Control-M vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

BMC and VMware are both solutions in the Process Automation category. BMC is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.8, while VMware is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.2. BMC holds a 4.4% mindshare in PA, compared to VMware’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Control-M

Read 122 Control-M reviews

3,851 Views
1,535 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

vCenter Orchestrator

Read 50 vCenter Orchestrator reviews

146 Views
115 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Control-M

vCenter Orchestrator

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

vCenter Orchestrator and Control-M both compete in the automation software category. Control-M seems to have the upper hand in comprehensive workload automation and integration with third-party systems.

Features: vCenter Orchestrator offers virtualization and workflow automation capabilities, making it suitable for virtual machine management and operations like vMotion. It provides centralized management and integrates well within VMware environments. Control-M provides cross-platform scheduling, managed file transfers, real-time monitoring, and API integrations. It also includes a self-service portal for operational efficiency.

Room for Improvement: vCenter Orchestrator could improve its multi-provider support and cross-platform integration. Enhancements to its scripting environment and GUI simplification are also suggested. Control-M could benefit from better cloud support, more intuitive reporting tools, and integration with additional modules. Both products have potential improvements in affordability and user-centric functionality.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vCenter Orchestrator is typically deployed on-premises, and while users report good technical support from VMware, there is a need for more responsive service. Control-M offers diverse deployment options, including cloud environments, providing flexibility. BMC’s support for Control-M is efficient, although some licensing management issues have been reported.

Pricing and ROI: vCenter Orchestrator is considered expensive and its pricing model is complex. It delivers high ROI for large-scale virtualization but may not be cost-effective for smaller clients. Control-M is also expensive but offers optimal ROI for large environments due to its comprehensive automation features. Both solutions provide value, though clarity in licensing and affordability could enhance their market appeal.

To learn more, read our detailed Control-M vs. vCenter Orchestrator Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. vCenter Orchestrator

April 2025

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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

Control-M

Ranking in Process Automation

2nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

122

Ranking in other categories

Managed File Transfer (MFT) (4th), Workload Automation (1st)

vCenter Orchestrator

Ranking in Process Automation

10th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Control-M is 4.4%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Orchestrator is 0.2%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Process Automation

Featured Reviews

Pedro Fuentes

System Engineer at Community Loans of America, Inc.

Cost-effective, excellent support, and centralized access and control

They have a department that handles requests for enhancements. I talked to Control-M guys back in October or November when they had a gathering here in Atlanta. We talked about not being able to go back in history in Helix Control-M for more than two weeks. We submitted a request for enhancement. They told us that they are working on it, and they are thinking of expanding that to 30 days. We would like to see it expand to 90 days, but they are working on it. In Control-M, we were able to go back 180 days, but that was on-prem. The storage of that data was on our own servers. We know that storage is money, and we do not expect them to store that much of the data, but at least 30 to 60 days seem proper.

Read full review

David Villota

EMEA Hosting Engineer at Yanfeng Automotive

Provides automatic monitoring capabilities that save time for users

In my company's IT environment, we use the tool to deploy production environments for products, including live manufacturing systems. The product improves my company's IT automation processes since we can use fewer resources currently. In my company, we need to spend less time considering that vCenter Orchestrator monitors everything. In general, we don't have to be present in our company to do active monitoring. Automatic monitoring is available for everything with vCenter Orchestrator, so we have proactive alerts in our company. The most valuable feature of the product in streamlining our company's workflow stems from the fact that we need to spend fewer resources and less time in general. Our company can spend time on more effective tasks like working with the plans to improve processes and so on, instead of taking care of the systems. The benefits of the product's integration capabilities were useful for HPE. My company has HPE infrastructure, and we are keen to integrate everything into the host, VMware ESXi. It is really important to have an easy integration method that allows for everything to be installed easily in a matter of minutes. I was not involved in the product's setup process. My colleague took care of the product's setup process. From what I know, I can say that the product's setup phase was straightforward. Some custom setups were to be done manually in the tool, but everything was well documented. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. One of the benefits of the product is that it is a low-cost and stable solution that offers a lot of resources. I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature we use most in Control-M is related to the file transfer module. It is quite advanced compared to the 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."

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

"BIM is helpful because we do not miss any SLAs, as we get to know the issue well in advance. It is the topmost service that has helped us provide better solutions for the business."

"It's very easy to use. Compared to other softwares, Control-M has significantly simplified our monthly release process, making it easier to move things forward."

"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."

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

"It has a very good GUI. We can search for a job very easily. The web interface, user account creation, and access control are very good. From an access control point of view, we can provide access to as many users as we want. A second group of users can be given a certain number of features, according to the requirements. The web interface is very easy for end users to login and use. A lot of features have been added, e.g., adding jobs. They can add jobs to their stuff, whatever they want, then get it validated by the scheduling team and work it into production."

"In the client, it provides a unified view for me. I can alter the view that I want to see jobs and conditions. This is nice to have. The fact that you can see everything in one space is very important, especially these days where everything is about data and monitoring as well as because we are working from home on a global basis. So, I can monitor jobs in real-time, along with any failures or anything that might be stuck. The real-time monitoring and the ability to see everything in one place is important for us because we operate 24/7."

More Control-M pros

"Snapshots and similar features were managed well."

"The solution is stable."

"Because of the central management, the scripting engine and workflow engine are integrated with VMware without any burden to integrate different products."

"vCenter Orchestrator is easy to use."

"If I need to do DR, VMware can enable me to use vMotion, which requires use of vCenter. You cannot do vMotion without vCenter. We do a lot of automation, orchestration, and simplification for that purpose."

"What I like best about vCenter Orchestrator is that it makes life easier through automation. People can request to automate all processes with vCenter Orchestrator, such as adding storage, creating VMs, removing VMs, and extending VMs."

"The backup and recovery times are very quick."

"The most valuable feature is how easy it makes it to manage the VM."

More vCenter Orchestrator pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"We have some plug-ins like BOBJ, and we need a little improvement there. Other than that, it has been pretty good. I haven't seen any issues."

"The licensing cost can be improved."

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

"Regarding product design and R&D, the DevOps pipeline could be improved with better capabilities and automation. API security and authentication is another area that could use improvement; users must have static credential passwords, which is a security concern."

"The stability of Control-M has Not been great. A big thing we've been trying to work on with BMC is observability. Modern applications should be observable and resilient, but we're finding that sometimes Control-M is not very resilient and many times Control-M is not very observable."

"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."

More Control-M cons

"This solution needs to have more built-in workflows."

"I would like to see a greater ability to do mobile administration."

"As we work towards more stability on the solution, sometimes we'll try something and it breaks and it's easier to restart the service. That's the only drawback. We've experienced this with other applications as well."

"I would like to see better performance."

"VMware tools would benefit from more automation. When installing our devices and servers, we often need to install the VMware tools manually. This process should be automated during the VM installation process."

"The only point for improvement is the price, which has increased by 135%, making it very expensive."

"I did not do the initial setup. However, it was complex at the beginning."

"In the next release, to make it easier to write the workflows, I would l like to see more HTML GUIs."

More vCenter Orchestrator cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Control-M isn't cheap, but this is an enterprise model."

"We have a license till 2024. We are good and satisfied with it."

"The pricing is moderate, not too low or too high compared to other solutions."

"Its cost can be more competitive. One of the main things customers look at is the cost. It's not affordable. The cost is very high, according to my customers."

"The cost of the hardware is high. Because you need to license each job, it is costly."

"It works on task-based licensing."

"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."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

"My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."

"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. We pay for the license and then we pay the support every year."

"We pay a yearly fee, based on our entries."

"We renew the solution's license every one or two years."

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"The licensing cost is manageable because they have different versions available, standard, essential, and advanced."

"The product is expensive."

"This solution is expensive and the licensing is more attractive for Haveri."

More vCenter Orchestrator pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?

It depends. It's packaged in such a way that you can buy the base model without all of the fancy stuff. You can try and keep your price similar to competitors. I guess it's natural throughout the w...

See all answers

What do you like most about vCenter Orchestrator?

The stability of the product is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Orchestrator?

We're running a low-profile budget. This is not our main focus on investment technology, so we're trying to reduce costs due to the change from perpetual to subscription licenses.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vCenter Orchestrator?

After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed. We are considering alternatives since we lost the perpetual aspect, and support is changing.

See all answers

Comparisons

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 16% of the time

Automic Automation vs Control-M

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 7% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Control-M

Compared 6% of the time

Stonebranch vs Control-M

Compared 5% of the time

More Control-M Competitors

VMware Aria Automation vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 53% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 23% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 11% of the time

More vCenter Orchestrator Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Control-M

May 2025

Download Control-M product report

Buyer's Guide

vCenter Orchestrator

April 2025

Download vCenter Orchestrator product report

Also Known As

Control M

No data available

Overview

Control-M is used for enterprise workload automation, orchestrating finance, retail, healthcare, and supply chain processes. It handles batch job scheduling, managed file transfers, cloud integrations, and compliance auditing across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Organizations leverage Control-M to efficiently monitor and manage business-critical processes like payroll, HR, SAP, Informatica, and database tasks. It enhances visibility, security, and error resolution. Automating and optimizing workflows in data centers, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, Control-M supports diverse technological environments. The platform's robust capabilities make it suitable for effective centralized management of applications and data pipelines, ensuring enhanced collaboration and scalability.

What are Control-M's most important features?

Integration capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with various systems
Automation API: Facilitates automation through APIs
Managed File Transfer: Simplifies secure file transfers
GUI console: Intuitive graphical user interface
Role-based administration: Provides access control
Single-pane view: Centralized monitoring dashboard
Scheduling options: Flexible job scheduling
Workflow orchestration: Coordinates complex workflows
Reporting: Generates insightful reports
Monitoring: Tracks and manages tasks
Forecasting: Predicts future workloads
Self-service portal: Empowers users with self-service tools
Plugins: Extends functionality through additional plugins

What are the benefits or ROI of using Control-M?

Enhanced visibility: Centralized view of all processes
Ease of use: User-friendly interface
Error reduction: Minimizes manual errors
Improved collaboration: Facilitates teamwork
Scalability: Supports growth and scale
Support: Comprehensive customer support

Control-M is implemented in industries like finance to handle payroll and HR tasks, in retail for inventory management and supply chain processes, and in healthcare for compliance auditing and patient data processing. Organizations benefit from streamlined workflows and automated processes across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, ensuring efficient and secure operations.

BMC

VMware vCenter Orchestrator simplifies the automation of complex IT tasks and integrates with VMware vCloud Suite components to adapt and extend service delivery and operational management, effectively working with existing infrastructure, tools and processes.

VMware

Sample Customers

CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc

Beiersdorf Shared Services

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. vCenter Orchestrator

April 2025

Free Report: Control-M vs. vCenter Orchestrator

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