Control-M Reviews

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.

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.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer has a scheduler and what they do is capture the steps based on the script, and then they put it into the Control-M job, or task. Any system that has the script behind it the solution can do it.

The GUI needs to be improved, they cannot provide a good GUI. That's the first improvement they should do.

I used BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer within the past 12 months.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is highly stable. It is enterprise-grade software. Doing a job of 10,000 to 20,000 the solution is very stable.

The solution has very few bugs.

I have contacted the support from BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer. We have contacted them a lot, but only for technical aspects of the solution.

Their level two support is not very good. My team was able to solve a problem before they were able to. Level one support is us, the local support, in my country. Level two is usually from, India or another location because their R&D is in India. Level three, I don't know where the level three team is located, but the level three agents are the best. Level two support is not the best.

The license model is based on the number of tasks or jobs required. The price overall is expensive. In my country, we don't have any choice but to use them because no one can match their capability.

I rate BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer a nine out of ten.

I am a partner and an implementer for Control-M. Once purchased by my clients, I implement this solution and provide daily support for this scheduling tool.

This solution could be improved by making it possible to better control GUI when interfacing with other systems. 

Secondly, this solution is very expensive compared to others in the market. Previously it was the only solution in our country to offer this kind of functionality. However, technology has caught up and many competitors offer the same at a lower price.  

.

This is a stable solution with very few bugs, whether being used for 1 or 20,000 jobs. 

Their L2-support Is not that good and often our team have managed to solve problems which their team could not. However, if there's a problem that needs to be escalated to Level 3, for example, then their engineering support is very good.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

The primary use case of this solution is for when you want certain cases to be executed, like file transfers when it is business to business. The solution is mostly used in the banking and finance domain. We are premium partners with BMC. 

This is a flagship product. The solution offers every feature that a customer could want, whether it's the architecture or the use case. It supports all file transfers. 

The solution used to have a graphical user interface for reporting. That is lacking now and it's unfortunate because customers liked it and it's no longer available. In order to compete with IT service desk management, they need to make the product more lightweight, more of a SaaS-based offering. If that were implemented they'd get back to the top. Currently, authentication and authorization portals are provided only in the case of external uploads but that should change.

I've been using this solution for 13 years. 

The solution is stable and provides good performance. 

This solution is easily scalable.

The initial setup is simple and takes about a day. We provide all the implementation and  maintenance services. The solution is generally for medium to enterprise size companies. 

Licensing costs can be negotiated depending on what the count is or how big the implementation is. I've seen even small banks using the solution and I believe licensing costs are reasonable. 

I think it's important to have knowledge about the infrastructure required, and the right data needs to be provided to the implementation partner. Once that's done, the solution is quite flexible to accommodate all requirements.

I rate the solution nine out of 10.