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Azure Automation vs Control-M comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Automation
Ranking in Process Automation
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Control-M
Ranking in Process Automation
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (4th), Workload Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Azure Automation is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Control-M is 4.7%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Control-M4.7%
Azure Automation1.1%
Other94.2%
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Gökhan YENİGÜN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has improved workflow automation and reduced manual tasks while offering room for simpler deployment
Azure Automation brings many benefits to my company and my customers' companies because many jobs can be converted automatically through an AI agent to complete tasks. PowerShell and Python scripting capabilities assist us significantly in developing tailored automation at 90% efficiency. I have utilized Azure Automation runbooks. We don't create new runbooks because some runbook templates simplify our business processes and tasks effectively.
Mark_Francome - PeerSpot reviewer
Easily connects to different platforms and ties everything together in a centralized screen
Areas of Control-M that have room for improvement include the reporting feature. The reporting on Control-M hasn't changed much over the years, although it is in a different internal format. It used to be Crystal Reports, and now they've upgraded that. It would be better if that was really flexible where you could define your own reports. You can customize it a little bit, but when people come in with complex questions, you should be able to use that tool and access anything in the database. Control-M has two internal databases that are core to the product. You can go in and do your own SQL queries against the database, but this reporting tool should really be able to do everything that you can do with SQL, and give you good information. Instead, you end up having to export to spreadsheets and then change and update them. It can be very labor-intensive to get this information out. Other than the reporting, they've addressed most things over the years. Control-M is a tool that's been around for more than 30 years, so they have actually fixed most issues that you would encounter. They have a request for enhancement process that most users have sent requests to, but it doesn't move very quickly. The other challenge is they're supporting so many different platforms; BMC just wants it to be a trouble-free release. When users request new features, such as improved reporting, BMC's priority remains maintaining a clean-running system.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Azure Automation brings many benefits to my company and my customers' companies because many jobs can be converted automatically through an AI agent to complete tasks."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Automation is the scripting."
"The best features include the solutions with the recent AI version; the recent updates are impressive, as they allow for automatic jobs, which help improve our productivity."
"Helix Control-M has contributed to the overall stability of our applications and improved user experience."
"Speeds up processes and automated tasks."
"In Helix Control-M, we have the automation API that allows us to customize and do integrations easily in any script, such as Java or Python. It is all integrated within the integration API."
"I think the administration part is much more valuable than any other feature."
"I find it very helpful to be able to keep track of all our help desk tickets."
"It integrates seamlessly with other tools within our ecosystem."
"I am proud to say almost all of the banks in South Africa are using it."
 

Cons

"The solution’s user interface could be improved."
"Deployment with Azure Automation can be challenging at times, though sometimes it is very easy."
"The UI can be challenging for new users due to its learning curve."
"Whenever I pull an S4HANA job to the Helix Control-M tool, it pulls it naturally with all the steps. A job can have several steps, and in this case, it is very easy to control the steps taken. However, in the case of the SaaS IBP tool, it can pull the job but cannot identify the steps. So, when I want to take an action in a step, I have to split the job."
"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."
"While they have a very good reporting facility, the reports that I'm asked to produce, a lot of times aren't necessarily what we need."
"Support is one aspect that they really need to improve."
"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."
"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."
"The MFT applications should have more functionality and flexibility within that tool. Having more flexibility with that tool for handling the one to many or many to one concept. Like being able to take data from one source and push it to many locations or pull data from many locations and bring it back into a single source. That's why we still use our TPS program for the file transfers just because we don't have some of those capabilities available to us within MFT."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"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. 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."
"As we increase the number of tasks or jobs on the system, there are concerns about cost."
"The product price is reasonable. I rate the pricing an eight."
"The license model is based on the number of jobs we run on the SaaS application or the number of executions, unlike the on-premise model options. If we have a handful of jobs, it's always good to consider Control-M, but if it's a large number of jobs, Control-M might not be a great option."
"This is now from my previous years as support for banks and big companies. If it's not enterprise scale, I find that it's too expensive for smaller companies. You really have to be quite big and need to have a dedicated support staff to run it, then you'll be fine. What we've seen at smaller companies, it's too expensive because they want to automate everything. Now, stuff that can literally run once a day for the rest of their lives is costing them $3 a job a day. It becomes too expensive, eventually. They are not seeing the return on investment because it's not business critical. Nobody is going to die or they're going to lose money if that job didn't run exactly at 11 minutes past 4:00. It's definitely for bigger enterprise companies, especially banks or healthcare providers. We have had an instance where Control-M was unavailable due to external factors for 20 minutes and there was a loss of almost a million euros because the solution involved logistics."
"You're going to spend a lot of money upfront, but the benefits you're going to get out of it are going to quickly pay for it."
"The price is right because of the licensing schema, which is based on nodes and processes. You purchase what you use, no more and no less, and you can grow with time."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise113
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Automation?
The most valuable feature of Azure Automation is the scripting.
What needs improvement with Azure Automation?
Based on feedback, Azure Automation needs to stay up-to-date with real technology game changers and include new features that meet market demands. It is essential for Azure Automation to capture ne...
What is your primary use case for Azure Automation?
My clients mainly use Azure Automation for back-office processes and operations, as the application of this product is wide-ranging. It depends on their in-house capabilities and the opportunities ...
How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?
Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful because nothing gets left unattended since it is all visible in one place, and th...
What do you like most about Control-M?
First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Control M
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Adobe 2. BMW 3. Coca-Cola 4. General Electric 5. Johnson & Johnson 6. NBCUniversal 7. Pfizer 8. Samsung 9. Siemens 10. Toyota 11. Verizon 12. 3M 13. Accenture 14. Airbus 15. Allianz 16. American Express 17. AT&T 18. Bank of America 19. Boeing 20. Cisco 21. Dell 22. ExxonMobil 23. Ford 24. General Motors 25. IBM 26. Intel 27. JPMorgan Chase 28. Microsoft (self-use) 29. Nestle 30. Procter & Gamble 31. Shell 32. Walmart
CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Automation vs. Control-M and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.