Control-M Reviews

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.