Control-M Reviews

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.