Control-M - Application And Data Workflow Orchestration

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. 

I have used Control-M  for database, SAP, web services, and file transfers. Additionally, I use it for normal scripts.

We had a customer who was using cron jobs to handle their workflows. With cron jobs, they faced problems related to SLA. When something failed, it took them time to identify issues, and sometimes they missed incidents which resulted in P1 situations in production environments. They transitioned to Control-M  based on its features related to SLA and workflow visibility, which significantly helped them.

The GUI is the best feature, along with the file transfer capabilities. These are the two main components I use on a daily basis. Through GUI or CCM , we get control of all the components, which I really appreciate. 

While I cannot specify exact business impact numbers, frequent P1 incidents in the production environment typically indicate monetary losses.

While it can be used for DevOps purposes, we haven't used it for that purpose.

Support is one aspect that they really need to improve. Though we receive support for current versions, the challenge arises when working in large organizations with legacy workflows or applications, typically 10 to 20% of the total. 

When these legacy environments have outdated OS and face production issues from a Control-M perspective, BMC support states it's not supported anymore. Recently, we needed documentation for an old component during a production issue, and their response was that they couldn't help as it wasn't supported. Documentation should be maintained for all versions since they provided the application.

I have a total experience of around 19 years, with approximately 13 or 14 years specifically with Control-M. I started with 6.4.

Control-M is pretty stable. There are occasional issues, yet nothing major, and most issues are not caused by the software itself.

In on-premises environments, scalability features are limited. Planning and resource allocation must be done at the start. If workflows increase from 1,000 to 10,000, redeployment of the application becomes necessary. Database and application node planning must account for anticipated workflow volumes from the beginning.

We have approximately 1,000 users.

Support is an area that requires significant improvement.

Positive

I haven't migrated from other solutions.

I have limited experience with TWS. The TWS version we used was primarily command-line based, and its GUI capabilities were not comparable to Control-M.

The deployment process is straightforward. The environment's complexity affects deployment time rather than the software itself. Basic DB and Linux box installation takes approximately a week. The planning phase for system connectivity and task execution locations requires additional time.

The system requires maintenance with patches released once or twice yearly.

We are implementing this as a customer.

I can provide a general perspective on ROI. Manual tasks require human effort and are prone to errors, which Control-M helps eliminate. However, I cannot provide specific ROI figures.

Control-M is expensive and not cheap at all.

I have conducted technical assessments for several market solutions, though not in great depth. We explored alternative solutions due to Control-M's high cost rather than its technical limitations. My assumption is that all current enterprise-level scheduling or workload automation software provides similar technical functionalities and features.

We're a customer.

I would recommend Control-M for its performance capabilities. While cost-cutting is prevalent everywhere and Control-M's cost is on the higher side, from a technical perspective, it ranks among the top three solutions. 

The review rating for Control-M is nine out of ten.

My use case with Control-M  spans three different organizations, primarily in the banking domain throughout my experience, working with major banks. Now I am in the telecom industry, where major telecom companies use Control-M  for their operations.

The best features in Control-M include the ability to schedule scripts at any time, and if they are not running, there is an option to run them again without any manual intervention in case any execution fails, plus you can get failure logs and alerts directly if a job fails. 

It's a user-friendly tool. I've used other solutions which are not as user-friendly. It's easy to understand.

It is simple to integrate Control-M with technologies for your data operations and DevOps processes, especially as we upgrade this tool to the latest versions, providing more options for integration with cloud solutions. It is not very challenging if you are skilled with Control-M and integration aspects, such as using Control-M APIs to connect your applications and action on jobs or run scripts through API calls as well.

I see major improvements from Control-M, specifically since I started with version seven, and now we are on version 9.21. I have seen major changes, such as transitioning from a thick-client version to an online self-service version accessible through the Internet, alongside multiple UI changes.

Currently, there is room for improvement in the cost aspect compared to other tools. Control-M could be more user-friendly, and while it is user-friendly now, it can be improved to be more intuitive.

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

I experience very little downtime with Control-M and would rate its stability eight out of ten.

Regarding scalability, I would rate it around eight out of ten.

Control-M requires maintenance, and we need support from BMC; it would be beneficial if BMC invested more in providing customer support to users. 

I assess BMC services for helping my team with migrations and overall strategy as very good; when we raise cases to them, they help us understand and provide valuable feedback, and I would rate this support an eight out of ten. My relationship with BMC is more transactional.

Positive

I did not migrate from Broadcom, CA, Redwood, or any other similar solutions in any of those companies.

The deployment is a bit complex. 

It has saved us time and money.

When compared with other tools, Control-M is a bit costly. That said, it provides the best results, and since it is very user-friendly, investing in it gives you great outcomes. I'd rate the pricing seven out of ten.

If I compare Control-M with other solutions or vendors on the market, it stands out for its security and is the best in the market as of now due to its functionality and cost-effectiveness, which usually comes from the total number of executions in your organization, making it a great choice for daily activities.

I would recommend Control-M to other users. Although it is slightly more expensive on the market compared to other tools, it is very user-friendly and includes multiple features, such as integration with other applications. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Control-M a seven.

In my company, we use Control-M  as the main scheduling and automation tool for ETL processes. It orchestrates data flows from AIX servers to Linux and Windows platforms, integrates with Informatica PowerCenter  for data transformation, and also manages dependencies with several network-based applications.

Control-M has significantly improved our organization by providing centralized scheduling and monitoring of ETL workflows. It allows us to automate complex job dependencies across different platforms, including AIX, Linux, and Windows. With Control-M, we can integrate seamlessly with Informatica PowerCenter  for data transformation, ensuring that data pipelines run consistently and on time.

The first aspect is in real-time monitoring. Control-M  has good visibility of thousands of jobs, and normally runs at the scheduled time. Control-M scheduling has always executed according to a different schedule, except when incidents occur, such as storage vapor.

I think Control-M has room for improvement because it should refresh more frequently.

I have been working in my current position for four months as a monitoring operator.

I would rate the stability of Control-M a 9.5 out of 10.

I would rate the scalability of Control-M at 9.5 out of 10.

I would rate technical support for Control-M at nine point five because it provides separate level error classification, which is a very important feature. The separate level error classification helps in determining the severity of issues.

Positive

Many engineers in our organization use Control-M, including both vendors and internal employees, approximately 100 in total.

I would rate Control-M overall a nine out of ten.

Currently, I'm working as a senior software engineer in HSBC. Here  in my organization, we are using Control-M  as a batch job scheduler. We use folders, calendars, and templates in Control-M  for a number of applications. On a daily basis, as I mentioned earlier, it is a batch job scheduler; we support this application for a number of markets, including seven markets in the APAC region, five markets in MENA, and another market called AOC China. Control-M is used for all these markets, which total around 13 markets. Daily, we have batches where we use shell scripting code in Control-M for routine work by creating a job that runs based on the timings specified. 

These jobs execute commands, and we receive logs. Regarding folders and calendars, we manage our schedules based on holidays, weekends, and month-end requirements with various calendars to avoid running jobs at unwanted times. For example, we have calendars for the first day of the month and for month-end reports. Folders help organize jobs categorized based on APAC, MENA, and AOC China regions, with each folder having jobs executed based on their dependencies and specified timings.

Control-M is very easy to use. There shouldn't be any technical knowledge required for using Control-M. I have experience with AutoSys, and I find Control-M easier to understand. There is no need for technical knowledge to use Control-M, making it more user-friendly compared to other tools in the market. The initial setup for Control-M is easier. The support we receive from BMC is wonderful. They contact us promptly and resolve any issues quickly.

There are a few suggestions for improvement. Currently, the history module captures only seven days of job execution data, and if we had at least 30 days available, that would be beneficial for investigating any issues. Additionally, in the monitoring module, we can only view 15 days of statistics for job execution, which includes details such as start time, end time, and runtime. I recommend that if we could have 30 days of statistics available, it would greatly enhance the Control-M user experience.

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

The product is stable.

The scalability of Control-M rates as a nine out of ten.

Whenever we encounter any issue with Control-M and contact BMC, the support we receive from them is wonderful. They contact us promptly and resolve any issues quickly. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate their support a nine.

Positive

The initial setup for Control-M is easier than other solutions.

Comparing Control-M to other batch job schedulers in the market, I would give it an eight out of ten based on my experience.

Problems with Control-M can arise depending on the data center where the servers are hosted. There are occasional server down issues, which occur rarely and usually last only for a few minutes, after which everything is fine. We are customers of BMC, not partners.

I would definitely recommend Control-M to others because, based on my experience with other tools, BMC is recommended over others. Control-M is easier to understand, with no technical knowledge required. A quick glance at the modules shows that job creation and management is straightforward. Self-script developers can quickly familiarize themselves with Control-M compared to other tools available.

Overall, I rate Control-M eight out of ten.