Over the years, I have worked with various firms to install and configure this system. The primary use case is automation, but the file transfer feature is also a valuable integration. Many people quickly understand the file transfer aspect because it is easy to set up. Therefore, automation is our top priority, followed by file transfer as a close second.

The solution has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to point to a single screen and say, 'That's the state of play in our batch operations.' Most sites do things in the daytime, so overnight, there'll be some batch processing running, and then they'll get file updates in the morning. If you can just look at the screen and see we're running 30,000 jobs overnight and this is where the problems are, you can just point to the three little red boxes that are what we need to fix. It's a very good way of being able to tie everything together and say, 'We know what's running, what's not running, and where the problems are.' Also, statistically, you can go back into history and say, 'This thing has been failing several times in the last three months, and we can see where our issues are and where we need to concentrate.'

The best features of Control-M include the fact that you can easily connect different platforms. For anybody coming to it, if you needed to script a solution that connected Windows and Unix and mainframe, that would be difficult. But with Control-M, you can just sit back and connect a COBOL program running on the mainframe, trigger something on the Windows platform, then do a file transfer on Linux. That's all basically just drag and drop. You can just indicate that these lines between these boxes perform those actions. The fact that you can tie different platforms together, including the cloud now, which many people are starting to use extensively, is very helpful.

Integrating Control-M with technologies for Data Ops and DevOps processes can be easy or difficult depending on the site. Many people have embedded methods for these things, so it can be difficult sometimes at various different sites to get it to integrate. It's not the tech or Control-M itself that's the issue; it tends to be the processes at different locations. It is very good at handling DevOps and the change management on the operations side.

Areas of Control-M that have room for improvement include the reporting feature. The reporting on Control-M hasn't changed much over the years, although it is in a different internal format. It used to be Crystal Reports, and now they've upgraded that. It would be better if that was really flexible where you could define your own reports. You can customize it a little bit, but when people come in with complex questions, you should be able to use that tool and access anything in the database.

Control-M has two internal databases that are core to the product. You can go in and do your own SQL queries against the database, but this reporting tool should really be able to do everything that you can do with SQL, and give you good information. Instead, you end up having to export to spreadsheets and then change and update them. It can be very labor-intensive to get this information out.

Other than the reporting, they've addressed most things over the years. Control-M is a tool that's been around for more than 30 years, so they have actually fixed most issues that you would encounter. They have a request for enhancement process that most users have sent requests to, but it doesn't move very quickly. The other challenge is they're supporting so many different platforms; BMC just wants it to be a trouble-free release. When users request new features, such as improved reporting, BMC's priority remains maintaining a clean-running system.

I have been using the product for approximately 24 years.

Control-M is very stable. I would rate it a nine out of ten. It very rarely has anything that goes wrong. It has to be stable; if it wasn't stable, then we wouldn't be using it.

Control-M is scalable for business requirements and needs. On the SaaS side, they've given certain limits which wouldn't allow for moving the entire batch currently to their cloud-based solution. But on-premises, it is completely scalable. Other customers are running a million jobs per day without issues. If you did have issues, you could add servers on the side that would handle the extra workload.

We have around 20 active users logging into the system daily. These users are responsible for managing the cache within the system. This leads to approximately 500 users who receive the messages. Additionally, there are millions of customer names involved. In summary, there are about 20 users logging into the system and around 500 business application users receiving the data.

Their support is excellent. If you encounter an issue that affects your business, you can call them at three o'clock in the morning, and they will help you find a solution.

I would rate the technical support a solid nine out of ten.

Positive

I have always used Control-M. I've worked at sites where they've installed Control-M as new and then migrated various things from CronTab. CronTab is just a Linux tool that comes with the Linux boxes to schedule, but it's the Linux native scheduling. It tends to be quite simple these days. BMC supplies scripts to do the conversion. Problems start to arise when people have created their own solutions on their own platforms, where 90% of the stuff is easily migrated, but 10% will be something specific to Broadcom or other schedulers, requiring script changes in Control-M. The same situation occurs when moving from Control-M, as people often leverage specific features that become problematic when trying to move to different solutions.

It's on-premises. The organization I work for has IT operations in about 60 different countries around the world. We use Control-M in at least 15 or 16 of those locations, and each site can be quite different. For instance, in Paris, they only use it for the mainframe. Our main office is in Germany, where they are starting to use the test version, and they would like us to explore the SaaS version as well. 

If I were to start looking into this, I think a hybrid approach would be the most logical way to organize things. This would allow us to have a clear view of both our on-premises and cloud environments, enabling a gradual migration to the cloud instead of making a major switch all at once. I've seen BMC presentations on this, and it looks promising. The advantage is that I wouldn't have to worry about where each workload is processed; everything can be monitored and managed from a single screen, which is very powerful.

Additionally, I've spoken with users who utilize cloud workloads, and their primary concern is cost rather than the specific platform. Control-M is effective at managing this. For example, if you're planning to deploy a workload on a specific server, the scripts can easily handle the transition to Amazon's cloud the following week. If a provider has a special offer in a month, like Google, it's straightforward to switch our workload to run there instead. With Control-M, this process is transparent and uncomplicated.

The maintenance is complicated. There is patching to consider on both the Control-M service side and for the agents and modules. When it comes to file transfers, you need a specific module from the Managed File Transfer (MFT) service. Typically, every few weeks, we need to install a new set of updates, whether due to a security issue or the introduction of a new feature. If you go to the Application Center (AC) and use that version with your account, you don’t have to worry about caching, as they manage that on the systems. You could use it in a controlled manner, perhaps on a Sunday morning. However, using a basic version might present some challenges for us.

Usually, the Linux team handles the patching, but it's also necessary to conduct tests. Sometimes, the latest version can alter certain behaviors that might not be acceptable in a production environment, so testing is crucial. It does require a separate environment dedicated to that. Overall, managing patches is a significant task. One key selling point of the SaaS solution is that you won’t have to worry about it in the future; BMC takes care of that for you. However, some of my colleagues are concerned that implementing a SaaS version could mean losing a significant portion of their work to automation, particularly the patching responsibilities. It’s definitely a complex situation.

It's hard for me to determine, but at the current location, we did conduct a study. We use Control-M to run a data warehouse, and an external company evaluated our setup. They concluded that the way we operate with our existing tools and at our current scale is actually more efficient and cost-effective than purchasing a packaged data warehouse product, like Informatica.

At my previous employer, we performed a similar study, and the results showed that the product paid for itself within the first year. Moving forward, it continued to be very cost-effective. The benefits tend to be hidden—people often overlook them because these processes run in the background, handling file transfers and other tasks. If I had to hire a developer to script these operations, those costs would be substantial, along with ongoing maintenance.

With Control-M, you define the processes once and then let them run. The operations team can monitor it, which means it integrates seamlessly with existing systems. In terms of return on investment, it pays for itself quite quickly. However, because these advantages are often invisible, people don't fully appreciate the costs and savings involved. You really need to consider the expenses of hiring a developer or operations staff specifically for these tasks. If you use Control-M, those costs effectively disappear, and people tend to just assume that everything is functioning as it should. It's definitely worth noting the return on investment. I'm sure BMC would be happy to provide those figures, demonstrating that it quickly offsets its initial costs, even if there can be significant upfront expenses at times.

Pricing for Control-M depends on the licensing model, with different options such as the per-agent model or the per-job model. BMC is phasing out the per-agent model in favor of per-job licensing, which can be expensive. The Control-M Helix SaaS version will only be available with per-job licensing. Currently, some implementations use a flat rate based on the number of agents. The shift to per-job licensing could have significant cost implications.

Control-M tends to be more expensive compared to other solutions, but users get great value from it. Organizations have invested considerable effort in developing for Control-M, making migration away from it less desirable. Competitors may offer fewer features at a reduced price, which could be a deciding factor for some companies.

Years ago, I was involved in a lot of Proof of Concepts (POC). Back then, IBM's Tivoli and Control-M were quite similar and difficult to differentiate. However, over the years, it’s become clear that IBM has not developed Tivoli to the level that Control-M has achieved. In my opinion, Control-M is now the clear market leader.

These days, you never know what new solutions might emerge that could disrupt the market. Nevertheless, Control-M has a robust footprint—it can integrate with many legacy systems, making it hard for competitors to come close to its capabilities.

While there may be newer solutions out there, I’m not fully aware of all the latest developments. Control-M does have advanced workload balancing in the cloud, but I still believe it remains the top choice for me. I may be biased since I've always worked with Control-M, but when you compare it to alternative tools, you often question whether they can accomplish specific tasks or integrate with various third-party products. You soon discover that many alternatives simply don’t offer the same level of functionality or integration, and even if they plan to provide those features in the future, they haven't yet delivered them.

Overall, I am quite confident in saying that Control-M is the number one product in the market. Of course, if you visit a potential customer site and they have unique requirements—especially if they are primarily Windows-based—they might find another product that better meets their needs than Control-M. However, in general terms and across most scenarios, I firmly believe that Control-M is the market leader in 90% of cases.

Our relationship with BMC has been transformative. However, I get the feeling that we are moving towards a more transactional relationship. Previously, they were very concerned about us using the products, growing with them, and deriving value from them. This was a refreshing attitude from a software company. That said, they are restructuring, and I get the impression that in the future, they may want to accelerate revenue generation. So, the nature of our relationship could change. At present, though, it remains transformational. They have been very helpful, with excellent support, but who knows what the future holds?

I absolutely would recommend BMC Control-M to other users. My only reservation would be with the new licensing structure. If you are going to be paying per job and your batch process was very granular without the ability to restructure, then cost might be an issue. Also, it is the serious high-end scheduling solution, so smaller enterprises might want to consider whether they need all the features that come with Control-M. For small or medium-sized enterprises, different solutions might be more appropriate. 

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

Control-M is similar to Stonebranch and Redwood. It is a workload automation system that automates steps typically defined by humans. Previously, if humans performed 100 steps to complete a task, they can now input these steps into Control-M and let the system run them automatically. 

The most common use case is in banking. In banking operations, there are daily transactions between customers that need to be processed, closed, summarized, compiled, and sent to the core banking system for execution. Manually, this process could take more than eight hours per day. With Control-M automation, this time can be reduced to one hour or even 30 minutes. Before the cutoff time at 12:00 a.m., Control-M performs the batch job or end-of-day process, executes it, passes it to the core system, and marks it as a finished job for the day.

Control-M makes it simple to create, integrate, and automate data pipelines. Essentially, you have a single dashboard where you can manage everything. You can create the job, perform quality checks before promoting it to development, and then execute it in production. You can also monitor the jobs to see if they fail or trigger any alerts that require attention. Overall, the process is very straightforward and simple.

It is pretty easy to integrate with technologies for data operations and DevOps processes as things change. Control-M is API ready, so as long as the other side also has an API, it’s a done deal.

Stability is crucial in the banking or financial sector, where operational downtime must be minimized. Control-M provides exceptional stability compared to competitors such as Redwood, Stonebranch, or Perpetuity. The second valuable feature is the user-friendliness of the tools, making it easy to learn and use.

Control-M can execute batch jobs and monitor the jobs it executes, though it does not monitor servers or other systems.

Since the system is stable, clients don't typically request rapid improvements. However, one area that could be improved is the AI capability and AI generative features, as these are becoming increasingly important in modern systems.

I have been working with it since late 2010, approximately 15 years.

After migration to Control-M, there is an initial stabilization period. Once properly implemented, the system becomes very stable, which is one of its strongest attributes.

It is a scalable solution. Our clients are enterprises. About 85% of banks in my country use Control-M.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

There was a previous solution from either Redwood or Stonebranch, and another tool called Perpetuity. Customers were successfully persuaded to migrate from these solutions to Control-M. The success rate of migrations is usually more than 97%, and it may even be almost 100%.

Implementing it is not straightforward. It requires careful installation, customization, and configuration. Unlike simply installing Microsoft Windows or Office, this solution demands significant effort and time. It is not as simple as it may seem.

Technical migration can be completed in a few months, but full implementation including user adoption and socialization typically takes about a year. This is because the tool has various users beyond IT, including business users, trade finance users, and branch users who need time to learn and become comfortable with the system.

We have previously attempted to work with the services team from BMC and found their design to be good. However, we prefer not to proceed with the actual on-site implementation. Their prices are quite high, and their approach is too rigid for our needs. Therefore, we believe it is better for us to handle the implementation ourselves.

Automation can benefit customers in many ways, particularly when it comes to saving money. For example, if we rely on human workers, we may face long Recovery Point Objective (RPO) times, which could extend up to 88 hours a day. Additionally, humans are prone to making mistakes. Let's consider a scenario where an operator is manually summarizing transactions from a single branch. If that branch has 10,000 transactions in one day, it can be quite challenging for the operator to keep track. This may lead to issues like double data entry, where the operator mistakenly inputs the same data twice. Such errors can be disastrous for a bank, potentially resulting in financial losses. By implementing automation tools, you can minimize human errors and improve efficiency.

The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for Control-M is more economical compared to other solutions. While competitors might offer lower initial prices, they often include hidden costs that emerge after the first year. Control-M maintains a straightforward pricing model based on license count, implementation, and training, without unexpected future costs.

Control-M uses a simple pricing model based on the number of jobs per license, where one job equals one license. After assessing customer needs, proposals typically include the required number of job licenses plus implementation fees. The implementation fee covers installation, customization, configuration, job building, testing, and execution until the solution is running perfectly.

When you purchase a license, it's typically through a subscription model. Some people refer to this as a subscription type or ops type. If a customer opts for a subscription, it's similar to renting a car; you must renew it each year. It's important to note that there may be an annual price increase determined by BMC, and the specifics will be decided by the principal.

BMC is an important strategic partner for our company. Around 70% to 80% of our business comes from working with BMC, or more specifically, from selling BMC products.

The biggest lesson learned is the importance of providing perspective to customers rather than simply following their requests. It's crucial to understand and discuss their requirements thoroughly, such as questioning why they need a specific number of jobs.

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

My use case for Control-M is primarily for automation.

The best features include the solutions with the recent AI version. The recent updates are impressive, as they allow for automatic jobs, which help improve our productivity. It gives us accurate logs whenever we need them, especially for Monday workloads that we have every Saturday or Sunday. Using it helps us solve problems quickly with the help of remediation.

Areas in Control-M that have room for improvement lie more on the AI side. I'd like to see more enhanced workload automation, particularly expanding automation in API integration with other systems, improving user experience, and including templates. We still have to explore CI/CD pipelines and scalability.

I've been using Control-M for almost a decade.

I find it to be a very stable solution.

I would rate the scalability a seven, noting that it does have room for improvement.

I did not receive help from BMC's service team in mapping out my migration; we did it ourselves.

It's always been BMC; I've not migrated from Broadcom, CA Redwood, or any similar solutions.

Deployment is easy. It took around 45 minutes to deploy Control-M.

We did it ourselves.

The return on investment includes resources, time, and two headcounts. I can estimate that it has saved about 30 percent.

I would compare Control-M with Ansible. Comparatively, we have various tools such as Azure ADF and AWS crawler, and while Control-M provides a hybrid solution in multi-cloud environments, its role-based transfer capabilities significantly improve speed operations with simplified solutions.

For DevOps processes, we have not yet established or expanded out, so integration has been difficult. I'm not using it for DevOps or DataOps at this time. Currently, we don't have any plans to increase the usage of Control-M.

Learning Control-M has been significant. Learning the solutions involves working as in a job as code scripts, particularly within the visual code IDE interface we use, along with the VS Studio code extension. For someone with non-technical skills, it's easier now. Earlier, it was a bit challenging, but we've picked up the programmatic interface, especially since it's a modern application release process.

My relationship with BMC is more transformative. I would recommend Control-M to other users because it integrates, automates, and functions as an orchestration application that helps in data workflows within complex and challenging technology ecosystems. Helix is one of the core leverages, utilizing the version engine for fast performance and a level five assessment in execution. Reaching a ten would require better integration with various tools like ServiceNow, as we also utilize Ansible and AWS. The vendor can contact me if they have any questions about my review.

I rate Control-M a six out of ten.

Control-M is mainly used for our clients. We use workload automation and batch job automation with Control-M. There are many other BMC products that we use, such as AMI Ops automation, DB2 monitoring, and application infrastructure monitoring.

The user experience with Control-M is good. Users can implement many customizations, and though the licensing is pricey, there are many competitive products available that can provide the same features as BMC. BMC support and some of the customizations are very good. Product support and the ability to manage distributed and mainframe workloads make Control-M an enterprise workload management solution. It is easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for data ops or DevOps processes as things change, and it is not complex compared to other workload automation tools available in the market.

BMC does excellent marketing. Their product narrative is very good. From the functional side, there is no superiority when compared with other products. All products provide the same functionality. If you examine IBM Workload Scheduler, Stonebranch, or Rocket Orchestrator, there are many other products available. These products provide the same functions in one way or another. BMC might provide better user experience and better product support than other products, but there is no clear technical differentiation or value proposition when compared to other products with BMC. They offer essentially the same features.

Control-M has been part of my experience for two to three years.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate BMC's support an eight. They have very good manuals, and they respond to tickets quickly. They provide clear details about issues. From the product support perspective, they always perform well. They continuously evolve rather than letting the product remain static. This is one of the differentiators compared to other products. They quickly evolve with changing technology trends, easily adopt new features, and incorporate them into the product.

Control-M is good so far, other than being somewhat pricey.

The implementation requires significant time and personnel resources, and they are pricey. The migration costs are very high, and the available skills are limited.

I am familiar with other workload automation tools and have used many. Our clients use IBM Workload Scheduler, Rocket Enterprise Orchestrator, CA ESP, and Stonebranch, though I cannot specify why we use BMC instead of those alternatives.

It is difficult to clearly differentiate how Control-M has improved our organization's functions because many other products offer the same functionality. The key factors are how users can easily adapt to the product, the available functions and features in the BMC product, and mainly the product support.

We use Control-M for orchestration.

The best feature of Control-M is its orchestration capabilities for any orchestration that's required. Control-M has positively impacted my organization by helping with orchestrating complex tasks.

The Alerting and Notification system is quite sufficient. It does what it's required to do.

The ability to deploy Control-M both in the cloud and on-premises is very important because the organization has a hybrid strategy, so Control-M helps in scenarios of moving files between on-prem and clouds.

Control-M could be improved on the reporting side. There can be better reporting on tasks and better dashboard capabilities for activities being completed. At the moment, it's a bit cumbersome if you receive an error message. There isn't a central place where you can view all of that.

I have an experience of approximately five years working with Control-M.

The solution is stable.

The on-premise setup of Control-M is not that scalable. As our demands increase, it is almost reaching its bottleneck. If I need to run parallel jobs, let's say double or triple the numbers that I'm currently doing, it will struggle to scale.

I would rate technical support from Control-M as a seven out of ten because the turnaround time was not adequate when running in production.

Neutral

I've made use of Pub/Sub in Google Cloud before using Control-M. I have not used any other solutions in this category. I would normally make use of the native tools in whatever cloud I was utilizing.

It was already set up when I joined, and it was a very intuitive tool to figure out.

There are time savings from a resource aspect with Control-M. There's definitely value there.

I would rate Control-M a seven out of ten.

From an administrative standpoint, we are mostly engaged in upgrading, downgrading, and fixing the issues on a day-to-day basis, such as integration with the cloud functionalities. 

My only objective is that the application is up and running 99% of the time. I will make sure that it is not down, and it does not impact my application teams. If it goes down, it has a major impact on SLA, financial, and everything, so I make sure this is up and running 99%.

Control-M improved our organization significantly. We integrated it with our DevOps model, which saved us around 32 FTEs in resource costs. We also integrated with AWS Glue jobs or other clouds, such as Informatica. It's compatible.

Control-M supports our daily IT automation tasks. It is the blood for my entire organization, integrating with every app team, including HR.

Control-M offers pretty good REST API connectivity with other solutions.

The most effective feature of Control-M is the API integration. BMC is focusing on API integration. It's also very easy to deploy and identify issues. 

I don't see any areas where Control-M could be improved because they are doing well. The support is awesome. We have a weekly connection with our BMC tech focal, so I don't see any improvement needed. Things are going well. They are already working on GenAI integration with Control-M. The only thing that comes to mind is the cost. If it could be more competitive, it would be great.

I have been using Control-M for almost 15 years.

The stability of Control-M has been good so far. However, the testing and development phases need to be more rigorous before releasing patches. I would rate it an eight out of ten for stability.

It's scalable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

It's used across multiple departments. There are more than 3,000 users.

Control-M's technical support is very helpful. The immediate acknowledgment and solutions provided by BMC's support team make it stand out compared to other tools. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

My current organization has been using Control-M for 20-25 years, but I have used Autosys and IBM Workload Scheduler previously.

The initial deployment of Control-M was straightforward. We started with version 6.4 and are now at 9.0.21.304.

When I started, it used to take about eight hours. We are now able to do it within 30 minutes, including the downtime.

We are using it on-premise because their SaaS solution is not capable of handling our workload. Its maintenance mostly involves upgrades.

I handle the deployment. We have about five members involved in the deployment of Control-M from our side, including an administrator.

After implementing Control-M, there should be cost savings or efficiency gains.

Its cost can be more competitive. One of the main things customers look at is the cost. It's not affordable. The cost is very high, according to my customers. The licensing cost is very high, and they often consider switching to IBM Workload Scheduler or other options.

There aren't any extra expenses after purchasing Control-M. We have never paid any extra cost unless we needed additional packages, and the team was able to help us with that.

Nothing comes to mind regarding alternatives to Control-M, but I see all the features available in it since it is a leader. However, other solutions might be more cost-effective.

If you want to implement Control-M in your business, the first thing is to look at your budget. Checking affordability is key. Control-M has a lot of features, more than just scheduling batch jobs. 

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Control-M is that you need to have patience. Errors or issues cannot be resolved without developer assistance, but once you get their help, you learn a lot.

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

It is a job scheduler. It is used for scheduling jobs.

It is useful for any sequence of jobs that are complicated, such as Job A can't run after Job B, but if Job C hasn't run, you can't run Job B. Building that logic into a script is almost impossible. Control-M solves that problem. Normally, in large banks, there are many different dependencies. It helps with dependency mapping.

Banks need to bring the branches online at seven o'clock in the morning, so you have to finish your batch processing by the time you bring the branches online. Typically, if you've got a big outage in the middle of the night, it would take hours to fix, which means you will run late, and your backups and all other jobs will not be completed by the time your branches open their doors. Control-M can manage that for you. It can make some smart predictions and change the workflow dynamically so that businesses can run with predictability every night.

It keeps the run times of all jobs. If you need an SLA to complete a particular suite of jobs by a particular time, for example, 2 AM, it can provide the historical average run times of each job. It can help predict or forward plan to see what time it's going to finish those particular jobs. It can do predictive analysis, so if it's not going to finish by 2 AM, it can warn you that it's not going to finish by 2 AM. You can then build in some actions. Some of them may be less important. You can omit those for the night to save time.

A large bank in South Africa would have more than one million jobs to be run each and every night. If something goes wrong in the middle of a million jobs, it can be very complicated if you're managing that via scripts or manually. Control-M solves that problem.

It has a graphic representation of the job flow. It has a very nice GUI to help you understand the sequence of events. On the GUI, if a job is green, it's running or it's completed. If a job is red, there's a problem. It uses alerting and color coding to assist the operator.

Control-M is the number one leading product in the world. What they've done about scheduling, other people are still trying to figure out, so it's difficult for me to propose anything new. There is not so much AI at this point in time, but I guess it's coming. However, predictive analysis is built into it.

I have been using this solution for 20 years.

There are no complaints regarding stability.

There are no complaints regarding scalability. I sell it to most of the large enterprises, but it's also applicable to medium enterprises.

They are very good because this is a tool that requires 24/7 support. If something fails at 3 AM in the morning, you need to fix it and get it back up and working really quickly. You can't afford to have the tool down for long.

Positive

It is very simple as long as you know the prerequisites. 

It's worth the money. It is cost-effective because you need fewer things. It has a high level of automation. Staff can go home at five o'clock. You can run a million batch jobs or tasks at night when all of your highly skilled people are at home sleeping. When your staff comes in the next morning, all of that work is completed, and the business is ready for the next day

It depends. It's packaged in such a way that you can buy the base model without all of the fancy stuff. You can try and keep your price similar to competitors. I guess it's natural throughout the world. It doesn't matter whether you're buying cell phones or something else. The best cell phone will always be more expensive.

There are other solutions, but the difference is that Control-M has constantly undergone development. Each and every year, many improvements have been coming out. The GUI is one example. Often, people think about job scheduling as something you did in the 1970s or 1980s. You don't do that anymore. A lot of the competitor tools are legacy. They're kind of locked in. That's how they work. They're not trying to evolve. We used to talk about job scheduling many years ago, but now, it is orchestration. There are fewer tools that can do proper orchestration.

The fact that it has been in the top right-hand quadrant for 20 years tells you everything about the tool.

I would rate Control-M a nine out of ten. I have been a reseller of the tool for 20 years. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't believe in the tool, and I didn't like it a lot. I am proud to say almost all of the banks in South Africa are using it. That speaks for itself.

We have been using it in the institute to manage all the student data and post-study processes.

We have been using Control-M in our IT department to maintain server backups and database updates and schedule regular updates. Furthermore, it is being used in our library system to automate periodic updates of library catalogs. Control-M also automates email notifications for event announcements and fee structures.

The best feature is that we can automate everything. Moreover, we can access all the features through one dashboard, which is beneficial. 

We have been using Control-M for managing simple automation tasks. It will be very effective in managing other types of tasks. Control-M has the potential and can be very useful in managing business aspects.

The licensing cost can be improved. Although it provides good value, it could be better. The pricing model should be optimized.

Its initial setup is a bit complex. They could provide more documentation and tutorials to make the initial setup easier to understand. Enhancing the documentation could simplify the setup process.

We have been using it for more than one and a half years.

The tasks we have been handling are straightforward automation tasks. Considering that, I would rate it a ten out of ten.

It is scalable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

We have 50 to 60 users.

Technical support has improved. In the past, they were not as supportive, but they are better now. Based on recent experiences, I would rate them an eight out of ten.

Positive

This is the first solution that we have used.

The initial setup and configuration are a bit challenging. There is a bit of a learning curve for some people. It takes a few days.

At the time, there were not many recommendations or resources to understand and deploy it properly, so it took us a couple of weeks to understand and deploy. It has been simplified over the last eight to ten months.

We implemented it in-house.

It has reduced the total cost of ownership by 30% to 40%. 

It has saved a lot of time for our employees and staff members. For a small task, there have been about 40% to 50% time savings.

It is a little bit expensive.

Our relationship with BMC is more transformative. We consider BMC as a strategic partner and trusted advisor.

I would definitely recommend Control-M to every institute because it is extremely helpful to manage every task without any manual error. I would suggest trying Control-M at least once. It is also recommended to start with the documentation and familiarize oneself with basic concepts before integrating it into the business aspect. 

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We are a cloud service provider, and we have been using Control-M for integrating and automating the orchestrating applications in the data workflow in our production. This is the main use case for our flow.

We are using its cloud version, Helix Control-M.

Helix Control-M has helped us schedule the jobs and manage our workload. We save time in running the jobs. There is no impact on the software even if I schedule a hundred jobs at a time. It can accommodate all kinds of jobs. It helps to meet our large-scale requirements.

Helix Control-M’s ability to build, schedule, manage, and monitor application and data workflows in production is good. It is pretty straightforward. It integrates well with different applications, such as AWS, GCP, and various cloud providers, enabling job scheduling directly from the Helix Control-M interface without any agents. Integration is very easy.

We have a single pane of glass for scheduling and viewing job status. We get all the details in one window. We can schedule everything in one window. We did not have any downtime with the Helix Control-M. All the jobs have been running perfectly. Everything is smooth and straightforward.

We are mainly using the AWS Cloud, and we also have some GCP services. We can monitor all the details under the History tab. We can see all the past jobs. 

Helix Control-M gives our company’s business users visibility and control over their jobs and frees up IT personnel for other tasks.

Helix Control-M is very critical for our business. We rely on it. We do not want any other scheduler. It provides us with everything.

Helix Control-M has contributed to the overall stability of our applications and improved user experience. It has taken away some of the administration work.

The flexibility of Helix Control-M allows us to manage tasks efficiently. The user interface is comprehensive and lets me view all my jobs on one page, monitor everything, and access the job history. The UI is superb and flexible to use.

Scheduling multiple jobs at a time is a standout feature. 

There should be an expansion in storing more data as it currently provides data storage for only up to 60 days. 

There can be some complexities with the UI part, especially with the advanced features. Other than that, it has been pretty good.

I have been using it for almost two and a half years.

The stability of the Helix Control-M solution is good. I would rate it an eight out of ten for stability.

We also have access to their support. If we face any issues, we get support from them. Everything is good and working as expected.

Helix Control-M is scalable. It is being used by many people in our organization.

We have more than a hundred jobs running, and we have almost eight people managing it. We also have 3-4 end users using it.

The technical support is very polite, helpful, and available 24/7. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

Before Helix Control-M, we used different solutions. We previously used IBM Workload Automation but switched to Helix Control-M because it provides a comprehensive solution for everything and is very manageable without needing a dedicated person. Anyone can learn it. Its learning curve is very small.

The migration to Helix Control-M was straightforward. We did not face any issues.

The initial setup was straightforward. It took about three or four months to settle down. It is also not difficult to maintain.

We received support from BMC tech support and did not require any third-party consultants. We had six or seven people for the deployment of the solution.

The main return on investment with Helix Control-M has been a reduction in downtime and minimization of manual interventions, which has improved our operational efficiency.

The pricing is moderate, not too low or too high compared to other solutions.

We evaluated multiple solutions, including ActiveBatch, before choosing Helix Control-M.

The pricing was similar, but we found Helix Control-M better in terms of job automation and features. Their support was also very good. We got help from them with the orchestration and migration.

Before implementing the solution, thoroughly try out how it works in your current environment. 

My overall rating for Helix Control-M is an eight out of ten.

We use Control-M for ACS and Azure services as it has inbuilt cloud integration. We have a product that works on government databases where we use data scraping and then integrate it with Azure and OpenAI. This integration allows us to process data and get insights. We also use AWS services to save the processed data in the AS.

Control-M is a bit faster compared to other solutions. The job and coding are easier. Also, my DevOps and Ops teams work collaboratively with it, enhancing its efficiency. The workflow is much easier compared to the ACS services we were using. Automation is more advanced, deployment is fast, and version control has been simplified.

They should have a proper integration method that clearly defines the workflow. Additionally, there should be an automation system for developers to set it up more easily and quickly. My Ops team faces certain problems that need addressing.

I have been using Control-M for four to five months.

The downtime is higher compared to AWS. Indexing and databasing are more challenging, and the endpoint sometimes gets reset automatically. The accuracy rate is about 80% to 85%.

As we hire new interns and DevOps partners to scale our business, Control-M scales well with the enterprise's growth. As the workload on Control-M increases, its scalability is much higher. Its cost is very low.

I never had direct communication with technical support because solutions are available on the web. We didn't have a one-on-one conversation, but the support is adequate through online resources.

Neutral

We migrated from AWS to Control-M. It was more cost-effective and capable compared to AWS services. We were a startup with limited resources.

The setup was manageable with certain experienced DevOps staff, making it easy to deploy on the local server.

There was an built-in DevOps team that found Control-M more cost-effective and capable than AWS services.

New users should have a comprehensive understanding of how BMC and Control-M operate. Good coding skills are essential, as well as utilizing open-source codes. Monitoring should be done by someone knowledgeable about the system. I would rate Control-M a seven out of ten.