Control-M Reviews

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 main use is for job scheduling. We are using Control-M to manage and schedule various jobs within our organization.

We are more comfortable with Control-M since we have people who know this tool well. It integrates seamlessly with other tools within our ecosystem.

The best aspects of the solution are the ecosystem and integration part. This makes Control-M particularly valuable for us.

Control-M could benefit from incorporating AI features for better job scheduling. For example, if a job fails, the system could automatically manage related failures and take remedial actions without manual intervention. This would make it more advanced.

I have been using Control-M in my current organization for the last six months.

We did not face any stability issues with Control-M. It has been very stable for our needs.

Scalability is very subjective to use cases. For our minimalistic use cases, Control-M is quite scalable. However, for larger use cases, such as those in banking where there are thousands of jobs, scaling might be different.

Customer support from BMC is good but not excellent. We always expect more from support, so I would rate it between three to nine on a scale of one to ten.

Positive

Before Control-M, there might have been an IBM scheduling tool in use. I am unsure why the switch happened as I have only seen Control-M being used since I joined.

The initial setup was straightforward. It did not require much effort as we had knowledgeable people in the team.

One person is generally enough for the installation and configuration parts. It typically takes around one day to complete the installation.

We found Control-M to be one of the best solutions available. I would recommend incorporating AI features for future improvements.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use the product as our primary application tool for workload automation. It helps monitor and manage client domains in terms of configuration daily.

The product has enhanced the interface with a clear visual display of data and process batches, showing the completion status of workflows. It makes it easier to understand our organization's progress at a glance.

The platform integrates with Jenkins, Ansible, Docker, and Kubernetes. It can schedule and manage container workflows.

Integrating new solutions into the DevOps toolchain with the right approach and resources is straightforward. However, sometimes it can be complex.

It offers excellent visibility and management capabilities. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring and managing workflows and job scheduling. It supports various scheduling options, including time-based, event-based, and condition-based scheduling, allowing users to automate complex workflows efficiently.

It has simplified the process by streamlining the data workflow. It facilitates data extraction from sources, transforms it as needed, and loads it into the destination database. This comprehensive support for data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL).

It is highly effective for building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows. For instance, it allows us to set up ETL processes to run at specific times, such as daily at midnight or in the morning. This precise scheduling ensures that all dependencies are met and tasks are executed in the correct sequence. For example, the transformation job is scheduled to start after the extraction job has been completed.

Operational efficiency is crucial as it reduces processing time. Faster data flow means job workflows are completed more quickly, reducing processing time. It is essential for meeting tight deadlines and maintaining smooth operations.

While numerous scheduling solutions are available, BMC's Control-M is highly effective for managing and orchestrating workflows across an enterprise.

The platform's best features are the monitoring capabilities. It is essential for tracking activities and ensuring jobs run smoothly. Additionally, the scheduling capability excels in building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows. These features are critical to our organization's operations and efficiency.

They could enhance the product's data flow, job processing speed, and efficiency.

Additionally, improvements are needed in real-time monitoring and alerts. Developing more robust real-time analytics capabilities to monitor and report the performance status of DevOps workflows would be beneficial.

I have been using Control-M for one and a half years.

It is a stable product. I rate the stability a nine.

Our organization has a team of 50 executives who use the product.

It is scalable. I rate the scalability a nine.

BMC's service team significantly supported the development of our migration plan for the Standard AutoCorrelation Controller (SGP). Their assistance involved several key steps. First, they helped us identify and map out the different requirements and dependencies, including how SGP jobs interact with one another and their integration within Control-M. The migration plan included phases for testing, fallback strategies, and execution. Post-migration validation was crucial to ensure that all SGP jobs were successfully migrated and were functioning correctly in the new environment.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. The deployment takes two months and involves a team of 50 executives.

The platform has helped us save 30% of operations time.

The product price is reasonable. I rate the pricing an eight.

I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to transform essential files into an accessible format.

The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to reduce the number of jobs by passing various variables. It saves a lot of time for maintenance.

The solution's price could be better.

The solution is very stable.

I rate the solution's scalability as seven. Our team of around 30 monitoring executives uses the solution.

We contacted the support team for a failover issue. They fixed the error remotely.

The solution's deployment process took a day to complete.

We implement the solution with the help of a consulting company.

The solution is expensive.

I rate the solution as a seven.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer has a scheduler and what they do is capture the steps based on the script, and then they put it into the Control-M job, or task. Any system that has the script behind it the solution can do it.

The GUI needs to be improved, they cannot provide a good GUI. That's the first improvement they should do.

I used BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer within the past 12 months.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is highly stable. It is enterprise-grade software. Doing a job of 10,000 to 20,000 the solution is very stable.

The solution has very few bugs.

I have contacted the support from BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer. We have contacted them a lot, but only for technical aspects of the solution.

Their level two support is not very good. My team was able to solve a problem before they were able to. Level one support is us, the local support, in my country. Level two is usually from, India or another location because their R&D is in India. Level three, I don't know where the level three team is located, but the level three agents are the best. Level two support is not the best.

The license model is based on the number of tasks or jobs required. The price overall is expensive. In my country, we don't have any choice but to use them because no one can match their capability.

I rate BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer a nine out of ten.

I am a partner and an implementer for Control-M. Once purchased by my clients, I implement this solution and provide daily support for this scheduling tool.

This solution could be improved by making it possible to better control GUI when interfacing with other systems. 

Secondly, this solution is very expensive compared to others in the market. Previously it was the only solution in our country to offer this kind of functionality. However, technology has caught up and many competitors offer the same at a lower price.  

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This is a stable solution with very few bugs, whether being used for 1 or 20,000 jobs. 

Their L2-support Is not that good and often our team have managed to solve problems which their team could not. However, if there's a problem that needs to be escalated to Level 3, for example, then their engineering support is very good.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

Our primary use cases of Managed File Transfer are monitoring jobs, transferring files, and doing some encryption and decryption. We work on insurance-based clients, so we have a lot of files that come in every day. The business does some manipulation on that, which, in turn, reflects in the New York Stock Exchange, so we use Managed File Transfer for all SLEs and things like that. 

We are using the version before the latest update. This solution is deployed on-premise. 

One of the most valuable features is the encryption and decryption which happens within the job. Usually, with other tools, we do a file transfer and then we have to encrypt and decrypt it, but in BMC Managed File Transfer, we can do it in one go. Another great feature is the ability to manipulate a file during a transfer. I think that with the new version, they also have a dashboard which gives a GUI-based view of what's getting transferred—how many files, how much time, and all that—so, from a single point, you can look at what's happening within the organization. If someone asks, "Where is this file?" or how much time it takes, you can just go to the dashboard, search for that file, and your information is there. 

Managed File Transfer could be improved with some more cloud features. Things have been moving to cloud, and the modules of AWS and Azure are there in Control-M, but we still end up writing codes to do that. If there were some embedded modules, it would be really helpful. 

As for additional features, we have been looking to integrate with SharePoint. This feature is not available. 

I have been using this solution for 12 years now. 

Managed File Transfer seems pretty stable. At times when it is not, the vendor does release some patches and stuff like that, which we might end up installing, which helps with the stability. We had faced some issues and reached out to them, and they said that there was a newer version that we had to update it ourselves, so we did that and it was fine. 

For maintenance, it requires you to apply the latest fix packs and patches, while at the same time keeping the database updated. We handle maintenance on our own. We have around eight people in our company who are working with Managed File Transfer. 

This solution is definitely scalable. 

BMC technical support is really good. Their turnover time is within one hour, which is pretty good. 

I worked for about six months with two similar tools, one of which was called JAMS. JAMS was more related to Windows, whereas with Control-M, it doesn't really matter which operating system or which environment you're trying to connect to. So with any distributed system, it's a very easy setup—with others, I have felt that it was a task, since it took some time to do. 

The initial setup is a simple process now. With the new versions, it's pretty simple—depending on the size of it, I believe it should take somewhere between twenty minutes to one hour to deploy. 

We implemented this solution through an in-house team. 

The pricing of Control-M is a bit on the higher end, compared to any other tools that we have seen. Pricing will depend on the sales approach and agreement between the companies, but I think they give some discounts. They have their standards, but the pricing can be negotiable, and they are flexible regarding certain features. 

I rate Control-M an eight out of ten, so there's some scope for input. 

To those considering implementation, I would advise you to have a good plan of what you need to set up—what does your environment really look like? Because to change your environment or database midway into something is a hefty task. So before starting it, I would advise you to check what your company's database looks like. Some use Oracle, some use Microsoft SQL, but BMC comes with a default one as well. It's better to plan that out because changing it midway is a task in and of itself. 

Our primary use case for Control-M is to order the jobs we have, like database entries and processes that need to be run in Unix or any other environment. With Control-M, we can run a set of flows at a specific time, like maybe on the fourth of every month or every second Sunday of the month.

The Control-M feature I find the most valuable is the ability to configure a lot compared to a contract. 

An issue we have run into in our lower environments is that Control-M can log you out frequently. This happens when you have a lot of applications running. Maybe it's just a configuration issue, but this is a pain point that would be good to look into. 

I have been using Control-M for a couple of years now. 

Control-M is a stable and reliable solution. 

I have not seen any issues with Control-M in our production environment. However, in the lower environment, we can see frequent log-outs. That could be an issue with how much they have allocated. 

In our organization, the development team uses it, as does the bank team. They monitor it. If a job fails, for example, Control-M sends out a notification and the team can take a look at what happened in the logs. They can do it on the fly instead of dealing with the issue later on. 

As soon as you have an issue, a ticket is created and the tech support is quite responsive. 

I did not set up Control-M in my organization, but the setup is straightforward. You just log in with your credentials and everything is already setup for you. You can access things in line with whatever authorization you have. 

I would recommend this solution because of the ease of use. To work with it, you do need to understand it and know how to configure it. But, once you do, you can take advantage of many features that are helpful. 

The primary use case of this solution is for when you want certain cases to be executed, like file transfers when it is business to business. The solution is mostly used in the banking and finance domain. We are premium partners with BMC. 

This is a flagship product. The solution offers every feature that a customer could want, whether it's the architecture or the use case. It supports all file transfers. 

The solution used to have a graphical user interface for reporting. That is lacking now and it's unfortunate because customers liked it and it's no longer available. In order to compete with IT service desk management, they need to make the product more lightweight, more of a SaaS-based offering. If that were implemented they'd get back to the top. Currently, authentication and authorization portals are provided only in the case of external uploads but that should change.

I've been using this solution for 13 years. 

The solution is stable and provides good performance. 

This solution is easily scalable.

The initial setup is simple and takes about a day. We provide all the implementation and  maintenance services. The solution is generally for medium to enterprise size companies. 

Licensing costs can be negotiated depending on what the count is or how big the implementation is. I've seen even small banks using the solution and I believe licensing costs are reasonable. 

I think it's important to have knowledge about the infrastructure required, and the right data needs to be provided to the implementation partner. Once that's done, the solution is quite flexible to accommodate all requirements.

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

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

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

The pressure on our operations and maintenance has been reduced.

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

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

The error content of Control-M is clearly displayed.

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

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

I have been using it for 10 years.

The solution is very stable.

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

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

It provides general scalability.

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

We have opened case requests to their support.

We did not previously use another solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

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

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

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

Buy and use it.

We developed a localized platform for managing Control-M.

We don't have MFT functionality.

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

I would rate this solution as nine out of 10.