Control-M SaaS

What do you like best about the product?

Ease of Implementation, Customer Support, Ease of Integration

What do you dislike about the product?

there is no such kind, but we are little late in cloud journey

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

automate so many manual processes and in detailed error visibility to find the process easier

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)

What do you like best about the product?

Integration with multi cloud platform and a number of different applications which gives a centralized view of entire workflows.

What do you dislike about the product?

- Their inability to support scheduling Legacy app servers.
- Pricing is on a higher side.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

- Helps maintain SLA for workflows.
- Helps identify the issues more quickly.
- Proactive alerts for Critical batch chains.

What do you like best about the product?

I like Control-M's ability for Hybrid Multicloud orchestration, which helps in managing a mix of old mainframes and modern cloud infrastructure within our bank. The Job As Code feature is beneficial as well. The Centralized Visibility and Auditing capabilities are also valuable, providing a centralized place to connect our systems, audit, monitor, and execute tasks effectively.

What do you dislike about the product?

It's quite complex at the learning stage, especially for beginners. Also, the cost is high. If I have a chance to improve it, my focus would be first on the native reporting tool, which definitely needs some enhancements.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

I use Control-M to reduce manual effort, system overload, downtime, and high operational cost. It centralizes job scheduling, provides hybrid multicloud orchestration, and offers centralized visibility and auditing, connecting our old and new IT infrastructures efficiently.

What do you like best about the product?

I like the user interfaces of Control-M, both the FAT Client and the Web UI. I appreciate that Control-M provides a lot of integrations by BMC, and I also like having the ability to create my own integrations using the Application Integrator.

What do you dislike about the product?

Sometimes it would be nice to have an integration provided by BMC. Or the integrations that are provided should have more functionalities. The Workload Archiver of Control-M could be improved by including more log information and keeping the logs revision-compliant. The MFT/E part of Control-M is missing a high-availability solution and a lot of modern MFT-functions. There could be improvements in regards to system requirements.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Control-M solves gaps between different applications, databases, and file transfers.