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.

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.

Control-M is our primary workload scheduling software, and we aim to utilize it for linking applications, hardware, and data transfers. Ideally, it should be the core component of our architecture. While we have started to expand its use over the past couple of years, we are not fully there yet.

A significant portion of our incoming files is handled through Managed File Transfer (MFT) Enterprise, which is an extension of Control-M. We have been utilizing this solution increasingly for both external and internal file transfers. Additionally, we rely on Control-M to schedule SAP jobs, which is one of its key functionalities. We also schedule a substantial portion of our data warehouse production using Control-M.

As a health insurance company, we have a main internal application that heavily depends on Control-M. For instance, many incoming files need to be decoded and processed for our internal application, followed by a job that transfers the data into our databases. We have recently begun to use Control-M for the maintenance of various databases, such as SAP HANA, Oracle, and Postgres. This aspect of our usage is constantly growing.

Another significant aspect of our workflow involves creating customized job types for our clients. For example, some files we receive are encoded and zipped, for which there is no default Control-M job. To address this, we frequently use the Application Integrator to provide additional functionalities not currently available in Control-M. This allows us to automate tasks that would otherwise require manual intervention, such as extracting contents from ZIP files.

We are also standardizing processes with Control-M, providing standard job types for all our customers. This includes file renaming, combining files, or separating them based on specific application types. For instance, we receive files that contain multiple text files, which we may need to split or combine into a certain format when sending them out.

In summary, we are dedicated to making Control-M our primary workload automation and orchestration software. Recently, we've begun integrating Control-M with Ansible to manage patch routines for our Linux and Windows servers. The challenge has been linking these patch routines with our application jobs. We've started this integration so that whenever there is a patch, our applications automatically halt until we receive confirmation from Ansible. We frequently use the Control-M API for this purpose, enabling seamless coordination between Ansible and Control-M. Overall, these are the main use cases we are currently implementing with Control-M, and we continually seek to expand its applications across our operations.

The application integrator provides a toolbox that makes integration easy. We use it to mask Python scripts that handle various routines, such as ZIP solutions, while the application integrator manages drop-down menus. Sometimes the integrations that Control-M provides are not suitable for our specific use cases. For instance, with S3 storage from Amazon, Control-M's integration only uses a small percentage of available S3 functionalities, so we had to create our own solution. When using BMC tools such as the application integrator, Control-M provides an easy path to integrate many features.

One thing we have criticized is the MFTE capabilities, particularly regarding high availability. BMC hasn't provided a setup with multiple fallbacks for error situations. We've experienced main problems with MFTE where having one setup means when an error occurs, the entire service goes down. We have requested BMC to provide a high availability solution for MFTE. While there are other minor issues, this remains our main concern.

I started using the z/OS parts in 2007-2008 for one to two years. After switching companies, I have been using it in its current form since 2013, totaling twelve years of experience.

It is usually very stable, except for the MFT solution where an error leads to an outage. This has occurred several times in the last two to three years. We are in direct contact with their lab development regarding these issues. While the system is stable 99% of the time, when issues occur, they are significant.

The scalability is very good with numerous configuration options available. Though we sometimes use load balancers in front of Control-M, the available functions offer good options for configuration. Our license doesn't limit our ability to configure Control-M as needed, allowing us to easily create new agents or environments.

I don’t contact the BMC support every day, but we are in constant communication with them. They are currently migrating many features to their web interface, which means some functionalities that were available on their desktop solution are now missing. As a result, we are creating a lot of tickets regarding this issue. At least once a week, one of my colleagues reaches out to BMC support.

Regarding the quality and speed of their responses, it really depends on the representative and the topic at hand. There are certain areas where they have more experienced experts, while in other cases, the support staff tends to rely on standard procedures. Generally, their answers are acceptable; I would rate them around a seven out of ten. Many times, their assistance is more like a nine or ten, but there are occasions when a representative provides standard responses without understanding the specific issue. In these situations, I often have to clarify the problem multiple times because they start with standard solutions that don’t apply to my case. Overall, I would rate their support around a solid seven out of ten.

I previously used OPC (now TWS) from IBM for z/OS software. We regularly evaluate the market, comparing different vendors with BMC, including Redwood, Stone Branch, and HLC. While we conduct proof of concepts and demonstrations from various vendors, we maintain only one product installation.

Control-M was previously used for both z/OS (mainframe) and distributed environments. However, we have since migrated from the mainframe to a distributed system two years ago, and now Control-M is only implemented on the distributed side. I was responsible for this migration due to my knowledge of mainframe systems. While Control-M was already in place, certain functionalities, like data transfer, were not integrated into Control-M. This integration has been accomplished in the last five years.

The learning curve for me was easy due to my background. It took about a year maximum to transition into an administration role. My experience with both mainframe and distributed systems was beneficial. For new colleagues without z/OS background, the learning curve was steeper. While becoming a scheduler is relatively easy in Control-M, mastering specific features requires more time and learning.

In terms of maintenance, we usually have one or two major releases each year, which is quite a significant process. If there’s one area where BMC could improve, it would be optimizing the maintenance process. The type of maintenance required depends on the range of components included. If we talk specifically about the core Control-M product or its basic components, then currently, there isn’t much maintenance involved. However, when we include the agents, the maintenance requirements increase. Overall, I would classify the maintenance needs as moderate. It could be less demanding, particularly during situations like a major version change, where we would prefer to minimize outages. We are in discussions with BMC about how to enhance this process. To summarize, I would say that the maintenance requirements are not low, but they don’t necessitate weekly attention either. So, I would characterize it as being in the middle range.

Control-M is among the highest-priced solutions in the market. When comparing with other vendors, BMC consistently maintains premium pricing. We hope for more creative pricing solutions from BMC in the future, as currently, the price often remains constant regardless of package customization or feature selection. We would appreciate more pricing flexibility from BMC.

Our relationship with BMC is more in the direction of transformative. We’ve built a solid relationship with BMC over the years. It was a process, but I would classify it as transformative. They support us well. While there are certain functions we wish were available, overall, I think our relationship is transformative.

We have a good relationship with BMC, and that required effort on both sides. Sometimes, there’s a gap between what we need as customers and the direction BMC is heading. However, overall, we’re satisfied with how BMC provides us with solutions. Of course, there are things we feel are missing at times, but I also must say that the experience can vary depending on who you’re speaking with at BMC. The experience with sales representatives can differ from discussions with technical staff. In general, though, I would say the relationship is positive.

I would overall rate Control-M an eight out of ten.

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.

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.

We use Control-M to schedule jobs in it, to run critical business processes as batches. We also use it to transfer files from one location to the other. We use it for reporting and to monitor critical batches that are running in the business.

The best feature of Control-M is the UI, the user interface. It is very user-friendly, and it has ease of use for an end user. I appreciate the centralized monitoring capability of this application where with one glance, we can get all the information. We don't need to run here and there for getting the information. Its main feature, the Batch Impact Manager feature in Control-M, is the best by far to monitor all the critical batches in one place.

BMC could do better in the reporting capabilities of Control-M. Currently, what they have is very limited in reporting. We may have some work going in place in the reporting area so that they can give more customized reports for users.

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

Control-M is mostly stable. It doesn't require regular maintenance, unlike other applications. It's stable, and we don't face any regular issues with the application unless something breaks over the network or on the server level. At the application level, we have very few issues even from the past few years.

Control-M has the capability to integrate with many other applications, so it's really scalable in that area. It even has the application integrator facility to talk to any other application that has the REST capability. It's more scalable in that aspect.

We have reached out to BMC a lot of times. They are good, but this is an honest opinion, the service for Control-M has had a slight downfall in recent times. It used to be very good in the past few years, but now they have slightly degraded service in terms of delay in response and the way they ask questions. They are asking repetitive questions even though we've provided the information to them. That's what I felt based on my past few cases with them. Overall, they are good but not very good.

I have used another scheduling tool, Autosys, but not to an extreme extent. Compared to Autosys, Control-M is by far the best. Control-M's capabilities to integrate with other platforms, such as SAP, AWS, and various web services, make it stand out among competitors. Control-M excels in these integrations and offers superior functionality. Additionally, I appreciate the user interface of Control-M; it is one of the features I like the most about the application. It's truly well-designed and user-friendly.

It was already deployed before I joined the organization. Learning to use Control-M is very user-friendly, unlike other scheduling tools in the market. The setup is very easy. We have all the documentation and required support videos available on YouTube in the official channel of BMC Control-M. Following the guide, we can easily set up the application. For use, we have a huge knowledge base in their support central page where we can search for anything, and we can find the solution for most things. If something is not there, then we can reach out to their support by logging in a case with them, and we will get a response with all the details. The features are there with good names, not confusing the user about why the feature was there or what's the use of it. It's very easy to use, all in one.

In terms of maintenance, we are the administrator, and we manage the application.

I'm not involved in any sales discussions related to Control-M, but I'll give my general opinion. I heard that Control-M is a bit pricey compared to other competitors. Given its features and capabilities, I think that's justified.

My relationship with BMC regarding Control-M is more transformative. We usually talk to them about the cases. For product-related discussions, if they need some information or reports from our end, we were involved and were over the calls talking with them. For all the critical cases that we raised with them, we were on the call discussing all the technical aspects. It was all good.

I would rate Control-M a nine 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.

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.

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.

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.