Control-M Reviews

Control-M is used for centralized monitoring and management of job scheduling across multiple platforms, and it serves day-to-day automation use cases, including file transfer and FTP and ERP jobs to be scheduled.

Multiple applications are supported, and with regard to file transfer, multiple files are received from the upstream and processed. When the file watcher successfully finds the files in the upstream, it transfers them to the downstream application, where multiple applications consume that file for their activities, including business warehouse management and day-to-day invoice processing, as well as file drive utilization.

Control-M is used for payroll, workflow management, ERP, supply chain, and file transfer, as well as HR portal management.

Control-M performs very well in building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows, and this workflow orchestration is important for DataOps and DevOps teams because it enables centralized scheduling activity and automation of complex workflows, thus improving operational efficiency and ensuring better governance and compliance.

Control-M has multiple benefits; it has improved ROI, and all KPIs have been met by implementing Control-M, resulting in a large reduction in the number of incidents. Before using Control-M, approximately 100 to 150 incidents occurred daily; now it has reduced to 10, and ROI and KPI targets are now met, indicating performance is in the green, whereas before it used to be in amber or red.

Control-M offers best features such as reducing manual effort for SLA compliance through its visual monitoring tool, minimizing operational error, and providing end-to-end workflow visibility; incident resolution can also be faster thanks to its GUI.

Control-M licensing is somewhat expensive for smaller organizations, and companies are hesitant to adopt BMC Control-M; the initial setup and implementation require a lot of admin work, so reducing that requirement would be greatly helpful.

The accuracy and reliability of Control-M's AI capabilities need improvement; AI in Control-M is not used much, so detailed commentary on this aspect is limited.

I have more than 10 years of experience in this field.

Control-M is very stable.

Control-M can be rated nine out of ten when it comes to scalability; it is very scalable and allows adding jobs and processes easily.

Control-M pricing is on the higher side; the cost should be reduced to onboard multiple customers, especially since open-source options are emerging. However, BMC customer support is very helpful and assists with licensing and everything.

Autosys was previously used before switching to Control-M because it offers a better visual experience, customer support, and more features.

Control-M takes one week to deploy, including setting up the environment, the agent, and the EM server.

A return on investment has been observed.

Before choosing Control-M, options like Apache Airflow and some of the processes in BizTalk were evaluated, but Control-M was found to be superior.

Control-M's governance and security are being worked on, and governance and audit capabilities exist, with all EM servers and Control-M servers being able to be hosted locally, so there are not many issues on the governance part.

Integrating Control-M with technologies for DataOps and DevOps processes has been a moderate experience; while a few CI/CD pipelines have been included in Control-M, deploying DevOps has not been easy, but a few features have been added, including using Control-M stats.

Control-M should be considered by those looking to use it because it offers enterprise-grade reliability, strong module integration with tools like Informatica and AWS, better support, and scalability compared to other schedulers. I would give this review an overall rating of 9.

Private Cloud

Microsoft Azure

I am currently working as a Data Engineer. I have been using Control-M for the past eight months since I joined as a Data Engineer. As a Data Engineer, my job is to monitor jobs and maintain pipelines, and Control-M is a scheduler tool which we use to schedule jobs by linking the jobs as predecessors and successors so that the flow of the data pipelines continues without human interference.

The daily important task which we are monitoring is the SaleRPT report, which gives business users the sales that happened the previous day in a restaurant at our project. The jobs are connected in such a way that starting, there are replication jobs, and then they are connected to SQL Server to transform the data and load it into Oracle SQL. From there, again, the data is loaded into our data warehouse tables, and the final target tables are Essbase. So this total flow has around 17 to 18 jobs which are scheduled to run twice a day when we get EOD clearance for each site. So these are the latest tasks for which I used Control-M to schedule jobs in a sequential manner.

In our legacy system, there are some Informatica jobs and some SnapLogic jobs. For example, there are three sets of jobs which are from Informatica, and the next successor jobs are from SnapLogic. Control-M allows us to link these Informatica jobs to SnapLogic. If the Informatica job is completed, it would automatically trigger the SnapLogic pipeline. So it allows the usage of multiple tools. For DataOps and DevOps, it is quite important to use Control-M, as it is a scheduler which schedules multiple jobs based on our requirement. We can easily change the schedule for a particular day if we have a lesser number of data. And if there is any data miss, we can also easily reprocess using Control-M by putting a few jobs on hold and running the jobs manually. So I think it is quite extensively important to use Control-M for a Data Engineer at any level.

There are multiple teams which are using Control-M. I think there are nearly 80 to 90 employees who are using Control-M tool in my organization in my current project. Mostly, 60 to 70 percent of them are Data Engineers. Some are from the BI ETL, Business Intelligence ETL team, and some are from the DevOps team, and some are part of the development team also. And some are part of the Aloha Insight team. These are the teams which I know which are currently using Control-M.

I have been using Control-M to monitor and maintain pipelines. It helps us schedule jobs by linking them as predecessors and successors, ensuring the continuous flow of data without human interference. Control-M is the most used tool in my current project and is essential for job scheduling and checking job failures. Its easy interface makes it beginner-friendly. Control-M's ability to link jobs from different tools such as SnapLogic, Informatica, and GCP DAGs enhances its functionality. The scheduler, ad hoc runs, and job linking features are particularly useful. It allows job connections to various tools and notifies us via email of any job failure, providing logs for quick rectification. It can save us significant time, reducing errors and the time taken to rectify them. Automatic failure notifications enable rapid response, facilitating efficient job management. Control-M enables development on various platforms, which is essential for DataOps and DevOps operations. Its user-friendly nature allows quick learning and management of tasks, with significant time savings compared to manual processes. We now receive automated failure notifications, which streamline error rectification and job reruns. Control-M's integration with Informatica and SnapLogic further exemplifies its efficiency.

One thing I find challenging is if a job is executing and we put it on hold, then if a job is an Informatica or SnapLogic job and we put it on hold, the corresponding pipeline in Informatica or SnapLogic would still be executing. We need to again go to that tool and kill the job. Rather, it would be easier if we kill the job in Control-M and it would automatically be killed in Informatica or SnapLogic. In some cases, some jobs go into a waiting state. So again, we need to change the Control-M settings for that particular job manually to transform it into the normal flow. These are the two things that if they are changed, Control-M would be an even better tool.

I have been using Control-M for the past eight months since I joined as a Data Engineer.

We have never experienced any licensing or any security issues from Control-M. My manager and the other members of my upper hierarchy manage the pricing. Since I have been using Control-M for the past almost one year, I have never experienced any security or software issues in it.

Control-M is easily scalable. I would rate it a nine out of ten when it comes to scalability of Control-M.

I have not used customer support until now, as the monitoring and the management of Control-M is done by another team. However, the other team which currently manages Control-M has helped us a lot.

When I was deployed into this project, Control-M was already in use, so I have not chosen or compared Control-M with other tools. Since I have been using it, I have not experienced any flaws or any issues.

For development, maintenance, and changing, I think around four to five people are enough for monitoring. For development, we need quite a lot of them. Once it is developed, only three to four people can easily manage Control-M.

I would recommend Control-M to most people. When it comes to metrics, I am not sure on how much the tool has saved us, but I am quite sure that it saved us a lot of time. For scheduling, Control-M is the first tool which I have used. Along with Control-M, I am also using DAG monitoring, which is already enabled in GCP, which is almost similar to a scheduler. We can easily depend on it to schedule the jobs and monitor them. I am already using it quite much for my daily tasks for my project. I am satisfied with the way I am using it and the features it is allowing me. One thing is how easy it is to use. Anyone, if they open Control-M and look at the jobs, they can easily know how to run a job, how to kill a job, how to put it on hold, how to check the logs, when it started, when it ended, whether it is running fine, or if there are any anomalies in the job. So I would recommend it. I advise them that it is a good tool. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

On-premises

Control-M is used to run Oracle scripts with scheduled jobs including monthly, weekly, and yearly schedules. Around 50 or more jobs are run every week. Control-M connects to the database, triggers all procedures, performs the operation, and generates the final report. The log is sent to mailboxes detailing how the process went, any issues, or any errors. If there are issues, the mailbox is checked; otherwise, a message indicating successful completion is received along with statistics such as how much time the process took and which processes were run. Jobs are scheduled once, Control-M jobs are created, timing is set up, and the jobs fire automatically at the particular time.

Control-M is used to connect to Oracle products, and through Control-M, a Tableau dashboard is maintained. Most of the scheduling jobs use Control-M to schedule. Control-M helps all products, making it a utility that can be used wherever scheduling features are needed. It is not just for DevOps, databases, or front-end applications; it can be used anywhere without manual intervention to perform particular activities. Wherever there is an opportunity for scheduling jobs, Control-M is the first option.

For migration, Control-M is considered very good. Once all the source and target details are configured in Control-M, it can automatically migrate data. It requires proper configuration and specifying the necessary changes for target technology along with the source system scripts. If properly configured, the complete migration can be triggered end to end. Data migrations and reporting, along with all scheduling activities, can be efficiently managed.

The best features in Control-M include sending emails to mailboxes after the process is completed and providing proper acknowledgement reports. The timing is impressive; it connects very fast and performs activities efficiently. The UI is very friendly, making it easy to configure jobs in Control-M. If core technology scripts are available, creating Control-M jobs is a five-minute task. The GUI is very friendly, which simplifies task assignment, scheduling, canceling, and all these operations, making it easily navigable.

Every week, 50 jobs are run using Control-M. If those 50 jobs were being run manually, it would take more than a week. Through Control-M, the jobs are able to be scheduled within two days, saving around five days of effort.

Before Control-M, jobs would be run on Friday evening so that the process would end by Sunday night, allowing the business to start on Monday. Without Control-M, everything would have to be run manually throughout the week. Thanks to Control-M, around five days are being saved. Otherwise, old data would be received for the current week's business, but now the latest data is received.

Control-M has room for improvement in displaying dashboard-like graphical reports once processes are completed. For example, after scheduling 50 jobs, if a dashboard showing the completed scripts, status, and time taken is displayed within Control-M itself, it would be very helpful. Currently, mailboxes are checked for reports; if it were in Control-M, anyone could check it. Only those configured with specific mail IDs receive emails, so if a few members are not set up, they will not see the reports. If it were available in Control-M, those users could directly check the dashboard.

Control-M has been used for the last two years from the beginning of the project level. Earlier, it was already there in Control-M that the client was using.

The same score for stability is a nine out of ten.

Control-M is capable of handling a large volume of processing if the necessary memory space is provided to the server.

Great support is received, with a rating of nine out of ten.

Positive

Control-M would definitely be recommended because it saves a lot of time. If everything were being done manually, it would take a lot of time to run and validate scripts. If everything is configured in Control-M, even non-experts like front-end staff can trigger jobs, making it simple. It is a one-time configuration, and anyone can trigger it. That is the best part; significant time is saved, and there is no waiting time; the next process starts immediately once the current one is completed. If dependencies are set in Control-M, it starts the next task automatically. That is why Control-M is highly recommended for scheduling.

The client is a big enterprise client.

Control-M requires occasional maintenance, maybe yearly or once every six months for upgrades. A Control-M team manages activities such as maintenance every six months or once a year, including cleaning up scripts or memory.

Around 15 members are using Control-M.

The overall review rating for Control-M is ten out of ten.

On-premises

My main use case for Control-M involves managing the banking financial data that we receive from different sources and types of files, which we integrate into our data warehouse. Then we extract this data through various use cases and store it in global GCS buckets. From there, we integrate it in Apache Airflow DAGs, run data, and create multiple pipelines based on the use case, ultimately producing the financial engines that generate AI outputs for our Looker dashboards, which serve predictive analytical purposes, including aggregations and drill-down reports.

A specific example of a workflow where Control-M is critical involves managing the banking processes such as account openings, updates, and credit card applications, where the orchestration of different financial services, credit cards, and insurance products are integrated into predictive analytical frameworks using Control-M for those workflows. For instance, when someone applies for a loan, our engine checks the credit score to assess eligibility, fraud risk, and delivery capabilities for various loan types. Control-M orchestrates these daily activities effectively.

Control-M nowadays has capabilities to integrate AI agents for enhanced orchestration, allowing us to embed workflows within Apache Airflow, which has over 70,000 customers. This seamless capture of data into buckets supports our analytical perspectives, providing valuable insights such as fail statuses and troubleshooting needs with an intuitive drag-and-drop dashboard. The insights are vital for understanding failure points and success statuses, which improves our operations. Control-M continuously offers many features and enhancements that are user-friendly and beneficial to companies like ours.

We manage integration and sequencing across diverse data platforms and cloud environments through Control-M, incorporating it with Juniper networks and using unique transaction IDs for seamless data handling. The data stored in GCS buckets is then processed through our platforms and utilized in Looker dashboards for predictive analytics.

Currently, we have not implemented Control-M for AI or ML workloads; however, with future updates, I foresee the potential for integrating these capabilities as part of managing larger data volumes effectively.

Control-M integrates with our Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), facilitating the orchestration of both batch and online processes in our financial services. This integration ensures efficient data handling and processing within the Google Cloud environment, meeting our daily operational needs.

Control-M aids our organization in compliance with requirements such as SOX and audit trails by overseeing batch processing data sourced from Cloud SQL, where transactions are validated and processed efficiently, reflecting correctly in our dashboards.

Control-M positively impacts our organization by saving time and costs, securing and optimizing our data processes, particularly with large volumes of varied file types crucial to our banking strategies. When we implement Control-M, we see significant time and cost savings, which are essential for our product and operations.

The best features Control-M offers include the ability to predict failures and easily identify issues through its AI agent, which provides inbuilt solutions, significantly reducing troubleshooting time. The root cause analysis that previously took long now finds failures quickly, which I find essential in today's IT environment where time is money. This capability eliminates much wasted time spent fixing issues, making Control-M one of the best tools for such needs.

In the context of our daily activities with Control-M, using Airflow DAGs is quite extensive as we manage hundreds of them with various tasks. When a specific task fails, Control-M's AI agent notifies us about the error through a red alert, allowing us to quickly identify the failed task and resolve it without wasting time. This efficiency helps our organization deliver features faster to the market, which is crucial for business success.

The current AI trend is about automation in day-to-day activities, and Control-M stands out as a strong player among tools that provide these solutions. Previously, we relied on cron jobs for scheduling and managing workflows, but now Control-M's AI agent automates 70% to 80% of our tasks, allowing more resources for developing new enhancements and features swiftly to market.

Regarding governance and security, data governance is crucial as it ensures data lineage and secure handling of sensitive financial and healthcare information, with features that allow for data masking to protect critical data points.

I find the accuracy of Control-M's AI capabilities to be around 85%, with its reliability output also at 85%, based on our product's performance.

Improvement for Control-M is a continuous process since challenges arise regularly; we strive to fix problems and enhance the system consistently. Control-M offers extensive connectivity to resources, facilitating integrations with platforms such as Apache Airflow, which is beneficial. Everything seems fine based on my use case.

I have been using Control-M for the last two years, as it was integrated into our product.

Control-M demonstrates good scalability, offering a supportive community that provides effective solutions.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate customer support as nine.

Before Control-M, we used workflow automation solutions that were less robust. We switched to Control-M to replace fragile scripts and manual scheduling with a centralized orchestration that optimizes management costs and SLA tracking for preventing costly job failures.

Since implementing Control-M, I estimate we save about 50% to 60% of our troubleshooting time and around 30% of costs, which we've measured quarter to quarter based on our product performance.

In terms of pricing and setup costs, the experience has been manageable, though specifics were not detailed.

I rate Control-M an eight overall. I rate Control-M an eight because most of the sources are integrated, the system works seamlessly with orchestration and scheduling, and it provides a user-friendly experience that yields time, cost savings, reliability, and security. I advise those considering Control-M to view it as user-friendly, open-source, and backed by excellent customer support, making integration and dashboard creation easy while benefiting from continuous feature improvements.

Private Cloud

Google

I primarily use Control-M for scheduling jobs for scripts, batch scripts, and Linux scripts. Most of the writing involves service restarts on servers.

For data ops and DevOps processes, the requirement involves integration processes that need to be scheduled in Control-M, allowing management of cyclic processes for integration and continuous execution.

For building, scheduling, and managing production workflows, access is available through the URL or from the client software, Control-M Configuration Manager.

Control-M has made it easier to create workflows for both cloud and on-premises environments with features such as drag and drop functionality. This makes it simpler for users to create jobs and integrate them with dependent jobs.

Control-M has helped consolidate job scheduler tools with features such as SMS and mail capabilities, which other scheduler tools do not provide.

The best features of Control-M are particularly effective for Windows scripts and Windows servers, mainly for service restarts.

What is most appreciated about Control-M is that it is easy and reliable. Jobs that have been created can be accessed through the front end URL, where operations such as hold, release, and execution can be managed entirely from the user GUI front end.

Workflow orchestration is important for data ops and DevOps tasks as it makes scheduling scripts and managing various aspects of operations much easier through a single screen.

There are areas for improvement in Control-M as it carries some vulnerability points that could be fixed in any version, or it could be made easier for organizations to repeatedly install or update new patches with more stable versions.

I have been using Control-M for four years.

On a scale from one to ten, with ten being the best, Control-M's stability is assessed as a solid product at approximately eight or nine. BMC support provides robust backing, with new patches arriving daily and being integrated with previous versions to replace outdated updates and fix bugs while unlocking more features. No stability issues have been noticed during the four years of use.

Regarding scalability, based on the features and how they help with day-to-day tasks, Control-M can be considered scalable.

In terms of technical support, the focus involves creating scripts for service restarts on particular servers with the main target of providing support for automation services, automation management, job failure management, and managing the agent package and Control-M package.

The deployment of Control-M is easier than other tools. There are no critical tasks or activities required to deploy on the server; it simply involves setup and installation on the server with the tool ready to use immediately.

Regarding pricing, Control-M is not the cheaper option. License renewal is based on active jobs in a year, but it is cost effective. More features are provided compared to other tools at the same price.

When comparing Control-M with other solutions such as ActiveBatch, JAMS, and IBM, Control-M offers easier manageable operations for hold, release, and execution, which can be managed directly from its front-end URL. In its configuration tools where jobs are created, there are no difficulties encountered. Unlike other tools where dependency tools and jobs must be mentioned separately, Control-M provides direct drag and drop functionality with arrows. This is much easier than other tools such as IBM Task Scheduler or Jenkins.

Approximately 2,000 to 3,000 people use Control-M, including users from Axis Bank where all employees are using Control-M.

Control-M is recommended to other users by providing them a demo and showing them the uses, which helps them understand the benefits and features that Control-M provides that cannot be obtained from other tools. This allows them to rely on Control-M for their day-to-day tasks.

One point is deducted from the overall rating because Control-M carries some vulnerability points. The overall rating for Control-M is nine out of ten.

I predominantly use Control-M for file transfers through the SaaS version. BMC has recently added an enterprise feature for the SaaS version, and we are now using it mostly for the file transfer part and also the APIs, which has been our latest addition.

With my current project, the File Transfer Enterprise is the best use case for us in terms of secured transfers and how we can track the transfers and manage significantly more with the transfers we are doing. This is the best feature, considering the ROI as to what my current scenario was and what we have achieved with the enterprise feature.

File Transfer Enterprise is the most valuable feature for our current project in terms of secured transfers and how we can track the transfers and manage significantly more with the transfers we are doing. This feature provides the best value, considering the ROI that we have achieved with the enterprise feature.

The integrator feature is not being supported by the BMC support team, which leaves it to us to customize and integrate it. Of course, the use cases differ and that is when they have decided not to have it under the support cluster. However, having basic support on the integration integrator would help us considerably. We do a lot of research and development to achieve what we need to accomplish, but BMC has the experts and eventually they have the answers. If they include the integrator feature under the support structure, it would be greatly beneficial.

The integrator feature is handy, but it can be tricky when we are trying to integrate in terms of achieving the connection profile. Setting up the connection profile initially to get any integrator working for us is somewhat tricky with different use cases we want to achieve. It is not straightforward.

I have been using Control-M since 2008 when I got into IT and started my career.

The SaaS version is excellent in terms of stability. For the price, it is very stable. We have not had any downtime. It has been more than two and a half years, approaching three years now since we got SaaS onto our system with no downtime at all. It is quite stable.

The scalability aspect is simply a matter of getting more agents in place and since it is a SaaS version, it gets scaled up on their end. We do not have to worry much about it. Of course, the licensing comes into play if the number of jobs are increasing, but it is dynamic.

I have recently contacted the BMC Control-M technical support team.

They are top-notch in terms of speed and quality. Most of the time, any question starts with extracting the logs and providing them to the support team, and they go through that. If they are not able to resolve the issue, they take time and put it to the research and development team. Of course, it takes a while if it goes to research and development, but they make sure that the issue is resolved. That is something great about them.

I would give the support a score of nine. I would still like to rate them ten, but some cases do take a while to get the resolution.

Autosys has been used and is the closest alternative to BMC Control-M. There are other features and other products, but Autosys is the most used alternative. However, it is nowhere near what BMC Control-M has to offer.

The initial deployment of Control-M was straightforward. With the current SaaS version, there is a support window of 14 days or specific hours. It is straightforward and depends on who is going to drive the deployment. For my case, I was experienced with the on-premise version as well, so that seemed straightforward for me. However, for those coming in with lesser experience, it may take some time. The documentation is excellent, so it is straightforward.

The deployment of Control-M requires two administrators. Basically, one administrator is the minimum need, but one can do the deployment. Since we have two admins, we share the workload. One is sufficient for the task.

Pricing for Control-M is on the costlier side when it comes to SaaS pricing. However, it does take off all the hassles of maintaining the Control-M server itself. This leaves us with only managing the agent part of it. It has pros and cons to that pricing feature, but it is on a higher side. Mostly in terms of ROI, the companies and stakeholders have that complaint.

Control-M does require maintenance on our end. There are two different windows of maintenance. One is when the core technology, in our case SAP, is getting under maintenance window, so we have to pause our jobs and resume it later on. This is a critical window that prevents our jobs from being pushed into SAP. We have to pause it and resume it depending on the schedules and make sure that we resume it and do not miss any jobs. The other window is when our agent maintenance or agent infrastructure maintenance occurs, when switching from a primary to a secondary agent, routing it, and making sure nothing is lost in the transit. Those are the two maintenance activities we perform.

We have a team of seven today, with two of us as admins. We have three schedulers and two monitoring agents.

Our engagement is with BMC. I have been involved with getting the contract rolled in for my current client and getting into the core of the technicalities in achieving the job requirements. It has been both.

We achieved the project in a month's time with Control-M. We had a project of converting and migrating our jobs from SAP workload onto the Control-M scheduler. End to end, we took less than a month to get the agents installed on the SAP infrastructure and get these jobs migrated from the SAP workload. Overall, I give this product a review rating of ten.

I work with Control-M from a commercial aspect and engage with IT and operation teams across different industries, which gives me direct exposure to how Control-M is used in real production environments. My role is to deliver tangible value to these teams.

The valuable features of Control-M depend on the specific customer needs. Some customers have business-critical processes, strict SLAs, and hybrid or multi-cloud environments where Control-M provides end-to-end visibility of all these processes. Control-M also offers different modules, such as MFT, which allows users to transfer files with the tool. As a commercial professional, I cannot personally attest to specific features since I do not typically use the tool directly, but I can share what customers have told me they value about the product.

As a commercial professional, I think one of the downsides of Control-M is that not all people know they can use a tool such as Control-M, and they think that Control-M is going to be very expensive, which is the reason why they don't want to use it or seek more information about it. However, when they are accustomed to using this type of tool or Control-M as a scheduler, they feel better with it and with their role inside their enterprise. For example, if they don't have any scheduler, they don't know that they can use a scheduler to automate different business processes. When they recognize that they can use this type of tool, one of the objectives is to reduce costs. They may spend money in the short term, but in the medium or long term, they will probably have more benefits than risk.

Control-M has everything that a person needs because the problem is not high cost. Control-M is available on-premises and in the cloud, and they are having more apps every week with the app integrator. I don't have anything that I dislike about Control-M. Possible areas for improvement could include documentation, configuration, and pricing. Being more flexible and having out-of-the-box reporting for business stakeholders would be beneficial. Continuing to simplify licensing and packaging for smaller customers would also help improve customer conversations. Reporting is often mentioned as an area where Control-M could continue to evolve. Many customers would appreciate more out-of-the-box business-friendly reports. Control-M has operability with SLA-focused reports, but developing something with less customization would be better.

I have been using Control-M for more or less two years.

I think that some instability is normal because everything is in the cloud, and I can remember a few months when the AWS cloud crashed. If you see the SLA reports or responses from different customers, they are very happy with the tool. Control-M achieves more or less 98% or 99% uptime in the cloud, which is a fantastic rate. I think 100% is impossible to achieve, and 99.8% is a good number.

Control-M, developed by BMC, which was previously part of BMC Helix and is now BMC Software, is focusing on Digital Business Automation processes. They are developing many different modules in Control-M, and the scalability is fantastic. Probably in a couple of years, Control-M is going to be the best scheduler. Currently, they are competing with other schedulers such as Redwood, Broadcom, and Stonebranch, but in a couple of years, maybe one or two years, Control-M is not going to have any competitors.

I have used technical support from BMC when we need to do demos for instances in the BMC tool. The technical support team are very good professionals and they do their jobs excellently. Since I don't use Control-M directly, if I have a problem with Control-M, the technical team from my enterprise would need to talk with the technical team from BMC. I usually talk with the commercial team from BMC rather than the technical team. I talk with the technical team when I need to make a demo, proof of concept, or proof of value, and we need to customize the future instance for the client. If I need to rate the technical support from BMC, I would give them a 10 because whenever I want to do something with them, they answer me, and I am very happy with them.

Positive

I don't use any alternative schedulers. I know that you can talk about Redwood, Broadcom, or Stonebranch, but I don't use any one of these schedulers.

I don't have a lot of contact with deployment. Probably if I think about some customers, they tell me that there is also interest in simplifying upgrades and environment standardization, particularly for organizations with multiple Control-M instances. If you talk with a small customer, they are going to be happy with deployment, upgrades, or the environment.

Control-M has an upgrade more or less every year or every two years. If you want to use the latest upgrade, you need to upgrade your tool.

The implementation team depends on the person doing the deployment.

The current pricing is good. Other vendors such as Broadcom are increasing their prices, so right now, Control-M is not one of the highest-cost schedulers. My customers have never told me anything negative about the pricing or licensing. BMC can be very amenable with the pricing of the tool. I have small customers, and I think that is a good point of view because they think they can't have the budget for a tool such as Control-M, but they do have the budget. Control-M is a tool for every kind of customer. You can sell Control-M for 15K on-premises and you can sell it for 7 million or 11 million. I think that people need to change their thinking because Control-M is not just an expensive tool. It is a tool for everyone, for every enterprise.

I would rate Control-M at nine.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for Control-M is automating the processes and managing workflows. I can give a specific example of a process I've automated using Control-M.

We had one of the customers, whom I cannot name because of a non-disclosure agreement, and they are a mid-sized insurance company in the Nordics market. They had an issue with all the First Information Reports that kept coming from their customers. We attempted to automate that process and the collection of those data using Control-M.

One of my colleagues uses Control-M in my company for automating workflows for a different use case with a healthcare provider. The workflows include pharmacy billing, as well as linking to the patient release once they are discharged from the hospital and then the billing and all the processes trying to automate the synchronized workflows.

I manage the integration and sequencing of data processing across diverse data platforms and cloud environments like Data Lake, Snowflake, and others.

In the way we work in our enterprise, there is a CIO team who does all the due diligence before recommending Control-M to all the project teams. For the AI implementation, we are currently partnered with OpenAI, ChatGPT, and Anthropic. We are using Control-M for our customers, but within our organization, it is on a pilot stage or prototype.

Control-M addresses compliance requirements through a very stringent audit process. We manage all the logs and go through all the vulnerabilities. This is mostly handled by the CIO office. The audit process is stringent, which is why we are still in the demo and prototype stage within the organization. Once that is cleared, we will have a full-fledged implementation like the other tools.

After automating that data collection process with Control-M, I noticed it was much faster. Earlier, we were using the rule-based engine, an in-house developed proprietary tool, but it was not as effective. It has definitely become very faster.

Regarding the accuracy part, we are still studying that. So far, we have not received any negative feedback, but we are collecting the data if any questions come from our client or their end user.

Regarding how this ease of use helps my team or organization, the way we operate is that we have a product manager. The product manager gets a use case and tries with different tools to find out the best one. They are not necessarily very technical because they come from the product background from the banks, providers, and in retail and other sectors. We don't need to assign technical people, which incurs additional costs for our company. They need some support, so some shared resources can help them. It is definitely a reduction in our cost if our product managers who are not very technical can handle it on their own or even develop a prototype for any of the use cases.

Control-M has positively impacted our organization because we work for our customers. We are a global capability center, so basically we try to implement the tools and licenses for our customers. One is time to market is faster, execution is faster. Secondly, as I mentioned, we are trying to gather data about the accuracy and I hope that it will meet the expectations of the customer. That is the way it would have helped us. There is also cost saving internally because we save costs on technical resources and we pass it on to the customers.

Regarding rough numbers or percentages about the time saved or cost reduction, it will be an estimate because maybe around 50% of the time, but that is a rough estimate because those numbers should come from our customers where it is exactly implemented.

The best features Control-M offers are that it is very quick. A semi-technical person can also handle it. You don't need much technical knowledge, and it is intuitive. So far, we have found that we don't need highly technical skilled people to handle it. That was one of the best parts. Product managers are very comfortable using it.

If the agentic features can be fine-tuned a bit more, that will be really helpful. I have not tried it, but if I can use my own LLMs, because in our company, there are certain enterprise regulations regarding cyber security and all that. I have not tried that feature, but if it is there, I would love to know more about it.

If the agentic AI feature can be more fine-tuned, that will really help. If the choice for choosing the right kind of model, whatever the customer feels is best, if that option is there, if it is model-agnostic, that will be good.

The interface of Control-M is fine. We are comfortable with the interface. The documentation is average. If it can be improved, that will be a real plus, but it is not a big challenge because we obviously go through all the documentation before we sign it off.

Concerning Control-M's AI capabilities, I think of its accuracy and reliability of output. It does hallucinate sometimes. I have observed it myself. Sometimes it does hallucinate, but most of the time it is okay. I am talking about the agentic AI features.

I have given detailed feedback about all my observations concerning improvements needed for Control-M.

I have been using Control-M for a little less than a year.

Control-M's stability has not presented issues.

Control-M's scalability is fine. We are satisfied with that.

Customer support for Control-M has been good. A couple of times we reached out, and it was good. I am satisfied.

I would rate the customer support a nine out of 10.

We never switched solutions. We use multiple solutions because we are a solution and technology company. We try out the different solutions based on the preference of our customers, so it is not a matter of switching but rather trying out different solutions based on customer preferences.

We did not find any great difficulty in integrating Control-M with Kubernetes or cloud native workflows along with traditional batch processing. Adaptation is also easy because our data engineers are able to handle it quite well. As we are a technology company, that is not a challenge for us.

We have not yet measured ROI. With the other recent AI tools, we understand there will be a return on investment, but measuring the return on investment and indicating it in our annual reports has been a tricky issue. We are still not reporting the individual revenue from the different AI tools that we are using.

Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, it is okay. It is fine because you have to pay the price and the cost if you want to use a tool. You cannot get it much cheaper, so that should be fine.

We evaluated multiple solutions as we are a solution and technology company.

I would rate Control-M a seven out of 10.

I chose 7 out of 10 because the good part, as I mentioned, is about the cost saving, time of execution, and the accuracy that our customers are looking for. The numbers can improve by one or two more points if I have the ability to choose my own models in the agentic field. That will make it much better.

Regarding Control-M's AI capabilities, whatever I have studied or observed, as of now, we are satisfied. We are also doing due diligence with the help of our customers to figure out how secure it is in terms of the agent handling the current scenario of cyber security and cyber attacks. That is one area we are looking at.

As we are a GCC and a service provider, the choice of cloud provider is always based on our customers' preference. We are partnered with all the major cloud providers, including AWS, Google, Azure, and Rackspace. We handle all the projects or the implementations based on what our customers are comfortable with.

Regarding advice I would give to others looking into using Control-M, they should definitely try it. They should definitely try it for themselves, and most probably they will also be satisfied just like we are.

Hybrid Cloud

Other

My main use case for Control-M is managing all the business processes, overnight processes, and everything we do with Control-M, including maintaining file deliveries and client files.

A specific example of a task I manage with Control-M is processing 10 files for a specific client through file triggers, where based on file availability, jobs get kicked off, downstream gets processed, and we deliver the files.

I manage all the SLAs and commitments to the businesses through Control-M, and we have built many custom solutions within Control-M to manage batch processing along with dashboard solutions to track the real-time status of batch jobs to take proactive steps in case of delays.

We manage the integration and sequencing of data processing across diverse platforms and cloud environments while actively engaging with BMC R&D for solutions.

My organization is planning to use Control-M to support AI solutions and is considering integration with Airflow for leveraging AI and ML capabilities.

We address compliance requirements such as SOX and audit trails using the audit trails within Control-M, with successful audits from KPMG and EY using Control-M reports.

Control-M has positively impacted my organization in all aspects, especially customer satisfaction. Transitioning from mainframe-centric products to Control-M has allowed for seamless management across both mainframe and distributed systems, saving us a lot of time.

Since adopting Control-M, we have seen significant metrics, with our batch success rate improving from 9.78% to 99.93%, resulting in excellent customer satisfaction in handling queries.

The best features Control-M offers include the modules within BIM and the alerting management system that keeps operations running smoothly, with proactive alerting through file triggers which enables quicker handling of issues.

Control-M's alerting has helped my team respond to issues by customizing alerting with AI solutions that engage respective owners at the right moment, allowing quick decisions to be made during market events and articulating downstream impacts effectively.

The solutions we built on top of Control-M with AI enable almost real-time engagement with respective groups, thus keeping everyone focused on issue resolution and significantly decreasing the mean time to resolution compared to different schedulers.

Control-M has facilitated our integration of Kubernetes with traditional batch processing by making infrastructure management easy and reliable, particularly enhancing resiliency.

Currently, from a product point of view, we are satisfied with what we receive but focus on how to enable AI into the system, identifying it as an area for improvement.

We are seeking seamless self-service capabilities related to API integration and envisioning AI solutions as a self-service feature.

I have been using Control-M for close to five years.

Control-M is stable and resilient, offering significant help in our operations.

Control-M's scalability is trusted at almost 100%, as we have successfully run experiments that confirm its capability to grow with business needs.

I am 100% satisfied with customer support.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate customer support always a 10 due to the engagement we have with BMC leadership and the core R&D team.

We previously built custom solutions with AI but switched to leveraging what is available within Control-M for proactive alerting and monitoring.

We have seen a return on investment and can share metrics that demonstrate a reduction in workforce from about 100 people managing 30 million batch workloads a month to around 60 people.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that while it is higher-end, the ROI from BMC support makes us happy and helps keep the business running.

Before choosing Control-M, we evaluated other options including Stonebranch and products from IBM and CA Broadcom.

I rate Control-M overall as a 10.

I give Control-M a perfect score of 10 due to its product innovation and the effective solutions derived from BMC support.

Regarding Control-M's AI capabilities, I think we must be mindful of the guardrails, and we can also think about internal guardrails related to invoking self-service.

Control-M's AI output accuracy and reliability is 100%, and as a bank, we never compromise on data quality and classifications.

My advice for others considering Control-M is to look for more self-AI custom-based solutions and enable APIs for business users rapidly.

On-premises

Control-M plays a crucial role in our batch process related applications as we use it for all our batch processes, and everything is driven through Control-M itself without manually running any particular application or script. This provides equal opportunity for both the stakeholder who is actually waiting for their reports or any process to be completed and from an application side as well to make sure that when it has run, how it has run, how long it has taken, and to provide accurate information. Control-M helps us in making our life and the stakeholder's life much easier because of the visual representation of the end-to-end detail of how the process has run.

We primarily use on-premises platforms, so we are not immersed in data pipelines from Control-M's perspective, but we do utilize MFT for our file transfers. From a file transferring perspective, Control-M provides significant advantages by enabling us to connect with multiple platforms or vendors and transfer files in real time, automatically sending data through our downstream systems without needing to verify whether the file has arrived or not. As soon as the file comes, Control-M job triggers the necessary flow, saving us a lot of time, making our operations mostly related to file transfer rather than data pipelines.

Currently, we are not using Control-M for AI or ML workloads, but down the line, if that's enabled for us, we plan to enhance our application monitoring logs perspective, allowing us to analyze logs more compactly through Control-M along with available AI capabilities, enhancing our operational excellency that leads to quicker resolution times, as all the time spent on analysis gets expedited through AI.

From an auditing perspective, we run custom scripts through Control-M to ensure all users with access to our internal applications and their corresponding app permissions are correctly managed. These scripts are executed periodically and send reports to our internal compliance team, who review the data for internal compliance auditing reports, which we also provide to our external vendors upon request regarding critical job statuses, failures, runtime, and actions taken, simplifying the information retrieval process from multiple sources to one action in Control-M.

We have established integration with traditional batch processing, which greatly benefits us, particularly from a time perspective, ensuring that all flows have run smoothly. Control-M provides checkpoints or confirmation alerts indicating that the file has been received and processed, ensuring no SLA slippages occur, as SLAs are critical in batch process management due to their financial implications regarding posted received amounts and system interactions.

Control-M's scheduling feature is the best one for us, providing an overall view that gives us end-to-end information of what is planned or scheduled for today, including any special jobs such as end-of-month tasks, which allows us to see any special day. Control-M's alert management part is crucial as well, because anytime an alert pops up, we receive a notification indicating that one of the jobs has failed or something, and then it gives us a chance to quickly jump onto it and see why it has failed from a front-end perspective to take immediate action, preventing any SLA slippage. Additionally, Control-M's planning section allows us to see all the jobs that are already created or configured to identify their schedules and modifications, which are the main features I value from Control-M.

In my opinion, Control-M can be improved by making the SaaS model more feasible from a cost perspective, as we have many cyclic jobs running every minute, and the execution cost limits our transition to a SaaS platform. Even though numerous features are available in the SaaS version, the high cost inhibits our ability to utilize them, and lowering this cost would definitely facilitate our move to SaaS, allowing us to focus more on internal processes rather than job execution costs.

My name is Pavan Chundi, and I work for TCS, but I am internally working for the client Foxtel. At Foxtel, our role is to provide application management of all the call center related applications that they have and the backend billing operations for their customers, so we build the customers, send their invoices, and handle all the batch process management as part of the TCS group. I have been with TCS for the past 14 plus years and out of which I have been with Foxtel for close to 12 plus years, and during that time period, I have been using Control-M for all the duration, so I do have pretty good hands-on experience with Control-M from a day-to-day usage perspective.

Control-M's stability and reliability from our side are very good, as we maintain the on-premises platform and have not encountered any issues with internal patches or testing processes. Even if minor issues arise, we consistently receive excellent support from the BMC team, ensuring that our workflows and SLAs stay on track without slipping.

We have not made significant changes in our usage of Control-M; we continue to add more jobs based on our requirements, but we have not ventured into new areas outside of what we were already using within Control-M.

BMC support has been incredibly helpful for us, especially concerning upgrades and patch versions. We never experience issues or delays in their support, which consistently helps us maintain productivity and upgrade our system software efficiently.

Before Control-M, there were no batch process management or orchestration tools in our system, and since implementing Control-M, it has become our go-to solution and one of the best products I have used throughout my IT career. I find it hard to imagine the future without Control-M being present because it has integrated so much into how our workflows are driven at Foxtel.

I was not involved in the initial deployment, but I participated in subsequent upgrades, and those upgrades were very smooth. We took appropriate steps to minimize downtime, and BMC support was instrumental in coordinating efforts to ensure that we completed the upgrade with the least amount of downtime possible.

From Control-M's side, the primary benefit we realize is in time consumption and accountability perspective when comparing manual processes to the enhanced automated Control-M processes. This major advantage includes that with manual processes, we have to go into each server to execute scripts, which does not reflect accountability, as there is no record of when or how it was run. However, with Control-M, everyone can see who has run it, when it was run, what parameters were used, and how long it took, allowing for accountability. Moreover, it enhances time management because we simply trigger the Control-M job and let it run by itself, and if it fails, we receive an alert, while with manual runs, we have to sit in front of the screen watching it continuously, which is eliminated with Control-M.

I have not recently evaluated other orchestration tools, but I have seen some alternatives. However, I do not see any other company coming close to what BMC offers with Control-M in terms of native integrations and functionality. While other tools may serve different use cases, for our current needs, Control-M stands out as the best tool we are using.

From my personal perspective, I would rate Control-M a 10 without hesitation, as it is among the best tools I have used, providing user-friendly experiences even for IT newcomers. When I started at TCS straight out of university, Control-M gave me insights into how entire systems operate, offering a comprehensive overview that is far superior to what many other tools provide, making it invaluable to our processes. My product rating for Control-M is 10 out of 10.

On-premises