What is our primary use case?
Our organization is a bank, and all batch processes are in Control-M. We have installed it on a mainframe. It is an on-premise distributed system.
How has it helped my organization?
For the bank, Control-M is one of the jewels of the queen. It is the heart of the bank. For batch processes, Control-M is most important. We have Control-M working seven days a week and 24 hours a day. All file transfers are managed from Control-M MFT. Some of our clients who are small companies send the data to the bank about their employees' salaries. The bank takes that data and prepares payments for different people in the company. Control-M MFT is used for the information transfer between the bank and Visa, American Express, or Mastercard. All of the information is sent by using file transfer in Control-M. It has improved our data transfers. It gave us the security and the vision of what is happening with our file transfers.
What is most valuable?
All of its features are very valuable. We have been working with Control-M for many years. For people who have been working with it, there is no other way. This product is a part of us. It is very easy to use. Our operators are new people, and they start to work with Control-M from the first day in the bank. In our bank, all new applications need to be implemented with Control-M. We try to look for the best way to establish communication between both products. One of the new features for us is Application Integrator. It is a very interesting feature because it lets us integrate with those applications that are not included in Control-M. By using Application Integrator, we can easily integrate new technologies. With the help of Application Integrator, we recently integrated with Blue Prism, which is a robotic product. We could integrate such processes into Control-M. Now, we are working with Ansible, and we are putting Ansible automated processes into Control-M.
What needs improvement?
In general, it is a very good product, and we are very happy with it. It meets all of our expectations. Although we have used the Smart Tables facility for a long time, today we have had a need to process services that include processes that combine Mainframe and non-mainframe jobs (Windows, SAP, Informatica). An improvement for Control-M EM would be the possibility of creating combined Smart Tables, that is, they include mainframe and non-mainframe jobs so that the work order can be generated with the Unique option. Today, to achieve this we must manage global Conditions with Variables and generating a unique code to pass to the MF tables and not MF. Let me name this feature “Global Smart Tables”.Another need we have is that Control-M MFT also supports commercial file transfer protocols such as CA-XCOM.
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For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with this product for more than 30 years. Personally, I have been working with Control-M since 1988. Here, in the bank where I am working, when we started in 1995, the product was on a mainframe.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is the most stable solution that we have had. It has been working on the mainframe for two years without any problem. It is a very stable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have not had any problem with scalability. The bank has been growing for the last 15 years, and we had no problem with Control-M. Control-M has adapted to our growing architecture. All new applications that we have, such as SAP, Informatica, or databases, are covered by Control-M. We have about 40,000 processes per day. We also have 100,000 execution per day. All batch processes are integrated into Control-M from different systems, such as Windows, SAP, Informatica, etc. All file transfers between the headquarter and the branches and the external providers are managed from Control-M. The bank has 6,000 employees. The system and IT teams have about 600 people. We have about 30 people for operations, monitoring, and implementation. In the technology area or system programmer area, we have six people. All of them are using Control-M. We work around the clock, and we have three teams that work per day. Each team has about 10 people. We have people for Operation Console who are looking at batch processing in terms of whether it is working fine. Four people are there to implement new jobs in Control-M. They are working with the calendars and resources. We have three people to administer the product, and there are other people to administer the jobs on Control-M.
How are customer service and support?
BMC has very good people. Their support has been excellent. We had very quick replies. Their technicians have always been very friendly, and they have a lot of knowledge of the product. They always provided a very good solution. When we had a Severity One problem, they call us immediately and solved the problem even on the weekend.
How was the initial setup?
Its initial setup was a long ago. It was very simple. The bank had about 6,000 offices, and it took about eight months to automate the whole batch processing. At that time, people were not ready to use automated processes. The most difficult thing was to change the mind of the people. When we started with automation, people thought that they will lose their jobs with this kind of tool, and it was very hard to change the mind of the people. Using Control-M was very simple, and it was easy to use Control-M to automate manual jobs. From that stage till now, all new systems are syncing with Control-M, and all new developments are integrated into Control-M.
What about the implementation team?
Initially, we used a partner. At that time, it was New Dimension Software. It became BMC in early 2000. Now, we have a lot of people in the bank with Control-M profiles. When we use any new feature of Control-M, we don't need any partner. I am the Control-M specialist for technical support in the bank. My job in the bank is to set up all new products.
What other advice do I have?
I have been working with Control-M for 30 years. So, I have seen other products. It is very easy to automate our daily manual jobs. It is not at all complex to set up the product. It is also very easy to teach to another person. It is not complex like other schedulers. It is a very easy tool. So far, we have only been using its Windows client. We have now started to use its web interface. We are also starting to use the DevOps technology with Control-M. We have migrated from Control-M 9.18 a month ago. We will start using centralized profiles. We will also start to work with Manage File Transfers (MFT) B2B. It is a new feature that we will start using to improve our customer delivery processes. I would rate Control-M a 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
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