Control-M Reviews

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 most valuable features are the: 

• GUI console
• Stability
• Workflow

I think it's slightly expensive but at the same time, it's a good product. 

I have been using Control-M for ten years. 

Their technical support is awesome. They're helpful when you're in a complicated situation. 

I would recommend it. Control-M is the complete package to manage a work environment. 

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

Many companies are using Control-M in Mexico, two main companies from the retail sector have been using Control-M for around 15 years for all the administration of their processes. 

It has been helpful in reducing costs and resources.

Its compatibility with the new technologies and platforms, like the Google Cloud or Amazon, is the most valuable. Its console allows us to view the duration and execution of a process. It is also very easy to use and easy to implement.

Some companies have found Control-M a very costly solution, and they think 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 accessible than the On-Premise schema.

It is very stable.

It is very scalable. All our clients are big companies.

Their technical support is very good. We need to create tickets, and their response time is good.

Its implementation is pretty fast and easy. The duration depends on the size of the infrastructure. It could be implemented between one to three months.

I would recommend this solution. It has good stability and integration capabilities. It is also easy to use and easy to implement.

I would rate Control-M a ten out of ten.

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 are a reseller. Our clients are from banks, retail, and pharmacy industries. We deploy versions 6, 7, 9, and 10 of this solution.

It is very easy to use. The HA feature is also very good.

Its installation can be better. Currently, we have to install it manually. The file transfer feature can also be improved. It is not very easy to transfer a file from business to business. 

In terms of new features, they can include new technologies. It can have API integration.

I have been using this solution for 11 years.

It is stable. There are no glitches. It has been working well from the start.

Its scalability is good. It is easy to scale. Our clients are medium and big enterprises.

They are perfect. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

The initial setup was easy. The deployment took two weeks.

I would recommend this solution. I would rate Control-M a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for automating workloads across traditional data centers, the cloud, SaaS offerings, and various other Enterprise software packages.

It is allowing developers and product owners to create complex workflows that may encompass several different products or technologies and have it all visible, monitored, and managed from one place.

The Single pane of glass view has helped us to see the big picture.

The auditing and archiving capabilities have helped us maintain compliance and provide for a single place to look for errors, check historical runs, etc.

We have increased efficiency by reducing the number of people needed to watch and react to processing.

The simplified integrations and scheduling across various products was a big win to reduce silos.

The Automation API has opened up a world of possibilities for us, including the ability to create workflows on-demand using traditional DevOps tools.

The most valuable feature is the Automation API - Jobs as Code. This is the future of workload automation. It brings Control-M into the DevOps sphere, and they are focusing a lot of effort with monthly releases of this product.

The Web interface is coming along but still has some missing pieces. Today, you must still rely on the full GUI client to do everything you need. The next major release needs to focus on the lightweight web client.

I'd also like to see more out of the box support for Docker, etc.

We have been using this solution for more than sixteen years.

This solution is highly stable with a good customer support team.

This solution is highly scalable.  We can run one job or a million jobs, with ease. We've never had an issue.

Technical support for this solution is top-notch. Many of the folks that I email have been there for years! That says a lot.

Prior to using this product, we used homemade solutions and we outgrew them.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward, but for new users, I would recommend engaging a third party to help you set up and learn the ropes.

We used a vendor team to assist with the deployment.

Over the years we've saved countless man YEARS. We have also avoided having to buy additional products for scheduling and integration. The list really does go on and on.

Pricing can be steep, but you get what you pay for. If you are just concerned about cost, you are going to miss the big picture because Control-M has features that are light years ahead of the competition. Don't save a nickel to spend $20.

Before choosing this product we looked at Computer Associates (CA Technologies) and Tivoli.

Control-M is light years ahead of any competitor we have looked at.

You can try it without buying it. I would suggest checking out the workbench at: https://jobsascode.io

This is a free version of the Control-M package that is perfect to take for a spin.

Our primary use case of this solution is to keep track of our help desk tickets.

The solution helps us to make sure that help desk tickets don't go unnoticed.

I find it very helpful to be able to keep track of all our help desk tickets.

We don't use the program that much, so it is stable enough for us.

I don't think the solution is very scalable. The version we're currently using is discontinued and I haven't upgraded yet. We don't plan to upgrade soon, because we're working on our other back-office software that's more for our business.

The technical support is okay, because it's an end of life product.

The biggest reason for upgrading what we currently have, is the workforce becoming more mobile and we need to give users easier access to submit help desk tickets. That is why we are looking for a solution that can offer this feature.

We used a consultant for the deployment and the initial setup was pretty straightforward and easy.

We haven't seen a ROI yet.

Licensing costs are around $3000 a year. 

My rating for this solution is five out of ten. It's not bad, but it's not good either. There's a lot of room for improvement and I think it can be more user-friendly. In the next version I would like to see something with integrated mobile device management so that I can keep track of software and devices, having it all in one software for our help desk. I think it would be very useful.

We use this solution for enterprise workload automation in the financial industry. We schedule and monitor hundreds of business-critical processes.

We also leverage the Managed File Transfer capabilities of Control-M to handle our file transfers securely & efficiently. Most of our tasks also deal with databases, and Control-M's purpose-built module for the databases comes in very handy when handling database components. It adds value with its capability to execute tasks natively and bring more information to the output.

The BIM feature is used to monitor the important set of jobs as a service and to proactively alert operations when it sees that some jobs in the critical path are failed or delayed. This helps a lot in maintaining our SLAs efficiently.

Control-M, with its huge integration capabilities, brought most of our scheduling activities under one roof. This adds to ease of use and support. To top that, the visibility it adds to the otherwise hidden information is very useful. In fact, invaluable.

Although we do not use tens of additional plugins available, we can see how they can be valuable to other companies.

BMC has now started concentrating more on APIs, which is a welcome move. This enables us to develop 'job as code'. This supports our efforts to adapt to a Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery model. We hope that they make it one hundred percent compatible as early as possible.

Integration capabilities, plugins, support communities, visibility, MFT, Reports, APIs. As mentioned earlier, all these features mean that we don't need to use multiple solutions to do the task. It also makes things a lot easier that way.

MFT changed the way we manage our file transfers. On top of that, all of it is directly visible in the same GUI. All the statistics can be viewed at the click of a button. Although a bit flaky sometimes, it is very helpful.

Experts in the communities need a special mention here. There's a huge number of people who spend their valuable time helping each other, solving others problems. Although the actual BMC support can be slow in response sometimes, the expertise & the helpful nature of people in the BMC Community for Control-M more than make up for it.

MFT needs some more polishing. We ran into problems a few times & struggled to get them sorted in time. But, BMC gave their full support to us at such times.

APIs are not there one hundred percent yet, but BMC just adopted a monthly release mechanism for APIs. I can see that they are on it full time.

Inbuilt integration with Connect Direct could be helpful. A developer sandbox could be very helpful to try out new features or experience them.

Application Integrator can be helpful, although I don't see many templates being built by BMC experts. The hub that is available is mostly user-dependent.

It's stable ninety-nine percent of the time. Even the other one percent could be because of the funky underlying infrastructure/network setup.

Our job footprint is very low, so we never faced any scalability issues. From the documentation, it is my understanding that virtually, there is no limit to its scalability.

It can be slow at times, but you eventually come to an understanding that as long as you provide all of the information they 'might' need as early as possible, there are better chances that you get your answers 'sooner'.

I had used Cron scheduler for a short time, but it can be considered almost zero experience. My understanding is that BMC Control-M is years ahead in terms of usability & visibility.

The initial setup of this solution is very straight forward. BMCs AMIGO program is there to walk you through the process.

It gets a bit technical when you need to setup MFTs, but at the same time, it's not rocket science either.

We performed the deployment in-house with help from BMCs AMIGO program.

Pricing is a tricky area that I don't have much experience in. I can see it getting even trickier with more companies moving to a cloud-based infrastructure.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution.

I like this solution, and my advice is to go for it :)

We use this solution to automate batch processing, create automated workflows to support various applications, and integrate various endpoints in the workflow to support business processes.

File transfer between our company and partner is critical for us. MFT has provided this solution and we are now using MFT for internal and external file transfers.

With version 9.0.18, which included new features, it has increased the usage of Control-M.

Introduction of Control-M-managed file transfer has increased usage in our organization. BIM is a good tool to monitor SLAs, and being a financial organization, this is a very good feature for us.

The most valuable feature is the Autoedit variable resolution in planning. This feature allows developers to better understand the schedule, and allow them to correct any potential issues in advance.

The MFT dashboard is also a useful tool to track all file transfers. It provides detailed information about both source and destination.

Control-M MFT and Control-M API both need improvement.

The Control-M MFT has to support checksums for FTP transfer between our own Control-M agents.

The Control-M API does not support SQL database-type jobs, where a job has been configured to use the SQL catalog to locate SSIS.

BIM needs further improvement to include any dynamic-type jobs with the workflow.

The support and bug fix timeline need improvement.

Technical support for this solution needs to be improved.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution.

We use it to control job submission.

This product works with all the platforms that we use today. We're able to centralize our managing of job flows for all our platforms. That's how it really helps us.

It has also improved our SLAs.

In addition, it has definitely helped development. Now we have multiple developers running their jobs and it gives them a lot of flexibility.

The most valuable features are 

• the managing of file transfers
• the product keeping up with technology.

It's also very user-friendly and easy to manage job flow.

I would like to see the ease of upgrades improved, although they may have addressed that. We're still at an early version, but we plan to get to the latest and greatest very soon, where we can take advantage of easy upgrades.

Their technicians should be more involved when we're applying new technology to Control-M, such as cloud. We're working with cloud right now, with AWS, and getting the attention of a technician, sometimes, can take some time. It would be nice if they had somebody assigned to it. Dedicated support.

It's very stable. It's continuously running - we're a 24/7 shop. The only problem that may come up is applying it to new servers with new technologies. There can be little startup problems, but they're usually ironed out. Overall, the stability of the product is awesome.

It's very scalable. The product does technically work with any other hardware, using its agents, so it's very scalable.

Technical support is very good. They're very helpful. The only downside is getting their attention and fixing a problem in a timely fashion. But a lot of it is development. If it comes to an urgent problem, they usually respond fairly quickly. And I must say, there really haven't been that many urgent problems.

Upgrades are pretty straightforward. There's not really that much mystery to them.

We did use a consultant when we went to a new release from a very old release. But going forward, we're doing our own upgrades. Our experience with the consultant was very good. I forget which consultant we used, it was about eight years ago, but they were very good. They handled everything.

My advice would be to go ahead with Control-M. Get a lot of input from their technicians. Work with them. They're very good, and very helpful.

I've learned a lot because I came from the mainframe area, personally, where now I'm working with all this Windows and agent technology I never knew before.

We do not have Managed File Transfer yet, but we do want to get to it. We like what it offers, above advanced file transfer. We're looking forward to implementing that.

I'm going to give it an eight, only because I don't have anything else to compare it with.

I've never worked in a company where we weren't using it, so it's hard to say how it improves our organization. Our Oracle Database backup teams used to do this all themselves via cron. They've automated what was done by cron with Control-M. Other than that, everybody's using it.

It saves us time. Instead of 800 applications internally doing their own thing, we centralize it into one location where there are notifications. Taking the power of economies of scale into one point of focus, it saves us money for sure. We turned a company of mom-and-pop little fiefdoms all over the place into a company where things are centralized in one location.

Monitoring is a valuable aspect of it. The monitoring tool is very good. It's very easy for expert and entry-level users to use on short notice. Also, the usability is good.

The reporting tool needs a major-league upgrade.

I also would like not to have to reach out to a third-party application company to do automated notifications. Right now, we still have people manually calling people and emailing people. There's a company called xMatters - and there are others - that has an API through Control-M that can automate any aspect of failure management. I'd like to see it build right into the product. I'd like to see a better notification product.

In some parts of Control-M the stability is good, in some parts it's not so good.

We're going to see the scalability soon when we upgrade. 

Most of the time we don't get the answers we're looking for. That's why we use a consultant company.

It works on task-based licensing.

Procurement may have looked at other products. But from our perspective, they probably would have scared the living heck out of us if they had told us they were looking at other things.

You have to talk about it more in terms of how Control-M fits into the scale of other products which BMC offers for what you're doing. It's got Helix, cloud management, ITSM, etc. BMC offers the whole scale - everything. We don't choose to use it all. But from another prospective, it's a real positive that they have this scope, that they can handle everything a corporation could throw at it.

I would like to see us use more things such as Helix. From that perspective, I would recommend it because of all the product offerings and because a lot of the approved vendors, which work directly through BMC, really make the experience a lot better.

We learn things every day about the product and the availabilities. We work in an IT environment with inquisitive people. There are millions of options available, parameter-wise, within the system and I learn something new every day, by working around smart people and intuitive people.

In terms of how the solution affects business modernization initiatives, this is all somewhat new for us. We're starting to go into a little bit of the DevOps and the Workload Change Manager, and the cloud chat-box. We're just starting to get into things like that with BMC Control-M.

I would rate the solution at eight out of ten. We've had massive growth in the last year to two years because of company acquisitions. We've added a lot of big-data processing and a lot of other processing and it's handled it quite well. We really haven't had any serious outages in quite a long time, even through the large growth we've had. We've doubled the work and it's handled it seamlessly. It's just that the reporting aspects are poor, because management always wants to know things. It's hard to get at tangible numbers without doing a lot of additional work outside of the system.

We use it to schedule nightly batch jobs. We also have jobs that run during the day on a cyclic basis to provide up-to-date, real-time information for the company.

I'm also pretty much focused on keeping things going. I'm the only scheduler at the company. We have about 4000 jobs in the daily schedule with around 42,000 iterations of jobs.

Everything that we schedule is run through Control-M. It supplies and provides what is needed, whether it is nighttime processing or cyclic job streams that are needed for the company to do what it needs to do.

The whole Control-M scheduling package is valuable. 

The most important features are that it is easy to use and graphical, since I'm a graphical person. This allows me to see it on the screen. I've used other scheduling tools, and the information wasn't there. Being able to see the jobs that connect to another job is real important to me.

It can do anything that I need. We do real-time jobs. We also do jobs that have to run at certain times. I have not been presented with a scheduling need that I was not able to do. It is very flexible and dynamic.

I learned it intuitively, and it's easy to use. I speak to operators who sometimes have limited technical knowledge and they are able to pick it up with my help. They're able to pick it up pretty easily and do the functions that they need to do. 

I'm not sure how the solution fits together with our business modernization initiatives, as there are things outside of my area, even though Control-M is the scheduling tool of the company. They may use other things, e.g., Big Data.

It always works. There is never a problem with Control-M. If there is a problem it is either with the server Control-M runs on or a scheduling error that was made. 

Control-M is always running and never breaking. I always tease server people about rebooting, since my application is always running.

We were on version 6 and went to version 8 about four years ago. Everything worked just like it used to, but it was more streamlined. When we went to version 9 last year, it was even more streamlined. Things just looked more up-to-date, and it was more web-based. 

Sometimes, I don't think of what can happen next, but I see the new version, and think, "Oh wow, that was a great idea!"

We keep growing in number of jobs. We have more jobs every year, and it is never a problem. Everything still runs like it is supposed to. It works quite well, and there is never an issue with the job count getting bigger.

Compared to large companies, we are small as far as our Control-M footprint.

The technical support is great. On their website, they have a knowledge base, where a lot of times, I find the answer to my problem. If not, whether it is a question or technical problem, I open a case online, and I get responses very quickly. If it is a high level problem, I will get a call back right away. They have follow-the-sun support, so I always have access to someone to talk to. If production is down, I will get someone on the phone right away, and I've never had a problem. They always answer my questions, which is very helpful. They never say, "Hey, you could have looked this up over here." They give me great answers back, which have helped quite a bit.

When I got there, we had Robot Schedule. With this solution, I couldn't see the job connecting, which was sort of frustrating. It was like, "Hey, where does this one go?" 

I know Robot Schedule has advanced. However, we had Robot Schedule and Control-M, and we migrated off of Robot Schedule and moved everything to Control-M. and I was part of that process. I just felt so much better after we phased off Robot Schedule.

The upgrade process is great. They have a whole department with their AMIGO program, where you can have someone walk you through it. We have upgraded to 9.18. When we go to 9.19, it will be real quick. It should be almost hands off from what I understand, and that is what I am attending this BMC event to find out about: the upgrade process. When we did the last one, it was real easy. I understand it will be even easier going forward, so I'm happy with that.

This product saves hours in a day based on my experience working here versus other companies with manual operations.

The solution has helped reduce IT operations costs. Years ago, I would get many calls in operations. I get zero calls now. I may get an email or two about a question operations has, but everything runs. It doesn't break and works like it is supposed to.

I have been exposed to a little bit looking online. We talked to someone through our rep. They were looking at Control-M and some other source scheduler. They went with the other scheduler for some reason. I looked at it online, and thought "Wow, this looks really weird."

Do your due diligence. Look around at what is out there. However, I would 100 percent be behind Control-M. It's a great company. Their support is good. The product is great. It's a good investment. It will keep growing and cover any needs that we have. This product can do everything I need and can help me do anything I need to do to schedule for real time information, supplying things, and batch jobs at night.

We are automating more things. I sometimes hear an application team say, "We are running this manually, and we want to make it automated." I will make a few jobs to save them from doing what they are doing manually and automate it. I am always looking for more things to automate.

The people who are in development of this product seem like they are very forward thinking, and always thinking, "What can we do next?" I think that is great.

It automates operations for all parts of the company. There isn't a part of the company that doesn't have jobs scheduled for Control-M.

The amount of work that gets done. We execute probably up to a million jobs a day. With Control-M, there is visibility into it. There are notifications when things go wrong. I don't think our company could run without it.

I am sure it has improved application reliability and SLAs.

Monitoring is a valuable aspect of it. The monitoring tool is very good, and it is easy for expert and entry level users to use on a short notice.

The reporting tool still needs a lot of improvement. It was supposed to get better with the upgrade, and it really didn't get better. Its reporting aspects are poor, and management always wants to know things. It is sort of hard to get at tangible numbers without doing a lot of additional work outside of the system. It needs help, because it's such a useful thing to have. It needs to be more powerful and easier to use.  

Our users always want access to the database directly, so they can do their own queries and pull their own data. However, there really isn't a tool that we can give them that does what they want, and we don't give access to our production database. Although, in our new infrastructure, we are setting it up so we have a mirrored one where they can run queries, because there has been so much demand. Though, it would be nice if there was a tool within Control-M so people wouldn't be asking for this.

I don't want to have to reach out to a third-party application company to do automated notifications of any form. Right now, we still have people manually calling people and emailing people. They should have built-in integration for better notifications using an API, similar to what xMatters offers.

The stability varies a bit. There are bugs that we run across. There are some issues that we have. However, when you think about the amount of work that it does within the company, it runs a million things a day, and it pretty much works. I'm not up in the middle of the night every night with problems. Overall, it's very stable, but it's not immune to problems. Considering the amount of work that it does, the problems that it has are very small.

The last upgrade took us three years. Up until the current version that we are about to go into, you had to build out a whole new infrastructure, then extract data and put it back in place. Now, it's a huge improvement, as upgrades do not need to build out a whole new infrastructure. 

We are probably one of the largest users of Control-M due to the amount of work that it does for us, and we could have it doing more. We are currently upgrading it.

We haven't had any serious outages in quite a long time, even through the large growth that we have had. We've doubled the work in the last year and a half to two years, and it's handled it seamlessly. 

Most of the time, we don't get the answers that we are looking for from the technical support. That is why we use a consultant company.

Sometimes, it's very good, and sometimes not. We have mixed feelings. It used to be better.

Oracle Database backup teams used to do this all themselves via cron. Now, they have automated cron to Control-M for a lot of our database backups where they used to do this outside of Control-M. Other than that, I think everybody is using it.

The initial upgrade setup (for basic functionality) is not difficult.

I would like a simpler setup. We have had some challenges implementing, having to play with some different settings. In order to get it to do what was wanted of it, not alerting too often nor giving false alarms, it takes a bit of setup. Maybe something a little easier to use for setup would be nice.

We've been using a consultant, for the last two upgrades, which first came to us through BMC Professional Services. Now, we use them directly and are very happy with them. Because there is not enough internal staff at our company for Control-M to do day-to-day and upgrading, we bring in help.

It has to save us time. Instead of 800 applications internally doing their own thing, it centralizes everything into one location where notifications, etc., take the power of economies of scale into one central point of focus. So, it saves us money for us and our customers, whose jobs we are scheduling.

We have a five-year contract with task-based licensing.

We had another solution in-house because it came to us through an acquisition of some business. So, I dealt with a title scheduler for a couple of years. It was different. It was not as scalable, robust, and more difficult.

I would recommend it for the scalability and dependability. The software is constantly being improved and new add-ons are being created. It is a robust tool that's stable. It is well-supported, especially compared to a lot of other options out there.

We have had massive growth in the last year to two because of company acquisitions. We have added a lot of big data aspect processing and a lot of other processing. It has handled this quite well.

We are just starting to go into a bit of the DevOps, Workload Change Manager, and Helix Chatbox.

Even though we don't chose to use their wide scope of products, it is one of the things that is a real positive about BMC. They can handle everything a corporation could throw at it, which makes the experience of working with them a lot better.

We learn things everyday about the product and its available features. We work in an IT environment with inquisitive people. There are millions of options available, parameter-wise, within the system. I learn something new everyday by working around smart, intuitive people.

We use it for our job automation, running jobs daily, monthly, and annually. So, it is all automation.

We use another product, which is a BMC competitor, and we were able to integrate the two product. Therefore, if a job fails, it is automatically contacting the development team who is in charge of that job.

Automation is its most valuable feature. It comes down to if you schedule a job, then it runs on its own. You don't need to have an operator manually start a script, start a mainframe job, etc.

I love the usability. It works. 

If a job fails, that development team is notified right away, which improves reliability. Previously, it was on the operators to notify the developers that their job failed, erred, or aborted. Now, it's all automated.

The technical support is great. They get it back to you right away. As soon as you open up a ticket, they are on it. I am happy with them.

We had a BMC competing product, then we integrated it with Control-M.

The initial setup was complex, because I wasn't used to it.

We used a consultant for the deployment. We had a great experience with them.

We are not yet using the solution's application workflow orchestration.

We are not using it for business modernization initiatives yet. 

We don't use any other BMC products.

We're not fully entrenched in Control-M yet.

We do scheduling of tasks and jobs in Control-M.

The company has had the product for over 25 years.

The opportunity to automate work so you have an audit trail, especially with governmental requirements in a regulated industry, such as the airline industry. It's really important that we have that audit trail.

Because it's a tool which allows us to do scheduled work, it allows for notifications when jobs aren't running within that scheduled time frame. This improves the opportunity to meet SLAs.

We have all sorts of things which run through it, both on distributed and mainframe platforms. They all seem to run quite successfully. We're looking to add some additional work off of distributed platforms that will run with Oracle types of processing. But, we have a lot of work to come to the tool that we're not using it for yet.

It creates an audit trail for jobs that we run off of it.

With opportunity to run things through a repository, such as a scheduler, you have a better opportunity to ensure the information is where it needs to be when it needs to be there.

The company has been working with BMC on the MFT. There are still some things about MFT which don't work the way that we want with our needs. So, we would like to see that improved.

While the solution has affected the collaboration between our development and operations within our company, there is a need and opportunity to further that relationship with the use of this tool, so the enterprise uses it on all platforms. We will get there, but we are just not there yet.

For our shop, the tool is 99.9 percent reliable. We have very few instances of disruption with the tool.

We don't have any complaints about the usability. We like what it does. There are no issues with usability of the tool.

As we increase the number of tasks or jobs on the system, there are concerns about cost.

We previously used CA products.

We have seen ROI. Our in-house developed tool has been able to use the Control-M platform, making it easier for us to manage and monitor our file delivery processes.

Control-M saves us time.

Because we have been so pleased with this product, I would encourage others to look into this product with a view on what are their needs. Ask the right questions of either their sales rep or technical person from BMC to understand how this tool would work successfully for them, because it's been so successful for us.

Because we've had it for so long, and it's been such a stable product, some of our folks on the distributed side of things need to learn how to use Control-M effectively in regards to output when tasks or jobs fail. They need to give us smarter outputs, so we can resolve things more quickly.

We use it to handle most of our batch processing and all of the transactions that we do on a daily basis. It's a large financial institution which handles quite a bit of processing on an individual basis, and we both mainframe and distribute it.

We are receiving files from another system, then we use the File Watch Utility (because we have no view into the other system and how it works). However, when files arrive on certain servers, we're able to pick them up and trigger further downstream processes from them.

Control-M has improved application reliability and the SLAs in our company by quite a bit. You can see if problems are coming. If we have an SLA in a couple of hours, we know well before that couple hours if processing is behind, and it allows us to take some preventative action.

• The ability to go from one system to another.
• To be able to trigger something off of it, yet we are still on a mainframe for our batch processing. 
• To be able to trigger something from the batch, then distribute that back and forth.
• The solution has always been very streamlined. 
• Ease of use
• The BMC customer service behind the tool has been most valuable.

They have Workload Change Manager, and I would like to see a little more of that. Being in the business that we're in, there's a lot of hesitance. We are very hesitant to change things in the banking industry. It isn't bleeding edge by any means. Getting people to buy into things is sort of the hard part, because everybody wants their money to be handled properly.

The solution is very stable. We have our mainframe as well, which has not been bad at processing, and it's pretty stable. With the application of Control-M, we've seen minimal downtime. If there has been downtime, it hasn't been with the application. It has been with the hardware, and you can't get around that part of it.

It is a good application for scaling. We're able to scale pretty fast, whether we're building a small or large set of jobs. When we have new servers being built, agents are already put on them, and we can work pretty quickly without having to step back to handle it.

The technical support is extremely helpful. You can provide just a basic description of your case. If they need to, they can log onto your system. They can shoot you into the right direction, whether it's a knowledge article, community forums, etc. Overall, it is great technical support. Though, it has been a while since I've had a technical call with them.

Sometimes, with technical support, they will take feedback, but you don't know where that feedback goes or if it proceeds along in the thought process.

They did previously use CA-7 for the mainframe. They switched for the ability to use both distributed and mainframe from one central point.

We did recently migrated to version 9.0. Our organization did use a reseller. Our national IT group manages the application. We are just the user of it, so I wasn't involved in any of that.

It has absolutely saved us time. It has made us more efficient. As far as the processing between systems, we don't have as many people. They have been able to focus on other efforts, because we have been able to automate more stuff with Control-M.

Do the trial demo. Reach out to others via the BMC community forums. I don't believe a license is required. It's just a sign on. There are multiple vendors who are resellers or BMC partners who will provide you with input. All you have to do is ask. Feel free to ask others. The people who I have dealt with have always been forthcoming with information. They will tell you what they see as a plus or minus.

It has helped us streamline some things in IT operations, which is probably a slight improvement. We haven't seen any negative impacts.

I've used it in different forms and versions for about 20 years now. I'm pretty familiar with it from an operations standpoint. The tool itself is a ten, and the customer service behind it has made that even more so.

It's worked pretty well. I haven't been able to take a lot of advantage of some of the new features, so I haven't been able to expand on those. For what we do now, it chugs along pretty well.

Our primary use cases for Control-M are scheduling, jobs, monitoring, and acting on job scheduling.

We value Control-M mainly for the ability to control multiple nodes in a coordinated manner. Control-M has the ability to really coordinate across a lot of nodes. That's the most valuable thing. 

Control-M is a mature tool with many features. It's pretty stable and very easy to learn. You can become an expert in it within a short time.

We would recommend modernizing the look and feel of Control-M. They also need to move towards more self-service and development in their environment. It's very antiquated. Opening up to more open source tools and switching the connectivity to additional tools would also be improvements. 

Most of the tools that are available with Control-M are antiquated. The self-service is currently not as function-rich as competitors. Control-M is not the best.

It is stable.

Control-M is very scalable.

Comtrol-M technical support is done through a local agent. We are in Israel, so the agent in Israel is the one giving it. It's adequate, not perfect. It's okay.

Previously we used some collection of ad hoc tools. It was a consolidated solution, i.e. a single solution that was used across the board.

The setup of Control-M is okay. It was done before my time by the vendor or a vendor agent. A third party authorized by the company itself helped with our implementation.

This is the first time for us implementing the solutions using Control-M.

We use Control-M with two administrators on average, sometimes three. With self-service, it's about 15 people who use the self-service option of it for end users, if not more.

I would like to suggest that Control-M implement a more modern way of using new tools. They should look at what they implement to determine if it is a legacy type or a batch type, then it would work better.

If they intend on moving to more modernized tools, then this approach might not be best for them. Control-M is really good for legacy, corporate enterprise but less optimal for modern, open source environments.

Overall, the main great improvements needed in Control-M is for better self-service. Give it more functionality for this self-service. The tool itself needs better out of the box connectivity to additional standard market tools.

I would rate Control-M at a seven or eight out of ten because it fits legacy stuff but once you're stepping into modern environments then you find yourself struggling. Control-M is a workhorse, but it's not 100% perfect.

We have used Control-M mostly as a file transfer and in conjunction with Hadoop.

We have many feeds coming in from different companies which are used by the business for various reasons and we must collectively have a central point to gather the files and feeds. We also use Control-M for encryption, decryption, and sending data across to different business users that begin at a point of time and making sure that we are not missing unnecessarily. It's a real help what we are getting. The example for us is we have a lot of business which depends on feeds which, if not properly processed, affect the stock exchange. So Control-M acts as a mediator in between that and provides it in a very efficient way. This has reduced a lot of manual intervention required as a business.

The feature we use most in Control-M is related to the file transfer module. It is quite advanced compared to other tools like Automate, etc. The new version which has come of same MFT has a lot of advanced features which makes it very easy to work with. There is less need for written programs and more GUI-based stuff.

One feature I would like to include is in the middle of the monitoring domain. In the monitoring domain, if I have to update a number of jobs, the only way to do it is by manually clicking on each job. I would like a feature that allows me to do a mass update in the jobs, which I feel is still lacking.

This version has done an amazing change, compared to version 7 and the versions after that. I'm not sure what they should change at this stage. One recent feature they have come up with is if we can upgrade Control-M agents from a central location. I would still prefer a solution where I can do an installation of the controller module from a remote distance. That's something they don't have. I know why it has still not come up, but it could be a great feature if we could include that somehow. To push out these sort of installation setup files onto another machine and get it in installed. It is not there for now, though.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. The reason for this rating is because of the scope of implementation. It will have an ultimately upper hand to the other tools in the market. They can show what most other controls don't have. Nevertheless, these features would really help as well. I would like to see more of them.

It is a very stable solution and BMC, the parent company, really comes up with tech packs and upgrades, which add new features and also resolve issues. Also, their knowledge base is quite full, which helps a lot to find the solution easily from the website.

I rate them nine out of ten for scalability.

On average, the control team consists of around fifteen people. This ranges from the elements of both which is the monitoring team and the L2 support which is for the scheduling team. Then there is also L3, who is the administrator. Apart from that, we have certain business users that will use the help service module often.

If we are looking at a 24 path sell and support, we would need close to seven members on a daily basis. That's the same for L1, L2, and L3 teams to each do daily support. L1 would be for monitoring, L2 for scheduling, and L3 is administrative.

We do have certain programs to increase usage down the line, which we're considering. I would say close to 60 to 65 percent of the company is using Control-M right now.

The technical support is great and I would give it a ten.

My main experience is with this as the central unit, but I have used other tools. The main reason I chose Control-M was firstly that it is user-friendly. Secondly, the market is wide open for Control-M, and a lot of other organizations use it. So it gives Control-M the upper hand in the market to work on something like this.

It was quite simple since Control-M has a very user-friendly GUI. That made it fairly easy to relate with the business and convert it into something which looks familiar.

We kind of started from scratch, so I think it took two to three months for us to set everything up at the initial stage. The strategy was to tackle one business at a time so that we don't complicate stuff because not everything is automated. We started to target one business/application at a time and converted them each into something which Control-M can work with.

We did the deployment on our own based on our experience. We had previously deployed it for certain clients basically so we were primarily the consultant for that.

I may not be able to convert it into a value in this way, but it does more in terms of reducing manual intervention. This, in turn, means less human resources are being used. For instance, if there are three people in a team and controlling certain work, they could probably put more on one resource. So that reduces the cost of resources in the whole organization.

We have account based licensing. There are two or three types of licensing. One of them is based on the number of jobs, so we a license close to 4,000 jobs per day.

The cost is based on the different modules, which we buy from them. If we a buy a hardware module, which we are presently using and integrating, that is an additional cost, but I'm not sure of the amount. Each module comes with a different cost.

I have experience with alternates like IBM Tivoli and another software called JAMS. These are the ones that I have worked on and the features and user-friendliness of both of them is fine. It's such a different level compared to this, so that's the reason I'm sticking to Control-M.

For those who want to implement, there are a few cons. Cost-wise it is not very simple for every business to implement it. So they should really plan if they are going to use it extensively. If not, they should think twice about it. 

If they are thinking of implementing, though, they should analyze the business and check which controller modules will really help them enhance their work and ultimately transform their work into an automated solution, which in turn will reduce their cost. 

I would really suggest someone who is planning to use Control-M or wants to deploy is first to check which modules are really required and also what kind of licensing makes sense for their business. If its a very large enterprise then it would be great to use a premium based license. If not, it's better to use a job count based license. So that is a point which they should check before implementing.

Relatively small setup for ETL jobs only. We do not use Control-M for enterprise-wide scheduling and automation.

• Job scheduling for our ETL batch jobs has become streamlined and more efficient. 
• We are now able to deliver data to our data warehouses and dashboards promptly.

• There is a wide range of connectors. 
• Ability to handle files remotely through the advanced file transfer feature.

• A smartphone interface would be welcome. 
• Finding documentation on the website can be a bit confusing.

It is primarily for batch job automation. It's working just fine.

It has certainly evolved over time. The latest versions have much better dashboarding and we can see what's happening. That is a significant improvement.

The automation of the batch jobs.

I would like to see automatic license management. And probably more importantly, some kind of machine learning to help identify the optimum automation path.

It's very stable.

It's as scalable as we've required. We haven't seen any problem.

Your process, standards, and control libraries: It's really important to have an advanced strategy around how development is going to take place. If each team is doing their own thing, it's hard to manage it.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor, in this case, since it's a mature product, would be ease of migration and, obviously, reduction in cost.

I rate it a nine out of 10. What would make it a 10 would be a reduction in the cost and, even more so, the intelligent automation. The ability to do some machine learning and dynamically reduce the amount of time that the automation is taking is more important than cost at this point.

Primary use case is automation, and it has performed fine.

I don't think it has actually maybe improved anything. It's a generic product. It just has some nice features. We could use a normal scheduler, like DOS, for the type of work we are doing but that would prevent self-service from users in the business, so that's why we are using BMC.

You can let users access the system and manage jobs: self-service.

I don't think that we're actually looking for new features. I think we are more looking for a better cost/license/performance model because BMC, while we could say it's the best, is also the most expensive.

It's just like anything else in that league. It's very stable. We are not experiencing instability or crashes. These are mature products.

The scalability is excellent.

Technical support is excellent. We called them two times in a year and there was a reply within 30 minutes, so that's good.

The only thing we would object to are the license costs. That is what we are probably most annoyed with. We are paying something like €1,000,000 over three years for having 4,000 jobs running. That's expensive.

If you can afford it, it's good. If you do have an unlimited budget, or budget is not the main concern, and you want stability then I would say go for this. It's easy to use, it's easy to install, it's easy to run, it's easy to operate. I have a student assistant who had six hours of e-learning and she can run the system. That's good. Yes, you need the right student assistant but she doesn't have any IT background. It's very easy to use but also an expensive product.

In terms of criteria when selecting a vendor, if I am to decide the vendor, it would be the biggest bang for the buck and then it would be quality, stability, and support. That is my job as manager of the IT department and therefore I have to ensure that we are getting the most value for the money.

The only reason I am rating it eight out of 10 is simply the cost. From a technical point of view, we could actually make the same jobs run from the DOS prompt, with the same stability. I think that we are paying a lot for having self-service, for having nice monitoring. I think we're paying a lot for that.

• We use it to run batches in SAP, Teradata, WMS, Manhattan, and a wide array of applications. 
• We use it for mainframe, AS/400, Linux, Unix, and \Windows servers.

When we first started using Control-M, we had multiple scheduling solutions across several platforms. Going to Control-M consolidated all of them and allowed us reactivity across all of them based on the completion of processing.

• Maintaining and monitoring of workloads have been and continue to be the most valuable feature in our environment. 
• There is a batch monitoring tool called Batch Impact Manager, which proactively warns when processing is behind and SLAs are in jeopardy of being missed. 
• Their forecasting tool is very handy. 
• They also have an API interface, although I cannot speak to it as we have not amassed enough experience to provide a fair assessment.

BMC Control-M has a slight issue with daylight savings time while advancing the clock in the Spring. It is not catastrophic, but it does requires some manual intervention to be issue free.

We implemented Control-M to replace our mainframe only scheduler and the other disparate group of schedulers that we had used in lieu of a cross platform solution. That was nearly five years ago, and it has had a huge impact on the speed in which we can implement new solutions. 

Cross platform scheduling has transformed how we run our estate workload. It is just so much more efficient now as we can tie together all the workloads across the estate and make the whole process reactive to events. 

• Cross platform scheduling
• Built-in file transfer
• Batch impact management
• Self-service 

They are all such valuable tools. Though, the ability to dynamically predict batch run time is so valuable. 

It is a very strong product, but the reporting could be better. I know BMC is working on this feature and hope to see some improvements in future releases.

Main use: Control of batch processing for many subprocesses on the servers in our datacenters for many of our customers.

Speeds up processes and automated tasks. BMC has taken the control of batch processing very far.

Unlike the batch controls of other solutions, BMC includes a graphical user interface (GUI). It is comprehensive and a little daunting, but there are many options you can pick.

Consider adding a mobile application for remote management or expand the integration with My IT.

Enterprise workload automation across mainframe and mid-range environments for a medium-size financial institution.

Control-M has enabled true enterprise batch automation, which combined with the other BMC Control products on our mainframe platform, allows us to run a 24/7 site with the lights out.

Most valuable feature would be the ability to detect and notify when a process has not completed successfully.

The main area that could be improved would be documentation, just like every other software product out there!

I have used Control-M for batch recovery and job processing providing automation solutions for in-house IT teams and dependent businesses.

The flexibility to schedule the jobs on various OS level platforms. It works on agent-level architecture, hence the usability is enhanced. 

Control-M has been there on back of all automated work lists by providing consistency, timely execution, and removing chances of human errors. 

Currently, I am not using this tool due to change of my role duties. Hence, it is difficult for me to comment over this. Though the tool is very resource intensive and has a few levels of performance issues when compared with VM and physical servers. 

No.

No.

Technical support was not required much as we had total in-house solution consultants. Though, in times of need, BMC had their regular support SLAs to support us. 

Yes, considering our then and there needs setup was bit complex and time consuming. As it was quite obvious due to the huge organizational size.  

It was an all in-house IT setup.

Workload Manager.

Using it to moving large amounts of data.

Scalability.

12 years.

No issues with stability.

Yes, it is not currently suited well for the Cloud.

10 out of 10.

Very simple to install.

This product has an excellent GUI that is user friendly and provides job management.

The BMC Control-M provides automated management by our various applications teams of PROD environments under one central GUI.

This product needs improvisation in regards to agility for job execution function.

I have used it for about 12 years.

Need to align with DevOps.

I have not encountered any issues with stability.

I have not encountered any issues with scalability.

4/10

BMC provides good technical support and I would give it an 8 out of 10 rating.

The installation for this product was not so easy. I found it quite complicated.

Implement through vendor team as special skills.

My suggestion would be to select more job-based pricing options as the BMC Control-M solution has less jobs to offer.

Before choosing this product, I evaluated a lot of options.

I would recommend to make use of outsourced software solutions such as Atgen for ensuring a stable setup process.

The deployment agent in this version was the most attractive thing I have found -- it's fast and very useful to upgrade in one go.

Usually, we have to raise a change request with each application owner to upgrade agents -- which was very time consuming since we had to login and do the installation. Now it's all in one go.

Area of improvement would be if it could attach anything other than .txt files as output files.

It's been seven years now.

Few database errors.

No.

No.

Excellent -- 10/10.

Excellent -- 10/10.

No.

Straightforward.

In-house.

N/A.

Planning is important.

CA.

Control-M has a huge number of features and utilities that assist users in monitoring their schedules and developers to build schedules which interface with many technologies. Here are some that stand out:

• Cross-platform support: A Linux job can be dependent on a Windows job, which can be dependent on many other flavours of hardware/software. Your batch is therefore managed by a single tool, allowing you to monitor your entire flow.
• Great GUI: Easy to navigate. Customisable. Status at a glance.
• Automated error handling: Depending on the exit status of a process, automated actions can be defined that might circumvent the need to callout.
• Forecast utility: Particularly useful after making changes to a batch flow, to see what impact those changes will have.
• Reporting utility: Generate reports for the business to track batch performance, usage, and so on.
• Mobile App: Business users can track the progress of their own batch flow, on the go.
• Control Modules: These allow you to define jobs that interface with databases, SFTP, SAP, and so on, directly, via secure connection profiles.
• Too many great features to list; excellent product..

Increased batch performance.

Reporting in Control-M could use improvement.

Used Control-M for 10 years and version 9 for six months.

Not that I'm aware of.

Not that I'm aware of.

None.

BMC service was excellent.

Excellent.

Excellent product.

Self Service for repeatable, low impact workload automation processes. BIM for SLA management. GUI client for visibility into the enterprise schedule. New to v9, the automatic Agent upgrade features have been quite helpful too. Relatively easy to perform upgrades and fix packs.

Offers a single pane of glass to our enterprise batch\workload automation environment. Allows us to empower business users to execute their own processes on demand through Self Service. We're able to proactively predict system availability thanks to BIM. Our 24/7 staff have all the right utilities to monitor and manage the schedule.

Advanced File Transfer (AFT) has limitations that cause us to use a bit more licensing than we feel is appropriate.

Almost 13 years.

No

Not usually.

No.

9/10 - Everything is typically great with customer service.

8/10 - After getting through the basics with lower level support, we tend to get problems resolved after proving our issue is "real" and we get put in contact with a technical SME.

We've used other stand-alone products that have their own scheduler while we've owned Control-M but have migrated away from that model to give ourselves the best visibility to the enterprise environment. We've broken down the silo and migrated all scheduling into Control-M.

We've been using the product for quite a long time, so reviewing initial setup wouldn't be applicable to current times. I feel the setup of v9 is quite straightforward.

In-house.

BMC does NOT have a great licensing model from my perspective.

We've evaluated many other products along the way... Just about every other major competitor in the market.

I think the administration part is much more valuable than any other feature. I don’t really remember the commands though, but working on the server is better than the GUI.

The project that I am working on is a banking project and a valuable customer to my organization; we get high revenue from it, hence the environment is very critical.

BMC keeps on improving this solution; there are many levels of improvement, customers can actually try the free trial version and provide feedback accordingly.

I have been using Control-M for the past four and a half years.

The product is stable, but in our environment, due to the huge amount of data, the product is a little slow.

We did encounter a few scalability issues. Sometimes, there are too many jobs in our environment on different servers, but that’s not the tool issue, we can simply increase the FS size. However, that requires bank cost; hence the scalability issue.

The technical support is good, I would rate it a three out of five.

Previously, I have used network and server monitoring for one and a half years; it was migrating to a different tool so I switched.

The setup was straightforward, i.e, in terms of CA NSM.

It’s a good, easy to use, and automated product. It is already used in every organization.

Self Service, BIM features are most valuable. As no need to login to EM client and check the job status. From any where we can login to self service poral and validate the process status. Different Control modules.

5 years back, our organisation runs Control-M 6.2. After upgrading to ver 7, application team benefited with the new features and very to easy manage their application jobs. Productivity has increased, introduced Job naming standards, stream line the application based on the priority.. etc...,

All is well in Control-M tool . Thank you for new enhancements of tool . But for some issues, BMC will suggest to upgrade to new version which will not be feasible to standards of the organisation. Hence some work around should be shown to run the business until new version was upgraded.

I am working on Control-M tool from past 10 years in different organisations.

No, its very pretty simple to deployment and configure all the components.

No issues with stability. Its easy to switch PROD to DR and vise versa, if there are any issues.

No

10 out of 9.

10 out of 0

N/A

It's straightforward to use Control-M compare to other tools. Easy to migrate from other tools to Control-M.

Up-gradation from ver 6.2 to ver 7 was done in-house.

As technical personal. I am not able to answer this question.

Compare to other tools Pricing and licensing was more. It should be decrease.

In my previous organisation, I have refer Control-M for batch process. But due to pricing client has not agrees and then client has decided to go with Active Batch tool.

No.. Happy to work on Control-M and looking to upgrade current version Control-M ver 7 to 9. One suggestion after a stable version released there should be gap of 2 year of support.

The user interface is very easy to navigate.

The batch team is now able to run an average of 1,500 jobs per day with incidents automatically created and routed to the correct team if a job fails or has an error.

The process to apply patches and upgrades is cumbersome. It feels like there could be a simpler or more streamlined way to apply patches.

We have been using Control-M for almost a year.

The deployment went smoothly.

We are having issues with failover working correctly but we are working with BMC Support.

No.

Customer service tries to be helpful. They tend to shy away from many tasks that BMC feels falls into "Customizations". Anything that differs from the OOB is hard to get help with.

Most of the technicians seem to be highly capable.

The previous solution was no longer supported.

We used BMC for the implementation.

ROI is unclear at this time as the software has been in use less than a year.

Product is intuitive, you can start working with it and figure out the basics pretty quickly. The built in modules (examples: File Transfer, Database, File Watcher etc.) help eliminate custom built scripts which accomplish the same thing.

One big example I can think of is the availability of the Self Service plug-in. The non scheduling IT users or business users will actually be able to have insight into their automated job flows which is a feature that we never had before.

Quicker adoption of the newest versions of the product by all would help work out the bugs sooner.

4 and a half years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

Mostly on our end, as we grow learning how to properly increase resources of the distributed servers and spread out the workload.

I've been happy not only with the customer service overall but also the speed with which I am contacted after submitting a case.

The level of technical support for Control-M continues to meet my needs.

CA Workload Scheduler, archaic, not intuitive, lack of features.

In house.

Price is based on how many jobs come into the scheduler each day (not executions) across all your different environments.

This evaluation was done a year or two before I started working with the product.

• Job scheduling in general
• Self-service
• Workload archiving

We rely on Control-M in our production environment. The automated notification in a case of an error has helped us a lot in reducing downtime and erasing errors.

Support for Z/OS output.

The company has used Control-M since the late 90s.

I did not encounter any issues with deployment.

The GUI had some problems in the early stages, but those seemed to have been solved.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

I would give customer service a rating of 8/10. They are very good.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10. They are very good.

We did not use a previous solution.

The setup was straightforward.

We implemented via a vendor team and in-house. The vendor teams we had were excellent.

Ask for packages and bundles, so you might get more plugins for one price.

We did not evaluate any other options.

The entire suite of Control-M is valuable.

It is easy to use and most of the add-on features are available.

In a big environment, there is the need is to have easy access to the client.

I have been using Control-M for many years.

I have no particular issue to report.

I have no particular issue to report.

I have no particular issue to report.

Customer service is excellent.

Technical support is excellent.

We were using a different solution. We switched for less cost and for more benefits.

It is easy to set up and has clear information and support.

The implementation was done by an internal team.

It isn't related to my function and I do not have any specific details.

We evaluated other options, but now we are consolidating all environments to only use Control-M.

From my experience with the last version, you are able to manage everything. The conversion tool can offer an easy way to migrate jobs from another tool.

Promotions between environments, as well as local, mass update, versioning, and self-service.

It is much easier to move and copy schedules. Versioning allows for quick restoration when an error is found.

It can definitely expand promotions, so that a single job can be moved. Currently you can only promote a job by promoting the entire table. In our environment we have very similar jobs in a flow but some are different so if i want to move just one of those jobs to all the other Control-M servers i would not be able to because it would overlay the entire folder. I want to be able to copy/move just a single job to prevent the overlay.

I have been using Control-M for 18 years.

I have not had any issues with deployment in any of the versions.

I can honestly say, I only had a stability issue once. Other than that one time, Control-M has been a very stable application.

No scalability issues at all. When we grew, we upgraded the server and it was back to business as usual.

I would give customer service a rating of 8/10.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10.

We used another solution. Our company was looking to standardize across the enterprise.

The setup was straightforward.

We had a single contractor and our in-house team. She was very knowledgeable of the product.

The GUI for operators.

Scheduling has changed from basic to more complex as our developers get acquainted with the ability and flexibility of the product.

Report builder is cumbersome. Not all interfaces work out-of-the-box and there are a lot of adjustments to the product and configurations after installation.

We have used this solution for three years.

Connectivity to agents is a constant challenge due to security and Firewalls.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

Customer support is good. The support site, searching, and accessing knowledge modules, and accessing product downloads is very slow.

Technical support is excellent.

We were a manual shop, where operators ran selected routines through menus.

We had do perform several install configurations until we finally achieved the stability we required.

We work with a vendor group and they were very good. The BMC support contributions for design were flawed and we had to make several adjustments.

I am not sure.

There are various methods available for licensing, and we use the task/day load process.

We evaluated Compugen, CA, and Cisco.

High availability through software, supported by an Oracle RAC with ASM, is a valuable feature. In operation, it is fantastic.

My clients are happy; the comment that gets repeated is, "Control-M is a very stable tool".

The web console consumes resources to my "high" point of view. Thinking about a totally web management environment is an opportunity for improvement.

• Operator = 2 years
• Scheduling = 3 years
• Administrator = 3 years

Implementation was easy and quick.

We have not encountered any stability issues. BMC Control-M is very stable in any version.

BMC Control-M is an easy-to-run, scalable, robust platform or architecture tool.

Customer service is the best.

Technical support is the best.

Previously, I had version 8, and I migrated to version 9 because of its high availability functionality.

You cannot be an airplane pilot without education; with the right education and training, the solution does what it has to do and makes it fantastic.

Providers implemented it; they were excellent.

I cannot mention ROI.

A good product always has a cost. I think the cost supports the efficiency of the product.

Before choosing this product, we did not evaluate other options.

Is a very good option for the WLA tasks within a company. There is a lot of information on the internet for it. Analyze the costs vs the benefits and if you have the option to invest in a solution that gives you automation of almost everything in IT, acquire it. You will not regret it.

There are no specific features that I could say are more valuable than others. The whole product is valuable to us.

• Ninety percent or more of the batch processing is now centralized into a single scheduling platform. This helps the support teams so that they only need to go to one group for scheduling and monitoring the batch processing
• The operations support staff only has one platform where they can monitor almost all of our batch processing.

There aren’t any improvements that I’ve come across with the most recent release. If I had to note one improvement, it would be that jobs already in the system for a given day could be updated en masse. This could be the same on the database where the job definitions reside.

I have used the product for sixteen years.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

The level of support from BMC has been very good.

We already evaluated CA’s offering at the time because we were already using CA-7 on the mainframe.

Other than creating the jobs in Control-M once it was set up, I was not involved.

It is task based pricing. It is based on the number of jobs brought into the system daily and any that remain in the system from prior days.

For example, if you have 2000 new jobs that come in in for a new day, and you still have 500 left from previous days, you will need to have 2500 task licenses to cover them. This is the case, even if those 500 jobs are daily jobs that came in during the prior day and have not yet been completed.

We use BMC’s Control-M software for our open systems and SAP batch processing. We will be looking at converting the batch we are running via the solution to the same.

I’ve never used the mainframe version of Control-M before, so I don’t have any opinions about it.

• AFT
• SAP
• DB

We use AFT, DB and other modules extensively. They have reduced a lot of human error and achieved our SLAs.

In each module, one or more improvements need to be made. However, that is out of scope for this review. In a sense, if anything cannot be done in batch mode, it requires online processing with middleware.

I have used it for nine years.

I have not encountered any stability issues. Control-M is a bulletproof product and very stable.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. It is a very scalable product.

Technical support is 8/10. However, a lot of techies use the online forum. If you are knowledgeable, you can solve issues yourself; otherwise it’ll go to level 3 support, which makes tech support a middleman.

I did not previously use a different solution.

I have seen initial setups that are both straightforward and complex.

Licensing is little complex.

The GUI is very user friendly and also plugins (Control Modules) are available for almost all of the widely used applications.

It helped to automates batches in the best possible way.

They could improve the reporting.

I have been using it for 10 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is very good.

I previously used another solution, but switched due to its limited functionality.

Initial setup was easy to understand.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Autosys.

The tool has many features; make sure you make use of most of them.

Integration with different modules such as:
Web Service -WS
Advanced File Transfer - AFT

We use the Control-M modules to reduce the development time of the automations, using the modules.

Web Service -WS (We use to integrate with ODI e SOA)

Advansed File Transfer - AFT (We did an integration between several servers with a safe delivery)

I would like to see improvement in the integration of modules. As I worked with the modules, I saw the need for better integration several times.

In the case of a Web Service (WS) module, it could have more facilities with the integration of SOA services when an asynchronous service is invoked. When used for this purpose, it generates a number of unnecessary alerts to the operator dashboard.

We have been using this solution for five years.

I did not find it.

Most stability problems are network connected, i.e., communication goes down with servers where you have a client.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

Very good.

Technical support is very good.

I thought of using a different solution, but this solution is as simple as other alternatives.

Yes, I did. We change because of the integration facilities other market tools and to ensure a safe delivery of the company's files.

It was done through a vendor team with the support of the internal team.

Confidential.

This is quite specific. It will depend on the number of processes that you need to automate.

Yes we evaluated.

CA Workload Automation AE(AutoSys)

IBM Tivoli System Automation

Improve the disclosure of the modules for the clients and show the cases of success.

Linking of jobs (visual, which other products don't have): It will give you a whole picture as to how other jobs are linked to each other (or if there's no link to other jobs).

The product was already in use when I was started working in the company.

There was an upgrade to the project, before it was moved to BMC. It could have been better if there was a demo on how / on the changes.

I used it for around six months. I was using it around the middle of 2015.

There were no stability issues as such. There were only issues in the appearance, after the upgrade.

I did not experience any scalability issues.

I didn't really call for help on the production with the technical support.

I've used other products but BMC Control-M is far better than the others.

Other teams are in charge of the installation process.

Nothing to worry, as the product works well.

It is a good product compared to the other products in the market.

• User friendly interface
• Self-service portal
• Support for AS400 and mainframes
• many more.

Not all central scheduler tools have agents for iSeries, z/OS and UNISYS 2000. These are valuable features because I don't have to use many tools and I have one central tool for all platforms.

Reduces cost, failure, and human error.

I would like to see a decrease is the licensing price.

We have been using this for eight years. (Versions 6.4, 7, and 8.)

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability

Technical support has a very weak first line of support, but a very good developer team in Israel.

I didn’t use a previous solution, but I saw and compared it with OpsWise, TWS and AutoSys.

It's like comparing iPhones (Control-M) with other phones (OpsWise, TWS and AutoSys).

Control-M has the best and most user friendly interface. It's very easy to use when you are just beginning your journey with central schedulers.

There are many features like modules for VMware, Hadoop, BladeLogic, databases, PeopleSoft, SAP and many more.

The installation was quite simple. There was very good documentation.

The licensing is quite expensive.

We evaluated OpsWise, TWS, and AutoSys.

Make sure you plan well when you begin automating jobs in Control-M.

Control-M has a huge number of features and utilities that assist users in monitoring their schedules, and developers to build schedules that interface with many technologies. Here are some that stand out:

• Cross-platform support. A Linux job can be dependent on a Windows job, which can be dependent on many other flavours of hardware/software. Your batch is therefore managed by a single tool, allowing you to monitor your entire flow.
• Great GUI. Easy to navigate. Customisable. Status at a glance.
• BIM (Batch Impact Manager). Proactively monitors a batch flow, against a pre-defined OLA/SLA and alerts as soon as an exception occurs that might threaten the target.
• Automated error handling. Depending on the exit status of a process, automated actions can be defined that might circumvent the need to callout.
• Forecast utility. Particularly useful after making changes to a batch flow, to see what impact those changes will have.
• Reporting utility. Generate reports for the business to track batch performance, usage, and so on.
• Mobile App. Business users can track the progress of their own batch flow, on the go.
• Control Modules. These allow you to define jobs that interface with databases, SFTP, SAP, and so on, directly, via secure connection profiles.
• Too many great features to list!

Previous scheduling solutions were platform specific, so when the overnight batch processes crossed between technologies, manual intervention was required. This was time costly and meant that it was not possible to get an overall picture of the flow/progress.

The ability to work offline would be an improvement. It is sometimes inconvenient that you cannot load and work on a schedule – unless you are connected to a Control-M Server. For example, when you are away from the office or on a train…

When you launch the application, the first thing that you need to do is 'log in' to a valid Control-M server. It would be nice if there was an 'offline' mode that would enable you to launch the application and then work on a batch schedule that can be 'checked in' to the appropriate server when you are next connected. This would enable users to be productive in environments where there is not a reliable network connection.

I have been working with Control-M for 20 years, using many versions; three years with version 8.

No.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is sufficient. BMC have a group of specialists in Tel Aviv who will advise on the best solution to any issue. It can be a little painful, trying to send huge log files to the vendor, but they are very helpful.

I have had limited experience with Windows Task Scheduler, Cron and Autosys. These are very basic scheduling tools that do not offer anywhere near the functionality of Control-M.

Out of the box, most clients will be fine installing Control-M with all default options. You have a choice of the packaged PostgreSQL database solution, or you can opt to use MS SQL It is therefore a relatively simple setup.

Control-M is expensive, but you get what you pay for. Talk to your account manager and discuss licensing options.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

Do it.

Control-M has a huge number of features, including:

• Cross-platform support
• Integration with applications such as Oracle, SAP, FTP, Hadoop, JMS, and many others.
• A GUI with various filter options that allows you to manage jobs from one screen.
• Add-ons such as BIM, Reporting Facility, and Forecast.
• Automated error handling allows you to define actions to be taken depending on the exit status of a job.
• Web-based and mobile applications allow you to manage Control-M from anywhere.

Before implementing Control-M, SAP or FTP related jobs were triggered using scripts. With Control-M, these jobs can be triggered using modules already integrated into Control-M, reducing team effort.

Also, Forecast and BIM give us a clear picture of batch job deadlines and alerts us of schedule overruns.

The cost of Control-M is a major factor. It is difficult for small-scale organizations to use Control-M as a solution.

I have been using Control-M for 10+ years and have no issues to date.

We have not encountered any stability issues. Control-M provides a highly stable environment. Fix packs are released regularly and immediately upon discovering bugs.

We did not encounter any scalability issues. Control-M can handle multiple servers, multiple cross-platform agents, and a large number of jobs easily.

BMC technical support is great. I rate it 10 out of 10. We have received immediate help with issues.

Previously, job scheduling was done internally using a SAP scheduler, Windows Task Scheduler, and cron. However, they all had limitations and we needed a single interface to handle different types of scheduling.

Initial setup and installation of Control-M does have challenges, but BMC has good technical support. Related documentation is also available online. Once you are familiar with these, setup becomes straightforward.

Pricing is somewhat on high side. But it’s recommended for bigger organizations.

We evaluated AutoSys and IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler, but they didn’t offer anything close to the functionality that Control-M offers.

If you need a one-stop solution for all your automation needs, Control-M is your answer.

• The ability to view a history of jobs\tasks that have run: This makes troubleshooting a breeze.
• The ability to proactively forecast the runtime of a workflow: Managing SLA expectations and proactively generate alerts when the SLA won’t be met.
• Having a flow diagram of all workflows and the relationship between jobs\tasks: This is a visual representation of the entire workflow estate, which is updated in real time.
• Control modules: These are add-ons that further integrate Control-M with other third-party products, eliminating the need to write any custom code. E.g., Control-M For File Transfers makes it effortless to SFTP files externally or within the organization.
• Mass update: This feature allows for multiple fields of job definitions to be updated based on certain search criteria, with a very user-friendly interface.

It has given the organization visibility into how various applications relate to and depend on one another. It has reduced scripting and coding time down to almost zero with the out-of-the-box plugins.

There are many areas that have room for improvement in V7:

• Specific to Control-M for Files Transfer: Have a broader list or custom pre & post commands when running a file transfer.
• Customizable HTML shout emails, for a better user experience.
• Out-of-the-box New Day Process per table\application (This can be done with a custom user daily but requires a job to run at the specified “New Day Time”).
• Include some sort of label object (similar to a job, but only performs shouts and doesn’t have a cost), so you can categorize work flows.

Control-M V9 improves on most, if not all, of the pain points in V7.

In my professional career, I’ve been using Control-M for 12 years.

No issues experienced with stability at all.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. The way the product is tiered makes it easily scalable.

I find the level of technical support (Blue Turtle Technologies) to be exceptional. Whether it is a small query or a large problem, you will always get a timeous response and often one of the support staff members will be present on-site.

Control-M was here when I started at this organization, so I’m not sure if a different solution was previously used.

The initial setup was fairly simple. Once all the servers and DBs were set up, the installation of Control-M Enterprise Manager, Control-M Servers and Control-M Agents was painless.

Task-based licensing (number of active jobs) can get very expensive. Bundle multiple functions within a batch\script file.

I’ve tried and POCed many other workload automation\batch scheduling tools out there; none of them come close to functionality and ease-of-use as Control-M.

Decide on bulletproof naming standards\site standards. This will make implementation and promotion of workflows incredibly easy.

Job processing and flows are great. Report functionality on all batch processes using Crystal Reports is excellent. The escalation process on jobs is awesome and that goes for the various modules and their functionality.

We have minimum downtime now. We have a bigger online window for our users to work. We now have a central dashboard to monitor the entire companies processes that is running.

V9 has now come out with some new features; it has just been launched, so I will have to review and see what's covered in the new release.

I have been using it for four years.

The support from the vendor is superb.

I have not encountered any stability issues. We run on a Unix platform, so no issues. On Windows, we had issues using MySQL instead of Postgres as recommended by the vendor.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

We receive excellent support from our service provider.

Technical support is excellent.

We previously used the IBM TWS solution. Control-M has much more functionality.

Setup was easy and there is a migration tool available for most platforms.

Pricing would be best to take the full suite and go with CPU licencing instead of TAS licencing.

Before choosing this product, we only evaluated Control-M.

It is the best in the market.

• AFT
• Job scheduling with various platforms
• Blending options for module compatibility

Although I work with various modules for Control-M, i.e., SAP, Informatica, DB, OS, and Windows. We can't do AFT with either Windows scheduler nor with Linux cron jobs. Control-M is the center for all of the applications, where it acts as the mediator between the application and the servers. Not only is it secure, but there are various major applications we can work on.

All tasks related to Windows scheduler and Unix (linux) cron jobs are converted with BMC Control-M scheduling.

Version compatibility is one of the very few areas with room for improvement, but it is a big issue with minimum support. When we need to upgrade the product, we have to follow the exact Control-M prerequisites.

For plenty of applications, there are limits. Control-M uses options for configuring items such as the remote host for servers in the DMZ.

I have used it for 4+ years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Currently technical support is awesome, 100%.

I did not previously use a different solution, such as Autosys and IBM Tivoli.

Initial setup is easy to understand for any end user who does not have any prior knowledge of the product.

Pricing and licensing depends on the infrastructure and the jobs they can purchase.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

It is an awesome product in the automation area, very robust and user friendly.

The features most valuable differ from client to client. One of our clients used Control-M to execute multiple scripts in distributed systems and mainframe environments, which in turn ensured proper functioning of equipment, updating data, BI report, etc. over their multiple stores and distribution centre. Another client I worked with required mainly files to be transferred to third parties/vendors/internal businesses.

In all cases, Control-M was able to deliver it flawlessly, and also with add-on security features such as SSH connections and PGP encryption.

Control-M helped automate workloads, which would have taken hours and hours of effort and resources. The tool increased the quality and efficiency of work performed with as minimum manual effort as possible. It also reduced cost to the company by ensuring timely/effective/error-free delivery of tasks.

Control-M as a tool has provided a really stable and effective platform to automate workloads. However, sometimes we do have to use different job types to achieve one task. For this scenario a welcome addition would be an application integrator tool that is part of the Control-M product and can be used to combine multiple/variety of job types into one, allowing us to achieve the same result in one job.

Now, since this tool is something the users would have to define on their own, the pre-packaged or existing functionalities wouldn’t recognise the new template we would have designed, if you work on mass-updating a folder. So we end up having to individually pick out the AI jobs and update it. Understandably, as multiple users will have multiples ways of working with the tool, it would be difficult to pre-code something into the Control-M tool without knowing what will be developed by, say, a random coder in a different part of the world with a different business requirement.

Another aspect that always bothered me, as an administrator, was the Old bug out-New bug in conundrum regarding compatibility of the tool when a new version/FixPack was installed. We would have to then install patches to ensure compatibility. Some of the Control-M modules would need their own patches on EM side/server side, etc.

I have used it for over eight years now.

I have not encountered any stability issues. Control-M, as a tool, has been pretty stable. We did come across some compatibility or connectivity issues at times, which usually were resolved really quickly, as BMC’s wonderful tech team would have released a patch beforehand.

We did initially face some confusion with the GUI servers. What happens is, when you log in to the tool, it automatically picks up the last used GUI server and most of the users, who aren't schedulers or administrators, wouldn't have bothered to check that field or change it. So with more users logging in at the same time, we would have a huge load on the servers and the tool would hang or disconnect or wouldn't connect. We were able to fix it when we created multiple GUI servers to share the load, and some education for the users. :)

I remember another instance during my initial experience with Control-M. There used to be a delay with the NDP (New Day Procedure) as the number of jobs were really high, and it took around 45 minutes to 1.5 hours some days. I haven't seen this issue again, though, and since I didn't get to work in-depth with Control-M back then, I am not sure if that was in fact the tool or our servers having hung processes.

Another instance was when we accidentally had more jobs running at the same time (around 200K Control-M jobs) than what our servers could handle; it all came crashing down. I think it could have been something our servers weren't built to handle, as I did hear of some stories where the company ran 500K jobs at the same time (can't vouch for that story, or how it went for them though).

But these were mostly situational issues, and we were able to learn from it and quickly resolve it, find workarounds/solutions or better server management. So, when we built any new environment, we took all of these into account.

Technical support is excellent. They have a great support team. Also their AMIGO program is great, where you can engage BMC support for migration of your Control-M versions, if you need BMC expertise handy, and they do go through the complete process from start to finish, which is great.

I hadn't had a chance to work with any other solutions.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward, with all the necessary details mentioned in their well-written guides. They have guides for utilities, parameters, installation, administration, etc., which makes it easier to adapt for anyone who is new to the tool (of course, prior understanding of OS/DBs/networks/etc. is expected for you to understand it. ;) )

Control-M does come with a lot of features, but with those features comes the hefty price tag. :) It is reasonable comparatively to some tools that may only do, say, one type of the multiple tasks available in Control-M.

Most of the places I worked already had the solution in place, hence I cannot comment on this.

It is a great product and it will be worth it, if you plan to utilize it to its full potential and on a larger scale.

The GUI interface is exceptional, beating any of the competitors’ products I have used. Also, the range of job types and integration with other products such as Hadoop, SAS, databases, etc. is very useful.

With the release of V9, we have been able to better use the features of the Hadoop product, allowing developers to use native Oozie workflows from within the product.

It is probably one of the most expensive solutions available and many of the extra functionality, such as Self-Service and BIM, are chargeable extras. It would be great if these were thrown in for free.

I have used it for 18 years.

Initially, we encountered stability issues with the V9 install, but this could be more to do with the VM infrastructure and networks than Control-M.

We did not really encounter any scalability issues; it is very scalable, especially with agentless technology.

Support has been very good in my experience.

I have used other products in other contracts, but the only experience I have of switching products was removing Control-M in favour of OPC, as it was a lot cheaper.

It is a complex product but for the most part, setup is reasonably straightforward. Some add-ins such as the BPI module can be quite challenging.

I have little experience with the licensing but I know it is expensive!

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options. As a contractor who specialises in Control-M, I tend to work for companies who already use it.

Use it. It’s the best out there from my experience.

With version 9, there is out-of-the-box automatic failover (high availability), as well as the new agent deployment tool.

Automatic failover allows for active-passive high availability. If the Control-M Application were to fail on one server, it would automatically start up and continue processing on the backup (failover) server.

The agent deployment tool allows for upgrading or patching agents directly from the configuration manager (CCM) instead of logging into each agent one by one. A big time saver.

N/A – We are a consulting company that implements this application for clients.

I would like to see the Mainframe Control-M IN/OUT Condition feature of Relative ODAT added to the Distributed Control-M.

I have used it since 1996.

I have only encountered stability issues with the base installation; their product development team supplies fix packs for bugs.

I have not encountered any scalability issues; the product is scalable.

Technical support is 10 out of 10; support is available around the clock, 24/7.

N/A – We replace different solutions for clients usually due to high costs, lack of support or functionality of the legacy product.

Initial setup is quite easy; a wizard-based installation process.

I am on the technical services side and am not involved in pricing.

N/A – We only work with Control-M.

Do a proof of concept to see if it meets your needs.

It provides a single point of control for the entire organization’s batch processing, helping to shorten the batch processing window and achieve a “manage by exception” operation environment. At my current organization, our batch processing requirement is too technically diversified and has to be supported 24/7. With Control-M, we are able to handle the customer demand and execute 30k-plus jobs through a single window.

I have been using the solution for 10 years, including earlier versions.

I have encountered very few stability issues; it’s highly stable.

Scalability is good.

I find technical support to be knowledgeable and willing to provide assistance for any and all queries.

I did not previously use a different solution at my current organization. However, I have experience working CA Autosys.

The installation is panel-driven and can be used by a relatively inexperienced technician to install it successfully.

It’s well suited for anywhere and anyone, but it comes with a cost; it is quite pricey.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

Control-M is very stable. It is rare to have any issues with the application. Nonetheless, the bigger the workload, the more a tool like Control-M is needed or else it’s too pricey.

Scheduling of the workflows: We had to run a few thousand scripts on a daily, weekly, monthly, semiannual, and annual basis. Without this tool, scheduling would have been really difficult. This tool also helps in documenting the runs, which would further enable us to check for defects.

It has made execution of workflows simple, especially batch runs.

We had to migrate from an E2 to an E3 framework, where we manually had to change the name of more than 1,000 instances in a batch. This could have been easy if it was automated, such as searching for a keyword and replacing it with the desired name. In BMC Control-M, this facility is only available for the file path and connection.

I have used it for two years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 7/10. I faced an issue in which the connection was lost in the middle of a run. It was a small batch, so I managed it by rerunning it. I contacted tech support on a weekend, because I had to run a weekly batch. I didn’t see much of an immediate response from them, but they were able to sort out the issue a little later.

I have used this since I joined my current company.

Initial setup was straightforward.

It is worth the price.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

It is definitely a good tool in the business intelligence domain, which can be used for small or big batch runs.

There are many valuable features, including its ability to interface with so many applications and allowing complex scheduling to be done easily.

BMC provides control modules that interface with third-party applications such as SAP, DB, VMware, FileWatcher, AFT and many more. These are valuable features that allow jobs with those applications to be easily scheduled.

We are able to automate a lot of scheduling, and integrate the scheduler with many applications to automate business cycles.

Cost

Provide a little customisation based on needs; the capability for development at the user level should be available. The reporting facility is a GUI with some standard queries. I think the portal needs to allow us to do reports that reflect many possibilities, like selecting fields present in the DB schema and building our own reports using the reporting GUI, rather than using any of the standard templates it offers.

Also, I’d like to be able to build a custom module for some applications that cannot be interfaced, provided we give some standard variables to connect with the application. For example, we are currently using the Axway product for file transfer on a very, very large scale. We are not happy with Axway, and would want to see if BMC can provide us a remedy for it. Or, if we were able to do some customization on the AFT module to incorporate this requirement.

I have used it for 10 years, starting with version 6.1.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

I rate technical support 10/10.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was complex. We have integrated Control-M with many applications using some complex scripts for meeting our business needs.

Pricing and license cost is high.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated Redwood, Autosys, and $U (Dollar Universe).

If you are willing to pay for it, the product is excellent.

• No product downtime
• Easy to administrate and use
• A lot of integration tools and control modules

We use the BPI (Java and web services) DB integrator, AFT file transfer, CM for Informatica Control-M modules that easily integrated the non-basic batch jobs with the regular batch jobs. There was no need to script file transfer or SQL query jobs; all of that comes straight from the BMC Control-M box.

The knowledge of the jobs has become transparent and business users can monitor and manage their own jobs through the self-service portal.

The reporting overall should be better; right now, external report tools have to be used. Reporting should be end-user modifiable; and there should not be a need for a separate reporting client. There should be more reporting options, for example, scheduling of the table/jobs, with nice charts.

Crystal Reports based reporting tool, need to be installed in the same box where the EM client resides. Also there has to be control-M agent in the same server to be able to run the reports in batch mode. The better solution would be to run BMC in the house developed reporting and get the date from EM database in the server level (no need to windows Server, unix/Linux is better).

In the current reporting tool, there are predefined templates which are working ok but defining own it’s not easy or impossible. You can get the data out but it’s not usable to export to excel format without heavy modifications in the excel or qlickview for example.

I have used it for about two years.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

Technical support is the best among the biggest software delivery houses.

Setup was very simple.

It is expensive; the smallest IT service providers can’t implement it.

We evaluated IBM TWS and UC4 before choosing this product.

Plan the hardware setup carefully, favoring *nix OS systems in the CTM-Server engine. Try to follow “best practice” instructions about the database considerations and software setups.

Control-M Virtual Terminal (CTMVT) for AS400: Because most of my customers are in banking, where their core banking processes run on AS400, Control-M Virtual Terminal helps us automate the interactive process on AS400.

This product helps my customers speed up the daily batch processes and also provides early warning if one or more processes are not running normally. For example, before we started using Control-M, one application took three hours to complete its end-of-day processes because many processes were waiting for human interaction. Control-M cut out the time waiting for human interaction.

Improve the capability to analyse the process output by making it more flexible. Actually its current capability is strong enough and I have no problem with Control-M implementation, but it would be great if the output analysis could accommodate functions such as arithmetic operations or regular expressions. Current capability only supports string matching.

Let me explain more technical details for this. For example, I have a job/task that has output:

Jobname : Test A
Result : Completed
Numbers of errors : 0

Currently Control-M has ability analyzing job / task output only with string / pattern matching operation, for example when output has text "Result : Completed" do something. What i mean good for improvement is Control-M has ability to analyze the output with arithmetic operation, for example i want when Numbers of errors greater than 0 do something.

To avoid misunderstanding, this is only for output analyzing, because Control-M itself has function to analyze return code number from the job/task.

I have used it for five years.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

The technical support is good. I've used them many times for technical issues. So far, their support has been good for resolving all the issues.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

The pricing is fair enough, considering its functionality.

I would recommend that others wanting to implement workload automation tools choose BMC Control-M as their solution.

• The GUI interface with the ability to oversee the whole enterprise in a graphical way
• The ability to create filters for applications and groups
• The ability to zoom in and out within applications or the whole enterprise

These make automation and scheduling troubleshooting easier.

Well, I am no longer with that company, but it gave us the tools to see the big picture and work toward more tightly integrating processes that were unnecessarily dependent on each other.

It allowed us to automate responses and or trigger different processes based on different outcomes of the same job or process.

Version 8 introduced a whole new set of features that required more processing power, creating what I call "dead weights" that, if not interpreted in the right way, can cause duplication of processes. I am pretty confident that, knowing their track record, the issue was addressed in later revisions.

I used it for 15-plus years.

I did not encounter any stability issues. The "dead weights" that I referred to above were in the scheduling development side of the product and did not affect the live processes.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

Technical support was very good, 8/10.

I had a minor issue with their online interface for opening problem tickets. Their website at the time was horrible. (I hope it has been fixed.) I did let them know it would take you in circles without ever actually opening the ticket. This to the point that you had to eventually call and wait for someone to call you back so that the ticket was established. Then, you would send all the doc explaining the issue. Then, they would ask you to provide a ton of stuff, such as logs. Then, once you sent them that, they would tell you that it was an automated response and that they really did not need all that. In their defense, this only happen occasionally; otherwise I would have given them a 4 out of 10.

I personally did have experience with a few different scheduling packages, but none came close to providing the overall enterprise scale of Control-M.

I did not switch, the switch was on when I joined the company.

While I was not involved in its original implementation from scratch, I did arrive in the early stages and once I had a grip on the functionality and its tools, it was fairly easy. I am sure the installation and first implementation came with challenges.

That part can be tricky as I did not handle it. I do know that it may be expensive in the beginning, but, once you have it implemented and use it to its full or close to its full potential, it will save money in the long run.

I was not involved in the process, but the move was from CA7, and I know that ESP, Jobtrac, and Zeke among others were considered.

Go for it.