What advice do you have for others considering BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer?

The impacts that Control-M has caused for my organization have very visibly increased operational reliability. Before Control-M, most jobs were script-based, such as cron jobs, and there was a lot of dependency on manual monitoring. Until the jobs were reported as failed by the business teams, we would not have had visibility over them. Now with Control-M, we have an end-to-end workflow which is centrally managed. If a node has failed, it sends notifications, and there is a lot of error handling built in. There are multiple automatic retries, reducing human intervention. In terms of issue detection and resolution itself, we have dashboards configured that enable us to get alerted even before the businesses are impacted or the businesses report the impact, allowing us to solve issues proactively. This has also increased productivity improvement. When one of our reporting downstreams processes data and uploads it to our systems, it used to take an hour for the data to actually reflect. Businesses would notice missing data in the systems when they consumed the data. Now, within the duration when the job runs, it counts the number of rows we have, which means if the job fails, it is notified immediately within that 15-minute duration, helping us rerun the job. This means issues that were reported in an hour's time now get reported within the duration of the job running, which is within 15 minutes, leading to a significant improvement in how we see that the reports are being run. There is a huge user base in our organization, with about 3,000 users using Control-M. The levels of usage vary; some have read access and just view the jobs, while others perform deployments in terms of job scheduling and other tasks. We extensively use Control-M to schedule multiple banking-related jobs in varied fields, not just the contact center. We definitely intend to increase the usage. The biggest lesson I have learned from using Control-M is that it is a best-in-class workload automation platform, effective in building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring complex workflows, especially for critical applications such as DataOps and enterprise DevOps environments where reliability and SLAs play a major role. The cross-system orchestration matters significantly more than speed alone, as it ensures jobs run accurately and efficiently. My advice for others looking into using Control-M is that no matter how many systems you have, Control-M is the most competent and enterprise-scalable tool available. With various requirements, it is extremely reliable in monitoring and scheduling, making it an excellent choice. I would rate Control-M an 8 out of 10 overall.

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.

With job scheduling and workflow automation, this automation has increased the scheduling time by fifty percent. The monitoring task has been reduced by twenty to thirty percent. Instead of going on multiple tabs, we can view it at once. Workflow management through the technologies is a bit of a complex task. As we have used this, we can implement it. For new users, it might be a bit complex. Currently, we have been using this for the past six months. We are seeing good, positive results. The automation workflow is also good, and the batch scheduling jobs are definitely good. We will still want to try it on different platforms and then decide on any further usage or increase in usage of Control-M. In production, this workflow is mainly through the monitoring and reporting features in Control-M. We check the job status to make sure the scheduled process completes successfully within the expected time window. If the job fails or is delayed, we review the logs again, analyze the dependency chain, and rerun or troubleshoot the job if needed. This helps ensure that the overall production workflow continues without impacting downstream processes. One piece of advice I would give is to spend time planning the job dependencies and workflows carefully during the initial stages. If the workflow is well-structured, Control-M can automate processes very efficiently and reduce manual intervention repeatedly. Overall, Control-M has been a reliable solution for managing automated workflows and scheduled jobs. It provides good visibility into job execution and helps teams maintain operational stability. I gave Control-M a rating of eight because it is a very reliable solution for scheduling jobs and automating workflows, and it helps me manage complex job dependencies and provides good monitoring capabilities, which makes it easier to track and troubleshoot batch processing. The reason I did not rate it higher is that the interface can feel complex for new users, and the initial setup and learning curve could be improved. With some improvements to the user interface and onboarding experience for new users, it could become even more effective.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Control-M is that automation is very convenient, with workload automation and job scheduling being easy and maintaining jobs in Control-M being very manageable. My advice for others considering Control-M is that it is definitely a reliable option since it is convenient, flexible, and stable. Control-M is extensively used as we have deployed it for many asset teams, and we plan to increase its usage as we are in discussions with different teams to migrate their manual activities into Control-M. I would rate this review as a nine out of ten.

Deployment is on a Windows platform in a high availability environment. I would recommend Control-M to others looking to implement it, but it is essential to ensure it fits your environment, so doing a proof of concept is always beneficial.

Nearly 100 users are using Control-M in our organization. We previously used BMC Eclipse, which is a Software as a Service solution, for three years. Control-M has enabled us to transition from mainframe to the cloud environment with Azure. We are using this on a video conference basis. My overall rating for Control-M is 8 out of 10.

My advice to others looking into using Control-M is that it is easy to use, flexible, and stable. The features in Control-M are good, and the GUI of Control-M is actually very fantastic. Currently, 500 users are using Control-M in my organization, where the majority of them are from the application team and a few are admin and schedulers. Control-M is currently used extensively, and while we do not have plans to increase its usage, we are using Control-M in different domains. The biggest lesson I have learned from using Control-M is that it makes automation easy. It is easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for my data ops and DevOps processes as things change. I have automated activities on the Linux server while integrating with Control-M. I would rate this product a 10.

I would advise others looking into using Control-M that it is a good tool if you want workload automation to be done and if you want to save time. I have given this review a rating of seven out of ten.

For those considering using Control-M, I would advise it is an excellent choice for managing workflows and orchestrating jobs as per project demands. I have been using Control-M in various roles over the past 10 plus years, and I recommend it, provided you understand processes and setups. I give this review a rating of 9.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is my favorite product, so while I would typically rate it around 9.7 or 9.8, I would ultimately assign it a rating of 10.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a ten.

Regarding workflow orchestration, I haven't quite used that part of BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer yet. I am totally satisfied with the functionality of the BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer product. I would definitely recommend BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer solution to other users. Overall, I would rate BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer an eight out of ten.

Since I'm not the vendor, I'm not going to disclose that information. The product has enough options to disable features that could expose proprietary information. One feature is that I can look at the output of a job, however, that can be disabled with security. It integrates LDAP and Active Directory authentication processes, making it secure and compliant. Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. We are just customers and not partners or resellers.

I would definitely recommend Control-M because it is a reliable tool expected to remain relevant for the next twenty to thirty years. I rate it ten out of ten.

I would rate BMC Control-M a nine out of ten. Build self service portals using the existing API endpoints to make provisioning easier.

Control-M is not just for file transfer; it integrates with all file-related jobs in downstream systems, including file generation, file transfer, and file usage. These processes run smoothly together, allowing us to meet KPH, PAs, and VNSLS SLAs. If you use a different tool for MFT, without proper control, there could be time delays. This might require adding buffer time between the file generation, file transfer, and file usage jobs, causing delays. With Control-M, there won't be any delays, as all three jobs run together seamlessly, ensuring no time lapse. Compared to script-based or other file transfer methods, Control-M offers a more streamlined process that doesn’t require extra support for file transfer tasks. Those managing the Control-M tool can handle file transfers and perform necessary checks. The integration includes a web or self-service portal, allowing customers to track file transfers and check their status, even from a web view. Unlike other tools where only the production support or technical team can monitor file transfers, Control-M allows users with appropriate credentials to verify whether a file transfer was successful. This is especially beneficial for reporting tool users like PowerBI, Cognos, or BusinessOptics, where data files are transferred from the source system to the reporting tool. Report users who refresh data manually can check if the file transfer was successful and, if necessary, rerun the job, ensuring their reports are updated on time without needing support from the technical team. Control-M offers excellent file management. In my current customer environment, more than 90% of file transfers are handled by Control-M, with only 5% to 10% done using internal mechanisms within AWS or Azure for cloud-specific transfers. For transfers within AWS, between applications, a small portion of the files is transferred outside Control-M. However, most file transfers go through Control-M, and the customer is satisfied because they don't need to pay extra for the product or support team. Control-M also handles email service and business view integration, allowing users to monitor and resolve file size, space, network, protocol, certification, and public key problems on-premises without additional support. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I recommend the solution to those who plan to use it. I rate the overall product an eight out of ten.

I rate the solution as a seven.

I definitely recommend the solution for automating manual workloads. You get good visibility for jobs and a dashboard to maintain things. There are no challenges and all of our customers are happy with the solution. I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I'd advise looking at the roles and responsibilities of your team and your IT topology and assessing whether or not this product would fit into your basic production environment and/or some type of standalone system. There are multitudes of products out there, and some people even use homegrown products. It's based on your business needs and how you want to meet the needs of the end users and the consumers of the file transfers. I'd rate it a nine out of ten. We haven't had any issues with it.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. The solution is good, but its current functionalities can be upgraded. I recommend the solution to users considering it.

I would recommend others follow the instructions given by the documentation and use it. That way, it is very simple to use. I rate BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer a ten out of ten.

We are mediators between the vendor and customers. We are using around version nine. I'm not sure of the exact version number. I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. I do need more time with the product. However, I haven't seen the product causing many issues. It's been sustainable, and we've liked having all operations in one single cluster.

If you are starting from scratch, I would strongly recommend the Control-M Matrix, which is BMC's current SaaS solution. It is my understanding that it is a lot less expensive. I haven't used it myself, but based on the prices, it's likely to be nearly half the price of what we currently pay. That simplifies your life because any upgrades to the Control-M server are handled by BMC. You go to the cloud, and they give you control and a server, and you don't have to worry about upgrades and such. The disadvantage is that BMC now has your data, and they do not currently have a SaaS solution available in Switzerland. I believe it is only in the United States that things can become complicated, and BMC would then have complete control over your licensing. They'd be able to see exactly how much you're using because we currently report how much we use. I believe it would work well for BMC because they would see a genuine reflection on usage and could then say, "You should be paying a lot more for what you are doing with the product." The SaaS solution is called Matrix Control-M. If I were starting from scratch today, that's what I'd look at first, but some people might want to keep it on-premises. Control-M obviously has agents that will work in the Amazon and whatever cloud, the Google Cloud, but that's a different story. Where you can have it on-premises but have your agents somewhere in the cloud. That's not a solution I've considered, but I suppose it's becoming more popular. I would rate BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer a nine out of ten.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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.

I rate BMC Control-M a nine out of ten, because of the stability and the customer support. The only reason I wouldn't rate it a ten out of ten is because their licensing is a bit expensive. Otherwise, BMC Control-M is the best tool I have ever worked on. I would absolutely recommend this solution to new clients. Lots of new clients are converting to this Control-M tool because of the stability and the support model. So I wouldn't only recommend it externally, but, internally, we also recommend it to our clients. If they can compromise on cost a little, then this is the best tool to go with.

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.

I would rate BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer a nine out of ten. Our clients are happy with this solution.

This product is not feature-rich but it is a solid file-transfer solution. I would say that the features they have now are very good, although the product is not complete because you cannot send files. I would recommend it but at the same time, I think that everybody needs to test it and see if it meets their needs. The supported features are very good but obviously, if there is a protocol or something else that you need that isn't supported then it will not be suitable. I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The work is really on the configuration side. Installation is not a problem these days. Push it out as much as possible, to have a dedicated team and to decide that you're going to investigate enterprise completely and figure out where the automation will pay the quickest dividends because the return on investment is very quick on these kinds of products. Once you start to use them and you realize how useful they are, then you really make a big difference to the company and it can save a lot of money for many large organizations. Obviously there will be some situations where it doesn't make sense to use it because you're happy with your setup. But there are numerous elements of the business that would benefit that you might just have to get out to your users and ask how you can help improve the way day-to-day work is dealt with. I would rate this product a nine out of 10.