot as we have to patch monthly now and we have to reboot it every month. However, we would see if we went two, three months on Windows, that we would start seeing some problems. Rebooting it took care of it.

That said, that's a Windows problem, not so much a Control-M issue, as we see problems on Windows servers that run for two or three months in any application.

Right now, we are running on their small database model. We, at one time, had about 2,500 jobs, and we were on a medium model then. Now, we're down to about 800 jobs a day. It's just a matter of the requirements we have. In terms of scalability, it scales up very nicely. It works very well. You can have multiple servers if you need multiple servers. Currently, we have one Control-M server and one EM server. We used to have two Control-M servers and one EM - EM being the enterprise manager, which is really what's running the system. The Control-M servers basically take care of the current runs, what's currently running on a system. Adding more jobs and adding more resources to it is not a problem.

It does high availability. We don't use the high availability due to the fact that we have another solution. We run everything in a virtual environment, and take regular snapshots if the system goes down. Should that happen, the snapshots are replicated from our production site to our DR site. We bring up the latest snapshot in the DR site if we lose the production site. It's up and running within minutes, literally. It's just a matter of going in and saying, "Bring these servers up." And they come up.

Currently, we've got three schedulers using the solution. They have more or less God rights, although they can't change user permissions. Those three schedulers can do anything with the jobs - delete, add, create, whatever. We have about 10 operators that have access to it as well. The operators have a somewhat reduced role from the schedulers. They can do a lot of it. They can bring in jobs, they can rerun jobs, they can kill jobs, however, there's a lot that they can't do. Then we have probably about 60 users that are developers, and they're basically read-only. They can see the jobs, they can see what happens. A lot of it has to do with corporate decisions on control. They didn't want the developers to be able to define jobs and items of that nature. They wanted the developers to define the job through a worksheet, and then the schedulers would actually implement the job. That's just a matter of policy, basically. They monitor their jobs that way. I'm trying to allow them to be able to at least bring in their jobs, for test - not for production - so that they can make it policy change here. If they could do that, it would greatly enhance their ability to get testing done. The downside to that is that you might have a developer that just keeps running the job over and over, and over, and over again, which I've seen happen too. Personally, I can do everything in test. I can't do anything in production at all, except view jobs. I have read-only on everything in production, except for the configuration part of it, to which I have full rights. I used to almost be a fourth scheduler at one time. At this point, there's no need. The limits of my job have been redefined several times.

Overall, the usage of the product in the company is very extensive. There's not a part of our daily businesses that's not reliant upon Control-M. If Control-M was done, the company would be at a standstill, literally.

That said, likely we won't increase usage. The company we just merged with, another organization and it's debatable as to how these things go. They have about 5,500 jobs. We used to have a lot of jobs like that, however, the business drives what we do. 

The technical support is probably the best I've ever worked with.

If I need support help from them, if we are down, they get back to me, if not immediately, within an hour. 24/7. And usually, we're up within an hour, after the first contact. They help greatly with planning for upgrades. I need to contact them here in the near future. They have a group called the AMIGO group, that does nothing but migrations and upgrades. I need to get with them to go over my plans for transitioning from the old servers to new servers. They will verify that what I'm doing is the right way to do it. If it's not, they will tell me how to do it, which is an excellent resource. 

They have a very large knowledge base. It's integrated with everything I've ever had to have it integrate with. Their support's been very good.

When I call BMC, I get an immediate response. I've had products that I've supported, that I've called companies and been on hold overnight. I've literally gone home for the night and left my phone on my desk, off the hook, on hold, and come in the next morning, and I'm still on hold, listening to the hold message due to the fact that the support hasn't answered yet.

We have recently merged with a company that uses Tidal, and of course, they want to hang on to theirs. We use Control-M. I've actually used several other scheduling products in the past, however, we've been on Control-M now for over 20 years.

I'm actually in the process of doing an implementation right now. I'm replacing our current production system. We're replacing EOS, actually, therefore, I'm doing a straight install of everything on the new servers. It is very straightforward. The install is not really difficult. It's fairly simple if you understand how databases work and whatnot. There's really no problem doing it.

In my case, I can bring up a Control-M server within hours. I only say that as I've done that, as we were not DR prepared back during Hurricane Sandy. I had to bring up a production version of it in Cleveland, in our DR site in Cleveland. Within 24 hours, we were up and running. Therefore, if you need it done fast, it can be done. It's just a matter of, are you willing to put in what you need to put in to do it.

It's a fairly easy install, really. I personally have never had any training on Control-M. Other people in my organization have had training. That said, I'm the one that put it in and I'm the one that read the manual. That's where I got all my information from, was from reading manuals and whatnot, and directly working with it.

I can't speak to what our support costs are. That's out of my realm at this point. At one point, I had an idea, however, I couldn't even tell you what that is anymore. I know that our licensing is based on jobs. We buy licenses based on the number of jobs. Currently, we have about 2,500 licenses. We used to run more jobs than we do right now. We did not get rid of those licenses. 

It's basically $100 a job, give or take.

They also don't charge us for items such as the plugins for MFTP, which we don't use, although we could. They wouldn't charge us for Oracle, SQL, or Informatica. It's a reporting product. 

There's no licensing for the server, there's no licensing for the EM server. All that stuff comes as part of the product. It's all-inclusive.

From what I've seen and heard from the other company about Tidal, that's where they're making their money from - the plugins. Whereas Control-M doesn't charge us. The plugins are basically free for us. I'm sure there is a charge for support every year. I have no idea what that is. I don't get down into that level.

I just tell them, "Yes, we need this" and then the purchasing staff takes care of the actual details.

At the time we were looking for a product, I looked at five or six different scheduling packages. By far, at that time, Control-M was leaps and bounds above all the rest of them.

We're customers and end-users.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

By far, BMC, from what I have seen, is the industry leader and they are the Cadillac of scheduling. I've worked with a lot of different scheduling systems over the years. When I first got into IT, years and years and years ago, as a JCL programmer, basically you had access to the scheduling system and you took care of the jobs. When jobs failed, you would do the restarts on them, do whatever fix needed to be done, and get them restarted, and get them to rerun. That was on a mainframe. 

I've used Cron, and I've worked with a number of different schedulers. In the Windows world, other than AT scheduler and Control-M, that's about all I've ever used. I did review five different products back when we put this in.

Having worked with so many products, and with this one for so long, I can advise that new uses should follow the installation instructions and notes. They're very simple, very straightforward. I would advise others to not get scared off by the price as, initially, the pricing seems rather steep, compared to some of the others. However, they all have their pricing quirks, and they're all making money in one way or another. The way they make their money is based on the way they license it. The per-job style actually works out very well.

I'd rate the product at a perfect ten out of ten. It has been one of the most stable products that I have supported, and I have supported a lot of different products. I've had fewer problems with it than I have with just about anything else I've supported. 

My client is one of the largest banks in Pakistan. They are using it for their international branches as well as for branches all over Pakistan. They have around 16 or 17 international branches in Gulf, North America, South Africa, Seychelles, and Singapore.

The operation window of our client is 24 hours. At different locations, they have to perform different activities. If you are working in a banking environment, the main activity is at the close of business, which is monitored by Control-M for all of their branches. Instead of having 20 people, now they have three to four people who are monitoring the tasks. Control-M is taking care of the close-of-business monitoring tasks, such as backups, etc.

It has multiple features. You can plan your execution in Control-M. It provides one single window where you can define workflows regardless of geographic boundaries and platforms. A batch process can be executed from this single window.

It provides insights into your processes. Your business people will know what process they are running and what is the state of the process. Instead of knowing that they're not going to meet the SLA the next morning, the business people immediately know the changes in their process.

Control-M is very easy. I can tell a non-technical person that this is how it works, and he would be able to easily understand it. Business people can understand the methodology of Control-M and the intuitive features that it has. It has a fantastic graphical user interface and is easy to understand. You just have to drag and drop but in a very intuitive way.

Monitoring features are also good. It has different color coding schemes, which can help you to understand the status of your workflow. An operator who is not that technical and is just monitoring the status of the application can see by color-coding the status of a process. If anything goes wrong or a process is stuck, it gives you a hint. You can just right-click and see the logs and the output. Even if the system is not right there in the data center and is located somewhere else, you can monitor it right from there and see the workflows.

A Control-M on-prem license is based on the number of jobs, which is the number of tasks a particular customer wants to have. These tasks have to be run within 24 hours window. For example, if you have a license for 100 jobs, you can run a maximum of 100 jobs in a 24-hour window. If your operations could not run 10 jobs, and they ran only 90 jobs, they just carry over to the next day, but the next day, they will have 110 jobs. Control-M asks you to buy those 10 more licenses because you were out of compliance in terms of the number of licenses. This is something that needs to be indicated in Control-M GUI so that customers know the number of licenses they're going to use in this time window. 

Their support and documentation should be improved. I am not that satisfied with their customer support. Sometimes, they don't have the answers. Their documentation is very poor. It is not well written, and it is not in a very logical manner.

You can use it on Unix, Linux, Windows, and AIX, but it needs some improvement on iSeries. It needs a built-in mechanism inside the system to give you an option to restore from the last point of failure. If a process crashes, the Control-M needs to have a mechanism in iSeries where the process can be restored from the last point of failure.

I have been using this solution for more than three years.

It is stable.

It is scalable. Its licensing is not based on the number of users. Its licensing is based on the number of tasks that you're using. You can have as many as 100 users, but in the environments that I have seen, there were between 10 to 20 users. You have administrators who can design the workflows, and you have operators who just monitor the results.

I am not that satisfied with their customer support. I would give them a 4 or 3.8 out of 5. Sometimes, they don't have the answers. 

Their documentation is not that clear. It is not well written, and it is not in a very logical manner. They just put information in the documentation, and you have to find things. It is not easy. If you are new to this product, you have to spend some time to understand what is it, and when you go to the documentation, most of the pages have a few lines, and then they ask, "Did it help?" It actually doesn't help. There is not much documentation, and it is not that clear. IBM products have very clear-cut, systematic, and guided activity sort of things on the website, whereas BMC's documentation is very poor. It is not that eloquent and clear.

It has some complexities because it is a complex environment. It has a three-tier environment on-prem, and one has to establish a secure connection between these entities, which is not easy. The first one is the master server console. The second one is the main engine that determines the scheduling process, and the third one is the agent. Agents have to be deployed on different client machines.

I would highly recommend this product. Its setup is complex, but once the setup is done, it hides away all the complexity. The end-user will have a very clear and intuitive interface to define the workflows. It is very easy to use.

I would rate Control-M an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for scheduling, including compiling for scheduling and financial scheduling across our countries.

We use the schedule for 19 African countries and also in the UK, on the Isle of Man, where our corporate business is done.

What Control-M offers at TWS that IBM Workload Scheduler doesn't offer becomes available with the next rollout of the software.

It's one of the top options on the market today. It's one of the better enterprise solutions.

The initial setup is largely straightforward.

The solution is stable and reliable.

There are lots of features you can add to the solution if you would like to.

I can't think of any features that are missing at this time. It's a pretty complete solution.

The licensing needs to be improved. It's a bit difficult right now.

You need to pay for extra features if you need them. Other options have them for free as part of their offering.

The product could be more affordable. Right now, we consider it to be expensive.

I've used Control-M on the mainframe for about four years. I never certified under Control-M, so my experience on Control-M is far less than TWM, however, I am using Control-M currently.

The stability of the solution is very good. It's very reliable and the performance is good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

I'm not sure how the scalability works. I'm a bit confused by the process. I can't say for certain how easy or difficult it is to scale.

Likely 400 to 500 people are using the solution at this time.

I only really deal with bank clients. Control-M handles the technical support. I don't deal with them directly and have no idea how technical support works or how helpful they are overall when it comes to troubleshooting issues.

I also have experience with IBM Workload and TWS. IBM Workload and Control-M products are extremely advanced. What is better between IBM Workload and Control-M, is that Control-M charges you for all your different features. When we go to IBM Workload Scheduler, you have plugins. Those plugins are free unless they were created by a third party. If the third party created them, there's a license fee that goes to the third party for the plugins. With IBM, as far as the product, everything is supplied. There are no additional options that you have to pay for. So you pay a single licensing fee and you get forecasting, simulation, your impact analysis.

While the difficulty of the initial setup can vary, the implementation itself is pretty straightforward.

I'm not sure exactly how long the deployment takes.

The solution is quite expensive.

The solution does charge for extra features. If you want an impact manager you pay for that. If you want forecasting you pay for it. If want any of the functions of scheduling, you pay for each component separately. You also pay for agents. They do not give that as part of the product, so they're add-ons, which costs money.

We are a customer and end-user.

We use the latest version of the solution. We try to stay on the most advanced option. It is deployed both on-premises and on the cloud. We also use various clouds, including public and private.

IBM Workload Scheduler and Control-M are far superior to any of the other products on the market. 

In general, I'd recommend TWS or IBM Workload Scheduler to other organizations.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. It's a top-of-the-line product.

The main use is for job scheduling. We are using Control-M to manage and schedule various jobs within our organization.

We are more comfortable with Control-M since we have people who know this tool well. It integrates seamlessly with other tools within our ecosystem.

The best aspects of the solution are the ecosystem and integration part. This makes Control-M particularly valuable for us.

Control-M could benefit from incorporating AI features for better job scheduling. For example, if a job fails, the system could automatically manage related failures and take remedial actions without manual intervention. This would make it more advanced.

I have been using Control-M in my current organization for the last six months.

We did not face any stability issues with Control-M. It has been very stable for our needs.

Scalability is very subjective to use cases. For our minimalistic use cases, Control-M is quite scalable. However, for larger use cases, such as those in banking where there are thousands of jobs, scaling might be different.

Customer support from BMC is good but not excellent. We always expect more from support, so I would rate it between three to nine on a scale of one to ten.

Positive

Before Control-M, there might have been an IBM scheduling tool in use. I am unsure why the switch happened as I have only seen Control-M being used since I joined.

The initial setup was straightforward. It did not require much effort as we had knowledgeable people in the team.

One person is generally enough for the installation and configuration parts. It typically takes around one day to complete the installation.

We found Control-M to be one of the best solutions available. I would recommend incorporating AI features for future improvements.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use the product as our primary application tool for workload automation. It helps monitor and manage client domains in terms of configuration daily.

The product has enhanced the interface with a clear visual display of data and process batches, showing the completion status of workflows. It makes it easier to understand our organization's progress at a glance.

The platform integrates with Jenkins, Ansible, Docker, and Kubernetes. It can schedule and manage container workflows.

Integrating new solutions into the DevOps toolchain with the right approach and resources is straightforward. However, sometimes it can be complex.

It offers excellent visibility and management capabilities. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring and managing workflows and job scheduling. It supports various scheduling options, including time-based, event-based, and condition-based scheduling, allowing users to automate complex workflows efficiently.

It has simplified the process by streamlining the data workflow. It facilitates data extraction from sources, transforms it as needed, and loads it into the destination database. This comprehensive support for data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL).

It is highly effective for building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows. For instance, it allows us to set up ETL processes to run at specific times, such as daily at midnight or in the morning. This precise scheduling ensures that all dependencies are met and tasks are executed in the correct sequence. For example, the transformation job is scheduled to start after the extraction job has been completed.

Operational efficiency is crucial as it reduces processing time. Faster data flow means job workflows are completed more quickly, reducing processing time. It is essential for meeting tight deadlines and maintaining smooth operations.

While numerous scheduling solutions are available, BMC's Control-M is highly effective for managing and orchestrating workflows across an enterprise.

The platform's best features are the monitoring capabilities. It is essential for tracking activities and ensuring jobs run smoothly. Additionally, the scheduling capability excels in building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows. These features are critical to our organization's operations and efficiency.

They could enhance the product's data flow, job processing speed, and efficiency.

Additionally, improvements are needed in real-time monitoring and alerts. Developing more robust real-time analytics capabilities to monitor and report the performance status of DevOps workflows would be beneficial.

I have been using Control-M for one and a half years.

It is a stable product. I rate the stability a nine.

Our organization has a team of 50 executives who use the product.

It is scalable. I rate the scalability a nine.

BMC's service team significantly supported the development of our migration plan for the Standard AutoCorrelation Controller (SGP). Their assistance involved several key steps. First, they helped us identify and map out the different requirements and dependencies, including how SGP jobs interact with one another and their integration within Control-M. The migration plan included phases for testing, fallback strategies, and execution. Post-migration validation was crucial to ensure that all SGP jobs were successfully migrated and were functioning correctly in the new environment.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. The deployment takes two months and involves a team of 50 executives.

The platform has helped us save 30% of operations time.

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

I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to transform essential files into an accessible format.

The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to reduce the number of jobs by passing various variables. It saves a lot of time for maintenance.

The solution's price could be better.

The solution is very stable.

I rate the solution's scalability as seven. Our team of around 30 monitoring executives uses the solution.

We contacted the support team for a failover issue. They fixed the error remotely.

The solution's deployment process took a day to complete.

We implement the solution with the help of a consulting company.

The solution is expensive.

I rate the solution as a seven.