Control-M Reviews

I primarily use Control-M for scheduling jobs for scripts, batch scripts, and Linux scripts. Most of the writing involves service restarts on servers.

For data ops and DevOps processes, the requirement involves integration processes that need to be scheduled in Control-M, allowing management of cyclic processes for integration and continuous execution.

For building, scheduling, and managing production workflows, access is available through the URL or from the client software, Control-M Configuration Manager.

Control-M has made it easier to create workflows for both cloud and on-premises environments with features such as drag and drop functionality. This makes it simpler for users to create jobs and integrate them with dependent jobs.

Control-M has helped consolidate job scheduler tools with features such as SMS and mail capabilities, which other scheduler tools do not provide.

The best features of Control-M are particularly effective for Windows scripts and Windows servers, mainly for service restarts.

What is most appreciated about Control-M is that it is easy and reliable. Jobs that have been created can be accessed through the front end URL, where operations such as hold, release, and execution can be managed entirely from the user GUI front end.

Workflow orchestration is important for data ops and DevOps tasks as it makes scheduling scripts and managing various aspects of operations much easier through a single screen.

There are areas for improvement in Control-M as it carries some vulnerability points that could be fixed in any version, or it could be made easier for organizations to repeatedly install or update new patches with more stable versions.

I have been using Control-M for four years.

On a scale from one to ten, with ten being the best, Control-M's stability is assessed as a solid product at approximately eight or nine. BMC support provides robust backing, with new patches arriving daily and being integrated with previous versions to replace outdated updates and fix bugs while unlocking more features. No stability issues have been noticed during the four years of use.

Regarding scalability, based on the features and how they help with day-to-day tasks, Control-M can be considered scalable.

In terms of technical support, the focus involves creating scripts for service restarts on particular servers with the main target of providing support for automation services, automation management, job failure management, and managing the agent package and Control-M package.

The deployment of Control-M is easier than other tools. There are no critical tasks or activities required to deploy on the server; it simply involves setup and installation on the server with the tool ready to use immediately.

Regarding pricing, Control-M is not the cheaper option. License renewal is based on active jobs in a year, but it is cost effective. More features are provided compared to other tools at the same price.

When comparing Control-M with other solutions such as ActiveBatch, JAMS, and IBM, Control-M offers easier manageable operations for hold, release, and execution, which can be managed directly from its front-end URL. In its configuration tools where jobs are created, there are no difficulties encountered. Unlike other tools where dependency tools and jobs must be mentioned separately, Control-M provides direct drag and drop functionality with arrows. This is much easier than other tools such as IBM Task Scheduler or Jenkins.

Approximately 2,000 to 3,000 people use Control-M, including users from Axis Bank where all employees are using Control-M.

Control-M is recommended to other users by providing them a demo and showing them the uses, which helps them understand the benefits and features that Control-M provides that cannot be obtained from other tools. This allows them to rely on Control-M for their day-to-day tasks.

One point is deducted from the overall rating because Control-M carries some vulnerability points. The overall rating for Control-M is nine out of ten.

I predominantly use Control-M for file transfers through the SaaS version. BMC has recently added an enterprise feature for the SaaS version, and we are now using it mostly for the file transfer part and also the APIs, which has been our latest addition.

With my current project, the File Transfer Enterprise is the best use case for us in terms of secured transfers and how we can track the transfers and manage significantly more with the transfers we are doing. This is the best feature, considering the ROI as to what my current scenario was and what we have achieved with the enterprise feature.

File Transfer Enterprise is the most valuable feature for our current project in terms of secured transfers and how we can track the transfers and manage significantly more with the transfers we are doing. This feature provides the best value, considering the ROI that we have achieved with the enterprise feature.

The integrator feature is not being supported by the BMC support team, which leaves it to us to customize and integrate it. Of course, the use cases differ and that is when they have decided not to have it under the support cluster. However, having basic support on the integration integrator would help us considerably. We do a lot of research and development to achieve what we need to accomplish, but BMC has the experts and eventually they have the answers. If they include the integrator feature under the support structure, it would be greatly beneficial.

The integrator feature is handy, but it can be tricky when we are trying to integrate in terms of achieving the connection profile. Setting up the connection profile initially to get any integrator working for us is somewhat tricky with different use cases we want to achieve. It is not straightforward.

I have been using Control-M since 2008 when I got into IT and started my career.

The SaaS version is excellent in terms of stability. For the price, it is very stable. We have not had any downtime. It has been more than two and a half years, approaching three years now since we got SaaS onto our system with no downtime at all. It is quite stable.

The scalability aspect is simply a matter of getting more agents in place and since it is a SaaS version, it gets scaled up on their end. We do not have to worry much about it. Of course, the licensing comes into play if the number of jobs are increasing, but it is dynamic.

I have recently contacted the BMC Control-M technical support team.

They are top-notch in terms of speed and quality. Most of the time, any question starts with extracting the logs and providing them to the support team, and they go through that. If they are not able to resolve the issue, they take time and put it to the research and development team. Of course, it takes a while if it goes to research and development, but they make sure that the issue is resolved. That is something great about them.

I would give the support a score of nine. I would still like to rate them ten, but some cases do take a while to get the resolution.

Autosys has been used and is the closest alternative to BMC Control-M. There are other features and other products, but Autosys is the most used alternative. However, it is nowhere near what BMC Control-M has to offer.

The initial deployment of Control-M was straightforward. With the current SaaS version, there is a support window of 14 days or specific hours. It is straightforward and depends on who is going to drive the deployment. For my case, I was experienced with the on-premise version as well, so that seemed straightforward for me. However, for those coming in with lesser experience, it may take some time. The documentation is excellent, so it is straightforward.

The deployment of Control-M requires two administrators. Basically, one administrator is the minimum need, but one can do the deployment. Since we have two admins, we share the workload. One is sufficient for the task.

Pricing for Control-M is on the costlier side when it comes to SaaS pricing. However, it does take off all the hassles of maintaining the Control-M server itself. This leaves us with only managing the agent part of it. It has pros and cons to that pricing feature, but it is on a higher side. Mostly in terms of ROI, the companies and stakeholders have that complaint.

Control-M does require maintenance on our end. There are two different windows of maintenance. One is when the core technology, in our case SAP, is getting under maintenance window, so we have to pause our jobs and resume it later on. This is a critical window that prevents our jobs from being pushed into SAP. We have to pause it and resume it depending on the schedules and make sure that we resume it and do not miss any jobs. The other window is when our agent maintenance or agent infrastructure maintenance occurs, when switching from a primary to a secondary agent, routing it, and making sure nothing is lost in the transit. Those are the two maintenance activities we perform.

We have a team of seven today, with two of us as admins. We have three schedulers and two monitoring agents.

Our engagement is with BMC. I have been involved with getting the contract rolled in for my current client and getting into the core of the technicalities in achieving the job requirements. It has been both.

We achieved the project in a month's time with Control-M. We had a project of converting and migrating our jobs from SAP workload onto the Control-M scheduler. End to end, we took less than a month to get the agents installed on the SAP infrastructure and get these jobs migrated from the SAP workload. Overall, I give this product a review rating of ten.

I work with Control-M from a commercial aspect and engage with IT and operation teams across different industries, which gives me direct exposure to how Control-M is used in real production environments. My role is to deliver tangible value to these teams.

The valuable features of Control-M depend on the specific customer needs. Some customers have business-critical processes, strict SLAs, and hybrid or multi-cloud environments where Control-M provides end-to-end visibility of all these processes. Control-M also offers different modules, such as MFT, which allows users to transfer files with the tool. As a commercial professional, I cannot personally attest to specific features since I do not typically use the tool directly, but I can share what customers have told me they value about the product.

As a commercial professional, I think one of the downsides of Control-M is that not all people know they can use a tool such as Control-M, and they think that Control-M is going to be very expensive, which is the reason why they don't want to use it or seek more information about it. However, when they are accustomed to using this type of tool or Control-M as a scheduler, they feel better with it and with their role inside their enterprise. For example, if they don't have any scheduler, they don't know that they can use a scheduler to automate different business processes. When they recognize that they can use this type of tool, one of the objectives is to reduce costs. They may spend money in the short term, but in the medium or long term, they will probably have more benefits than risk.

Control-M has everything that a person needs because the problem is not high cost. Control-M is available on-premises and in the cloud, and they are having more apps every week with the app integrator. I don't have anything that I dislike about Control-M. Possible areas for improvement could include documentation, configuration, and pricing. Being more flexible and having out-of-the-box reporting for business stakeholders would be beneficial. Continuing to simplify licensing and packaging for smaller customers would also help improve customer conversations. Reporting is often mentioned as an area where Control-M could continue to evolve. Many customers would appreciate more out-of-the-box business-friendly reports. Control-M has operability with SLA-focused reports, but developing something with less customization would be better.

I have been using Control-M for more or less two years.

I think that some instability is normal because everything is in the cloud, and I can remember a few months when the AWS cloud crashed. If you see the SLA reports or responses from different customers, they are very happy with the tool. Control-M achieves more or less 98% or 99% uptime in the cloud, which is a fantastic rate. I think 100% is impossible to achieve, and 99.8% is a good number.

Control-M, developed by BMC, which was previously part of BMC Helix and is now BMC Software, is focusing on Digital Business Automation processes. They are developing many different modules in Control-M, and the scalability is fantastic. Probably in a couple of years, Control-M is going to be the best scheduler. Currently, they are competing with other schedulers such as Redwood, Broadcom, and Stonebranch, but in a couple of years, maybe one or two years, Control-M is not going to have any competitors.

I have used technical support from BMC when we need to do demos for instances in the BMC tool. The technical support team are very good professionals and they do their jobs excellently. Since I don't use Control-M directly, if I have a problem with Control-M, the technical team from my enterprise would need to talk with the technical team from BMC. I usually talk with the commercial team from BMC rather than the technical team. I talk with the technical team when I need to make a demo, proof of concept, or proof of value, and we need to customize the future instance for the client. If I need to rate the technical support from BMC, I would give them a 10 because whenever I want to do something with them, they answer me, and I am very happy with them.

Positive

I don't use any alternative schedulers. I know that you can talk about Redwood, Broadcom, or Stonebranch, but I don't use any one of these schedulers.

I don't have a lot of contact with deployment. Probably if I think about some customers, they tell me that there is also interest in simplifying upgrades and environment standardization, particularly for organizations with multiple Control-M instances. If you talk with a small customer, they are going to be happy with deployment, upgrades, or the environment.

Control-M has an upgrade more or less every year or every two years. If you want to use the latest upgrade, you need to upgrade your tool.

The implementation team depends on the person doing the deployment.

The current pricing is good. Other vendors such as Broadcom are increasing their prices, so right now, Control-M is not one of the highest-cost schedulers. My customers have never told me anything negative about the pricing or licensing. BMC can be very amenable with the pricing of the tool. I have small customers, and I think that is a good point of view because they think they can't have the budget for a tool such as Control-M, but they do have the budget. Control-M is a tool for every kind of customer. You can sell Control-M for 15K on-premises and you can sell it for 7 million or 11 million. I think that people need to change their thinking because Control-M is not just an expensive tool. It is a tool for everyone, for every enterprise.

I would rate Control-M at nine.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

We are a system integrator specializing in document digitization and DMS applications, and we encounter various workflows within documents and data. I have been using Control-M for less than one year, primarily on workflow process applications where we work with clients on digitizing backlog conversion projects. We use it when there are complex structured documents with AI-enabled workflows. We encountered this orchestration platform where we need to work across documents and applications to integrate whenever there is a critical business workflow.

The best features of Control-M are the seamless and simple process that any business user can understand and adapt to. Control-M also provides low-code and no-code capabilities that allow business users to work on workflow orchestration in a straightforward manner.

I assess Control-M as having ease of use and being simple to deploy and configure at a business level. When workflows are structured, it appears simpler and easier to create and integrate data pipelines for on-premises and cloud environments. For complex workflows, we need to fine-tune and understand the system before deployment.

Control-M currently saves approximately 15 to 20% of time compared to our previous support system.

The areas that have room for improvement for Control-M include integration and different data structures. Additionally, whether the deployment is on-premises or hybrid requires careful consideration. Both applications we worked on were on-premises, and we did not work on any cloud applications. The challenge regarding latency and other connectivity integration will likely be a key challenge for Control-M, and understanding how this will impact ease of use and deployment will be important.

I have been using Control-M for less than one year, primarily on workflow process applications where we work with clients on digitizing backlog conversion projects. We use it when there are complex structured documents with AI-enabled workflows. We encountered this orchestration platform where we need to work across documents and applications to integrate whenever there is a critical business workflow.

I rate the stability of Control-M as seven. I rate it a seven because it is still in the initial phase. We need to deploy other workflows and observe how the application scales and how the stability of the whole application with an increased number of users deployed across different locations will perform.

I rate the scalability of Control-M as eight.

I rate the technical support of Control-M as a seven on a scale of one to ten.

I did not migrate from Broadcom, CA, or Redwood because this was a straightforward implementation of the application from the start.

I did not encounter any challenges with Control-M or with the deployment process because this was just an initial starter pack to begin with. It was a small project and was straightforward.

It is difficult to assess how easy or difficult it is to integrate Control-M for our DevOps and DataOps processes because we have not done any integration. It was a standalone use of the application. Our scope was limited and we have not encountered the integration part.

We had only one specialist working with Control-M, and we hired third-party resources to work on the project.

Resource-wise, we have realized approximately 20% value from Control-M, but financially, it is premature to assess regarding ROI.

Regarding the pricing of Control-M, I believe it looks competitive compared to other vendors. Whether it is a SaaS application or an on-premises application varies, and they have different structures such as a starter pack or a value pack. We went with the starter pack.

I cannot compare Control-M with other solutions or vendors because this request came from the end user, so I cannot provide live feedback.

Currently, we do not use Control-M to orchestrate workloads across multiple environments; all usage is on-premises.

I have not used the Control-M Python client or API because no API was within our scope, so I cannot comment with any correct feedback.

On-premises

My use case for Control-M is that it's a job scheduler for some jobs regarding data warehouse jobs and billing tasks for a telecommunication company, mainly monitoring jobs.

The best features of Control-M that I most appreciate are the integration and unification of different systems, such as BMC Remedy, integration with alerting systems, and the unification for the dashboard—something akin to one dashboard to monitor everything, which is very good. It can communicate with different platforms such as cloud, different systems, and OSes. I also appreciate the visualization; when we are designing a tree, a job tree, the option to visualize the dependencies and the mapping is very user-friendly.

Control-M has positively impacted my organization, particularly in the flexibility it offers in scheduling jobs. It has a nice feature called Calendar Integration that integrates with the company calendar to allow for the holidays and special events regarding the organization, not only the public calendar, but specifically for the organization.

There are some areas in Control-M that have room for improvement, particularly some constraints regarding the scripts, such as limitations in how they can be executed and integrated; it's not the normal scripting way in some cases. It's not in all cases, but in some cases, there are limitations and constraints in running the scripts. 

Additionally, Control-M requires some hardware resources in terms of system requirements; it consumes some hardware resources.

I have been using Control-M for about five years or more than five years.

The stability of Control-M gets a nine from me; although we faced one issue during this year regarding its stability, nine is good for it.

Scalability for Control-M is good; I would rate it an eight due to the high license cost, but it's scalable.

I would rate the technical support for Control-M a nine.

Positive

I have seen a return on investment with Control-M; we have the real-time alert feature. Our administrators get alerts for any job failures or emails for any issues, which saves our business. We also have reporting tools embedded in Control-M to generate daily reports and keep historical data. All of this handles our job, mainly the monitoring and automation for the scheduling. That's why we are using it.

My thoughts on the pricing of Control-M are that the cost of the license is very high. You have to implement some cost-saving measures, such as cleaning up jobs that are not required anymore on a monthly basis, in order to control the license, as the license is very costly. 

Additionally, there's a dependency on training; on a yearly basis, or whenever there's a new version, we need to schedule training and an official training from an accredited course center or from BMC itself, which is very costly.

I haven't dealt with other solutions or vendors on the market, but I can say Control-M is better than good when it comes to automation.

There is a good feature about the drag-and-drop; we can easily create and modify jobs with drag-and-drop in the interface, which makes it easier and user-friendly. BMC is a good strategic partner; they are helping us in mapping out our migration strategy, and we have a team from their side that supports us in our job. They know our case and they are specialized in our system, following up on our system.

I recommend Control-M to other users because it's user-friendly, it has a unified dashboard, and it's easy to schedule and use. However, there are certain limitations, especially for larger organizations, to afford the cost of the license and the cost of training. For a small organization, I wouldn't recommend it, as it would be very costly for them.

I would rate Control-M an eight out of ten, considering I have some concerns about the cost and the training, which is also related to cost. 

Hybrid Cloud

Control-M is one of the scheduling tools where we can schedule the jobs overnight in contact center operations. I do not have any hands-on experience with Genesys Cloud CX. I have experience with Genesys on-premise. So far, I have not had an opportunity to work on the cloud. As of now, I'm working in one of the ANZ banks, which is located in Australia, where we are migrating from on-premise to cloud, and it is in progress. In the last quarter, they initiated the migration's first phase. It will take around two years to complete the migration. Until then, we are part of on-premise engage support.

With Control-M, I use it to automate jobs overnight. For example, if there is database purging, we will automate the job. We will set up the job in Control-M, and the job will initiate the process. Overnight, it will complete the process as per the schedule. To reduce manual work, we automate the scheduling jobs in Control-M. Not only in the database, there are a couple of Genesys jobs as well. CMI data processing and a few dialer jobs are placed on Control-M. This is for dialing processing to update the contact history data and calling list data. We will upload this data to the BH, and then to Control-M. Control-M will process the job as per the schedule, say eleven o'clock or eleven thirty. There are three schedules in the present environment. It will run automatically. If there is any patching on the Control-M servers or database servers on the end-user application side, we have to stop the applications and stop the job. Once the activity is completed, we will resume the jobs and reorder the jobs.

In my organization, Control-M is deployed on the cloud, and they recently migrated from on-premise to cloud. The console is the same, but where we are trying to access the application, we are using the CPC, the cloud environment variables. We try to launch the bank using Azure.

Control-M is one of the best solutions to automate jobs, and it should optimize manual work. It processes with the automation scripts, which helps the contact center operations run smoothly. That is the main purpose we use it for: following the schedule for callbacks and automating the scripts where it is necessary for the operations.

From my operations end, Control-M is worthy. I am not sure about the exact pricing, but it is very valuable. Control-M is the only asset where we can run all contact center operations for automating the scheduled jobs. There is a separate team that handles all the admin and maintenance processes. We are authorized only for our applications, our Genesys applications. We have restricted access where we can access our Genesys and nice jobs. For these two clusters, we have visibility to access the jobs, and we can manage them from our application end.

The positive impact I have seen from using Control-M so far is quality. It has smooth operations and scalability. Even though it is more optimized, optimization is a necessary requirement. The benefits would be to reduce manual efforts. It is flexible to operate technically and to understand the platform and solutions.

Control-M could be improved or enhanced in some areas. There are several optimization solutions out there, but Control-M is feasible. We can easily adapt and learn it. It is easy to operate in scheduling, operating, and monitoring, so it is easy to access. Even though the user interface is simple, it is very familiar to techies who can handle it. If we had complete control of the console, then we could deep-dive on the restricted access and have the specifications of restrictions. That way, we would gain more knowledge on it. As of now, it is user-friendly.

To improve the scalability, the user access controls are important. For the failover jobs, where we can see the output and the log section, there are a lot of redundancy events. We would appreciate it if they could improve event generation and optimize the log events to read the applications. If they update that, it would be great. Our market is different from the outside. Based on the initial integrations and commitments, they have been configured in such a way. Different organizations might be following different norms.

I have used Control-M for the last four years.

I would rate the scalability of Control-M a seven out of ten. It is feasible.

We are not authorized to engage with customer support from Control-M. There are teams that do. Usually, if anything comes to us, we review it on our side. If there are any errors related to our application and if it is not, then we straight away engage with the Control-M team. They will reach out to the support team if required. Otherwise, if they have the knowledge to resolve it, they will resolve it.

Initially I worked on an HSBC project where they were using the same Control-M. In previous organizations, they were not using any scheduling tools. It was an insurance company. As of now, I have only used BMC Control-M.

I did not have the privileges for the complete initial installation and configuration of Control-M. I initiated our application jobs, where we initiate the scheduling of new jobs, making orders, progressive, and taking over from the monitoring phase. We can do that from a specific application cluster. For a complete installation, I think it would be easier. If we get control over things, it is easier for learning quickly.

With Control-M, I have learned that there are depending teams. Control-M is one of the best solutions. Each team has several jobs. Each application might have built the jobs. If there is any cycle, like patching windows, in the specific cluster, if our Genesys jobs are running on the cycle, those jobs might failover. There are dependency applications we have to engage with, and ask them to follow up. Dependent applications might be impacted. It is a challenge to communicate with the vendors and collaborate with all the relevant application stakeholders and inform them to put their jobs on hold. If there are any jobs related to them, we have to engage with them and follow up to hold the process. Once the activity is completed, we have to roll back the application and resume the jobs. There are some challenges while performing the monthly cycle patching. They recently migrated to cloud, but we may not involve them in the cloud. That would be the best solution on the cloud. All those optimizations mean we may not need to follow up with communications. We will just inform them via email or inform all the restricted users and permissions. It is easy. Once the cloud is in place, these are all challenges.

Overall, there are challenges in communicating with internal and external teams and coordinating. That requires manual resources to follow up on every cycle patching. Before Control-M, I would use something that is easily accessible and can integrate with BMC Control-M. Rather than other solutions, I would prefer Control-M.

When I was deploying the applications, there would be a lot of permission relevancy. Based on those permissions, we have to engage with the admins, the Control-M team who have the privileged access. We ask them to join us on the deployments, and we try to gain the privileges. We take over from our application configurations. Once it is completed, they revoke the access. For change deployments, we gain privilege access, admin privilege access, from those who are authorized in the bank. We have specific teams. We cannot control their applications. Each team has their own privileges. Whatever we require, we usually ask them to provide the privilege access, and we will take it from there. Overall, we are not authorized in Control-M, for four years in the market. We are just on the application side; we are end-to-end Genesys operations. There are a couple of jobs in Genesys, and those we deploy in Control-M. From our Genesys applications end, we have a pretty good experience using Control-M, where we can schedule the jobs, run the jobs, and troubleshoot the jobs if required. I have this much knowledge about scheduling, monitoring, and troubleshooting the jobs. For the specific applications, each application is required for the specific operations, permissions, and privileges. If I get the opportunity, we will go through it end-to-end. I have completed the certification, the initial Control-M certification, where we can gain access. I would rate my overall experience with Control-M a seven out of ten.

Control-M is a scheduling tool that I have been using for the last three years. Earlier I used Autosys as a primary scheduling tool. When I started Control-M, it was a new experience because Autosys was over the cloud and we used to log in to the browser. Control-M is specifically for the application where we are using it now. The good thing is that there are so many connectors available.

Although I have one year of Autosys experience, Control-M presents a vast opportunity for us as a developer. Currently, I am in a data warehousing project where all the tools are legacy tools such as Informatica, SalesScript, Control-M, and database. When we are moving to the cloud, Control-M is still valid and relevant. We are transferring our data to the cloud and using Control-M as a scheduler. We are not using native cloud scheduler to date because all the developers here are accustomed to it.

We are almost using around 60 to 70% of the features. Control-M is providing us with so much capability to use during our daily problem-solving.

The good thing is that there are so many connectors available. Control-M provides lots of features, and we are almost using around 60 to 70% of them. Control-M is providing us with so much capability to use during our daily problem-solving.

When I joined this project and was very new to Control-M, there was one problem that even the seniors were facing sometimes. Suppose you are using Informatica; there are lots of Informatica developers in the market or some other tools that are very known to everyone. Even though Control-M is used by lots of people, the documentation in the beginning was very hard to search for on Google. This is why we had to reach out to people who were experienced, and it was a tough job for us because a few functionalities are not properly written in the documentation.

Another area of improvement is related to multiple versions of Control-M being used. In dev, one version exists, and in production, one version exists. In production, the stable version is used. Sometimes when we change over, there are multiple domains in Control-M such as Planning, Monitoring, History, and Forecast Tools. When we hop from one domain to another, sometimes we open a job, and the detail dialog box or detail window is not able to open.

Some features which are hidden are not properly documented in Control-M itself, or maybe documented but not properly given or described with examples. This is a problem. Sometimes we are forced to connect to senior developers who have used it for five to six years or more to learn about it.

I have been using Control-M for the last three years.

There is no maintenance on my end. In the last three years, I have seen two upgrades that were done by the admin team. Control-M is using the new versions, and as a developer, I am using it.

Control-M processes about 10,000 jobs starting every day in our production environment, and adding new jobs is very simple. We don't feel any pressure on Control-M because it is processing multiple jobs in parallel.

Regarding contacting technical support about Control-M, we tried, but at that time, we didn't get any response. We reached out to our client head, described our problem, and received assistance.

As a developer, I created an account in the BMC community to get help support. We post there nearly because sometimes we need solutions very quickly, and we don't have time to connect with the guys in the Control-M help desk.

Neutral

Earlier I used Autosys as a primary scheduling tool. When I started Control-M, it was a new experience because Autosys was over the cloud.

Regarding the initial installation and setup of Control-M, I still have not installed it. I need to connect with one of my friends who are working in the ops team, as I am in the developer team. We never install Control-M here in this project.

I need to connect with one of my friends working in the ops team, as I am in the developer team. They have the access to install, uninstall, or configure anything.

Regarding pricing, I cannot comment. As a developer, this is not in my hands, and it was decided by the client.

If Control-M is selling their product to new customers who have never used anything, then who will support the new customer? The customer may not have the senior engineer who has used Control-M earlier, so the documentation matters. Control-M can improve this in the way that others have; for example, Databricks, Google Cloud, and Azure have so much documentation.

Whatever we wanted, we have it. Control-M is not executing anything; it is just a scheduler. It schedules an Informatica job, and Informatica is running on its operating system, managing all the logs, and showing us that the job is completed. I have not seen any lagging. This can be answered by the ops team better because as a developer, I own a few applications, and when they start and end, my duty is done. Overall, I would give Control-M a rating of eight out of ten.

On-premises

Other

We use Control-M for enterprise workload automation, cross-platform job scheduling, and orchestration of critical banking processes. One of our most important use cases is End-of-Day (EOD) processing, where Control-M coordinates and monitors complex job dependencies across IBM i, Linux, Windows, databases, and core banking applications. It provides centralized visibility, improves operational efficiency, and reduces manual intervention and operational risk.

Control-M has significantly improved our visibility into end-to-end business processes that span multiple platforms and systems. It has enabled faster identification and resolution of process execution issues through centralized monitoring and alerting. Additionally, by automating tasks that were previously performed manually, Control-M has substantially reduced operational errors, increased process reliability, and improved overall operational efficiency.

Control-M is a very robust solution. The product is stable and robust, providing reliability in operations.

One area where Control-M could be enhanced is by providing native scripting capabilities directly within the platform. Today, when we need to perform complex logic, data manipulation, or multi-step workflows, we must develop scripts externally (for example in Bash, Perl, Python, or other languages) on the target execution server and then invoke those scripts from Control-M. It would be valuable to have a built-in scripting environment that allows users to develop and execute workflow logic directly within Control-M, without relying on external scripts or operating system dependencies.

For example, a workflow could execute a query against an Oracle database, process the results, generate an Excel report, send it by email, and then trigger additional processes on other platforms such as IBM i (AS400), Windows, Linux, or cloud environments—all orchestrated through a native Control-M scripting language.

This functionality would reduce implementation complexity, improve portability, simplify maintenance, and provide greater flexibility for advanced process automation.
Additionally, greater access to variables, conditional logic, and workflow programming constructs within the platform would make Control-M even more powerful for organizations managing complex enterprise workloads.

Another area for improvement is licensing flexibility. Some capabilities that many customers may consider part of the core workload automation experience, such as extended log retention and archiving, currently require additional licensed components. A more integrated approach could provide greater value and simplify adoption.

One improvement that could be made to Control-M is the way jobs captured through SBMJOB on IBM i (AS/400) are handled. On the Extractor side, it would be helpful to have a more flexible and efficient way to manage extraction rules.

On the Interceptor side, having a single folder per AS/400 library is not very practical. It makes it more difficult to organize jobs, use conditions effectively, and manage our workflows, especially when they are affected by the New Day process

Our institution has been using Control-M since late 2022. However, I have been familiar with the product and its capabilities since 2010 through my professional experience managing enterprise workload automation and job scheduling environments.

Control-M is very stable for us and very robust.

Control-M has proven to be highly reliable and capable of supporting large-scale enterprise workloads. From a scalability perspective, I would rate it around 8 out of 10.
The platform scales well in terms of the number of jobs, workflows, and systems that can be managed centrally.

However, when integrating new applications or platforms, significant development effort is sometimes required on the target systems. Complex automation scenarios often require external scripts or custom integrations, which can increase implementation and maintenance effort.

For this reason, while Control-M is highly scalable from an operational and workload management standpoint, I believe there is room for improvement in simplifying integrations and providing more native workflow development capabilities. Reducing the dependency on external scripting would make onboarding new systems faster and further enhance the platform's scalability.

We typically work through our implementation partner, who serves as our primary point of contact for support and manages most interactions with BMC on our behalf.

Overall, I would rate BMC's technical support 7 out of 10. The support quality is generally good, and issues are ultimately addressed. However, we have observed longer-than-expected response times in some cases, particularly when incidents require escalation to higher support tiers. The escalation process can be slow and sometimes extends the overall resolution time.

Despite this, the expertise of the support teams has been satisfactory, and we have no major concerns regarding the quality of the technical assistance provided.

Yes. Prior to adopting Control-M, the institution used HP Operations Orchestration for the automation and orchestration of core business processes, as well as IBM Advanced Job Scheduler for IBM i workload scheduling. We transitioned to Control-M to consolidate workload automation across multiple platforms, improve end-to-end visibility, enhance monitoring and dependency management, and provide a more centralized and scalable enterprise scheduling solution.

The initial implementation was relatively complex. A significant part of the effort was not the Control-M installation itself, but the application and process changes required to adapt our existing workloads to operate within the Control-M framework.

Many of our existing processes had to be modified to integrate with Control-M, which increased the complexity of the initial deployment. This was especially true for legacy applications and workloads that were not originally designed for centralized workload automation.

However, once the foundational integration work was completed and standards were established, onboarding new applications and developing new automated workflows became much easier and more efficient. Today, implementing new processes is significantly more agile than during the initial adoption phase.

Yes. As the customer, we worked with a BMC Business Partner that provided both the software licensing and the implementation services. Our experience was positive overall, as they supported the deployment, knowledge transfer, and initial configuration activities, helping us successfully adopt the platform within our environment.

Control-M does not sell any perpetual licenses right now. I have to constantly renew my contract as a software subscription license. I think the pricing is a little high, but the solution is very robust and stable. I mean, I am paying for a Mercedes, and I am getting a Mercedes. My overall rating for Control-M out of ten for the solution overall is a seven. It is pricey, but it is stable. On the other hand, I have to work a lot to adapt my software to run with Control-M.

On-premises

Control-M is a scheduling software for scheduling jobs, and I have been using it for four to six years.

The best feature of Control-M is that it is a SAP module we use to schedule jobs in SAP for the delivery of goods, and mainly it's time-oriented. Time-oriented features and whatever reports we can fetch are very easy in Control-M.

It is easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for DataOps and DevOps. Currently, our next project is underway regarding the integration.

Control-M supports DataOps and DevOps initiatives by enabling us to update batches we get from the BMC tool, and we are currently using both for development and testing purposes. I hope it will be beneficial for us moving forward. If we implement a DevOps project in our application, it will save significant time by reducing human intervention as jobs will be scheduled automatically.

Currently, the solution saves us around 15 to 20% time during the primary phase.

Regarding areas for improvement, there are some additional features that you must give concerning the available features. The job scheduling time is a little bit consuming, and it should be simplified into very straightforward steps, such as a web-based application for all the scheduling jobs, as this would be helpful.

There are a few bugs I found while implementing Control-M, which are minor issues. We can minimize those bugs, such as applications not running at scheduled times. If there's a time schedule, we might get a report with logs, and 98% of the time it runs on time, with only 2% being slightly problematic regarding job execution.

Regarding stability, Control-M application is stable, and there is no second thought on this. If any error arises from a job that hasn't run, we simply need to address that issue. I rate its stability as eight.

I rate scalability as eight.

I rate the support for the solution as a seven, around 7 to 8, specifically a 7.5.

I have not yet migrated from Broadcom or Redwood or any similar solutions, but we have conducted workshops and other preparations for that.

It is simple to integrate Control-M, particularly in the cloud. We need to have the host or an agent to run commands with the application name, and it is comparatively easy when compared to others.

It's not cheap; it's a little bit costlier compared to others due to database processing and finishing jobs, which have some dependencies, so I don't think it's cheaper.

Control-M, which is the BMC workload automation tool, is mainly used for scheduling. When we integrate Control-M into a SAP basis, we can automatically fetch records. We have to schedule and run jobs at a particular time, going through phases such as initial phase, build phase, and delivery phase. In that process, we handle job scheduling, workload management, creating OS and file transfer of database jobs, and reporting and configuration management involving automation capabilities.

Currently, our client is using BMC's Control-M software, so we must go as per the client's requirements. We are not in a position to decide whether we can proceed with it or not because the client uses Control-M for batch scheduling.

I definitely recommend BMC; Control-M is excellent for handling very large batch scheduling jobs. We have many jobs to complete in our daily activities, and this is one of the best tools. I would also recommend it to my partners for different clients who need batch scheduling; Control-M is a very good tool or application.

Primarily for email and SNMP, as well as monitoring tools, we use Control-M compared to other solutions or vendors. I would rate this product an overall eight out of ten.

On-premises

I primarily use Control-M for scheduling workload automation to ensure that jobs and schedules run according to the specified time and dependencies across different environments including Windows, UNIX, and SAP.

Multiple servers previously required jobs to run sequentially on a manual basis. Control-M provided a user interface where agents could be installed to run jobs sequentially rather than manually. Once the Windows job completed, the UNIX job ran, followed by the SAP job, and then the Windows job ran again.

Control-M's pipeline integrations are a valuable tool that is utilized on a daily basis.

Control-M's best features are the ease of scheduling, the user interface, and the ability to integrate with numerous tools.

The user interface is intuitive and the primary integration utilized is ServiceNow, which helps create incidents and establish a data pipeline between ServiceNow and Control-M.

Control-M has ensured that schedules and job batches run on time with no organizational impact or delays, including critical processes such as payroll.

Since implementing Control-M, a significant reduction has been noticed in billing process times. Billing processes that previously took approximately two hours are now completed within one hour, resulting in substantial savings of full-time equivalents.

Control-M pricing is on the higher end, and if the cost could be reduced, it would be beneficial.

I have been using Control-M for around two years.

Control-M is stable.

Control-M's scalability is strong, and the support for scaling is also strong. Scalability has not been an issue.

Support for Control-M is excellent.

IBM Tivoli was used previously before switching to Control-M, which provided a better solution and superior integration capabilities.

The deployment of Control-M took three months.

Two hundred fifty staff are required for deployment and maintenance, divided into teams at levels L1, L2, and L3. Some team members are responsible for monitoring, some for creation of new jobs, and others manage the administrative tasks of the controller.

A return on investment has been achieved. After deployment and product stabilization, staffing was reduced from thirty full-time equivalents to twenty full-time equivalents, resulting in a significant reduction. Additionally, because jobs have been streamlined, many manual processes have been automated, resulting in savings of approximately five hundred thousand pounds.

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Control-M are good.

Other options were evaluated before choosing Control-M, including Redwood RunMyJobs.

Control-M support is excellent and the user interface is outstanding. For those seeking a stable and dominant tool in the market for scheduling and workload automation, Control-M is the recommended choice. This review has been given a rating of nine out of ten.

On-premises