Control-M Reviews

We primarily use Control-M for financial services. We do file transfers, payroll, HR, and other related tasks.

The top three processes that we have automated with Control-M are payroll, HR reports, and time reports. This automation gives HR, and the business in general, a clearer picture of what is happening as far as the payroll timesheets go, including who's punching in and punching out. Essentially, it improves transparency.

Control-M provides us with a unified view where we can define and monitor applications, and this is very important to us, especially in the audit process. We have auditors and they request certain information; using Control-M, we can log in and create the report according to the parameters they're asking for. It makes life much easier.

Our developers use the web-based interface to monitor their jobs. They do not have access to do anything else but they can tell if their jobs have run, or not.

Our developers leverage the “as-code” interfaces and it makes it very easy to roll out new applications and application updates. Everything is automated as far as transferring files in and out to certain people. This is helpful because it doesn't have to be done manually. It also generates reports automatically for us. Control-M jobs produce the reports so we don't have to create them every day.

We just started using Control-M to streamline our data and analytics projects. So far, it has given us some actionable insights. The streamlining has improved our business service delivery because we can tell if something is running behind, and why. We know if there's an issue before anybody notices.

Control-M has improved our data transfers because it is much easier to do encryption back and forth when sending files.

This product has helped us to achieve faster issue resolution. I estimate that issues are now normally resolved within 10 minutes. It's very quick.

Control-M has helped us to improve service-level operations performance. We have a critical job stream and because we're an institution, we have to have certain data out at a certain time for the federal reserve. If we can detect when something is running behind, and why, then we can notify them ahead of time so that they know the reports are going to be late. It helps them on their end, too. This way, they don't have to call and ask us where their report is.

The most valuable feature is the reporting function. It allows us to pull up reports for specific information that the end-users are looking for.

The planning and monitoring features in Control-M 20 help us because we can forecast to assist with network maintenance. For example, if we have something major going on with the network and there is going to be downtime, we can do a forecast to see what's going to be running at that particular time and adjust things accordingly.

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

I have been using Control-M for 15 years.

Control-M is very stable and we've had no major issues with it.

Scalability is not a problem. It absolutely extends with our needs and the jobs that it needs to run in. At this time, it is running payroll reports and other payroll jobs. We are looking at expanding this to other applications in the future, although there is nothing definite yet.

Technical support is very responsive and we have never had any issues with them. Generally, if we have a problem or question, we can open a ticket with BMC and we usually get a response back within an hour, or no later than two hours.

I would rate their support a ten out of ten.

We work with BMC for upgrades and support. We are part of the AMIGO program.

We have absolutely seen a return on investment with Control-M. It is centralized and it's made everything easier for the business end, in particular for getting their reports on time. 

The pricing of Control-M is reasonable. 

The developers in our organization are responsible for creating the scripts. There are 20 of them and they monitor their jobs. With respect to operations including creating, running, modifying, and killing the jobs, there is a group of six staff in charge of that. This group also creates the schedule and the calendars, so essentially, they take care of the day-to-day administration.

My advice for anybody who is considering Control-M is that if they have questions then BMC is great to talk to, but there is also a BMC community and if they have questions or want to know how it's running or working for other organizations, they can post and generally get a response back. There are user groups specifically within Control-M.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use it as a scheduling tool. We use it for infrastructure backups and running scheduled tasks, but nothing in regards to data analytics.

It is an infrastructure process behind the scenes: custom backups and custom file migrations.

We leverage Control-M for backups. That would be a critical process that we have integrated. This allows teams that rely on the backups to have a single pane of glass through the dashboard to determine if their backup is successful. It allows email alerts or triggers, if something fails or we need to do manual intervention.

My organization has been able to script scheduled jobs in Control-M to potentially replace legacy products that are at end of life or end of service. The previous backup applications that were being used for specific files, folders, or applications were no longer being supported, therefore being able to use Control-M to replace that has been very valuable.

We rely on Control-M for automation. Anything that would have been a manual effort previously or legacy, Control-M has been able to replace.

The scheduler allows you to pretty much run anything from anywhere. It is very convenient. The sensor reporting that the scheduler gives you can monitor hundreds of jobs that could potentially be running in a given hour.

All the scheduled tasks are available in a dashboard or workflow view that different teams leverage. This is important and great. Having the ability to have a dashboard or workflow allows for easier troubleshooting. We also have alerting set up through email triggers, which are very helpful.

We leverage it for file transfer. We don't necessarily have application workflows dependent on those, but we do have Control-M for the migration of files. The visibility of a successful transfer is very useful, e.g., the ability to report on that or view whether that job succeeded or failed in the dashboard. You have an alert that would trigger on a failure. So, failure is automated. The Control-M job could retry that file migration a number of times based on logic that you have programmed into the job, and having to avoid manual intervention is useful.

The alerts are helpful and can contribute to faster issue resolution in the event of an issue.

The infrastructure updates could use improvement. Some of the previous updates that we have run to get to version nineteen were troublesome. So, a more seamless upgrade path for the infrastructure components would be useful. I don't know if they have replaced that in version 20 or if version 20 has an easier path, but I would like to see the upgrade from one version to the next version be a little smoother.

I have been using it for about five years.

The platform has been great. I don't think we have had any downtime besides our upgrade process.

The scheduling process has been able to handle almost everything that we have asked it to do. It seems to be able to run pretty much anything from anywhere within our environment.

This solution was a new integration/installation done before my involvement.

The application was a part of the infrastructure when I joined. We have been able to add automations for components that were otherwise manual. 

The upgrades are a bit complex. The last time we did an upgrade, it took several hours.

The upgrade was planned. We ran into an issue, then we had to reach out to support. They were quick to respond, but the resolution did take several hours. They did a good job. The issue was resolved in a timely manner during our upgrade window. Their service was an eight or nine out of 10, as far as issue resolution. To be a 10 out of 10, I would like something prescheduled. If we could have had support personnel available for the upgrade procedure, it would have been helpful. So, it was just the time element.

The product is helpful for its automation components.

It is worth evaluating.

Control-M is mainly an infrastructure tool that we use for scheduled tasks. The IT teams and most of the operations teams are the ones who use it. I would estimate about 10 people, but the management of the application is centralized.

The big lesson learnt: Reach out to support when using the product and do something that you could reimagine.

We don't have any data analytics in Control-M.

We don't have developer integration with Control-M at this point.

Control-M is doing a fantastic job for what we use it for. The product is a nine out of 10.

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.

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.

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 have a lot of projects with many companies, mostly in México.

There are two main companies in the retail sector. The clients use this solution for their process orchestration.

The solution has the power to reduce resources, which is good for business. It is constantly updated to remain compatible with new technologies such as Amazon, Azure, and Google Cloud. It's very easy to take advantage of the compatibilities.

• The dependencies between multi-platform processes are very good.
• The capabilities of the solution are great.
• It offers very good reporting.
• The product offers very good integration with other solutions.
• The implementation and adoption are easy.

Some companies have found Control-M a very cost solution, and they thing it’s not worth the investment.

My recommendation is that they can evaluate some points like Control-M is a leader in EMA Analysis (similar to Gartner Studio), and see the potential of Control-M and the immediate benefits that it can have to the Business.

It’s my understanding that BMC will be releasing Control-M Saas, which will have a new commercial schema, more accesible than the On-Premise schema.

I've used the solution within the last 12 years.

The solution is quite stable. It's a reliable product. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution scales well. If a company needs to expand it, they can do so rather easily.

Typically, our clients are large-scale enterprises.

The technical support on offer is very good. It's from BMC. The customers can
open a ticket and be sure that they will have excellent technical support. We're
satisfied with the level of service provided.

The initial setup isn't too difficult. It's quite straightforward. We haven't had issues with the implementations that We have done with our clients. The implementation is pretty fast. It depends on the size of the infrastructure, however, it could be implemented between one to three months. It happens very fast if you compare it to other solutions.

A certified software consultant will help with the implementation process.

The solution offers good value for money.

We're BMC partners. We have a business relationship with the solution. While we typically handle on-premises deployments, we also deal with the cloud.

I would recommend the solution. My recommendation is based on the stability, the constant evolution, and the capabilities of the integration with other software. The implementation is easy. It's easy to use and easy to implement then it's worth the expenditure.

Overall, I would rate the solution ten out of ten. We've been very happy with it.

We schedule all our batch jobs for business systems through Control-M. Almost all the applications in the organization are scheduling batch jobs with Control-M.

Using BIM, Control-M helped us to improve Service Level Operations performance.

The pressure on our operations and maintenance has been reduced.

It is capable of service orchestration, which is needed by my organization.

It provides us with a unified view, where we can easily define, orchestrate, and monitor all our application workflows and data pipelines. This is very important for scheduling my organization's batch jobs.

The error content of Control-M is clearly displayed.

There are four things that need to be improved about Control-M:

1. Improvement in the slow architecture. Distributed architecture is not currently supported.
2. The report form and display function are weak; they are not very powerful.
3. The Web interface is not yet a complete replacement for the C/S interface.
4. SSO and multi-tenant features are not yet supported.

I have been using it for 10 years.

The solution is very stable.

We upgrade versions according to the plan. Adequate testing is done before upgrading.

Two people are required for day-to-day maintenance.

It provides general scalability.

There are about a dozen people who use the solution: administrators, operators, and observers.

We have opened case requests to their support.

We did not previously use another solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

While there is no specific ROI, there have been fewer failures with our batch scheduling.

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

We evaluated other options. The main differences between solutions were their Gartner scores.

Buy and use it.

We developed a localized platform for managing Control-M.

We don't have MFT functionality.

The biggest lessons from using this solution: service orchestration and automation.

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10.