Control-M SaaS
Automation has simplified complex scheduling and now runs high-volume daily workflows reliably
What is our primary use case?
Like any other batch scheduler, Control-M is what we're really using for the various workflows that we have to either do on a daily or hourly or whatever basis. We run them all through there.
What is most valuable?
I've worked with other ones, and I think the certain simplicity to how Control-M lets you set up a schedule or workflow is excellent. It's very easy to build everything together.
What needs improvement?
Most of my complaints have ever been with support for Control-M, not with the product itself. I can't really think of anything that I strongly dislike about the product.
Sometimes my gripes with the support relate to them being a little slow to get back on either a query or a problem issue. That's my biggest gripe on the support side. There are some people in the support area that are fantastic, and then there are others that feel like I'm being pushed off to the side. I don't know what's going on in the back shop, so I can't say for certain.
I'm currently fighting with support on one issue right now with Control-M, but it's not the overall product, it's just one sub-piece that's being problematic. It's the SAP interface with Control-M.
For how long have I used the solution?
My usage has definitely been more than ten years. I go back to release three or something.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I've never really seen much of a problem with scalability for Control-M. I'm sure there is an upper limit to how many agents and how many jobs you could run, but I haven't hit that yet. Where I am right now, we load probably about three thousand jobs a day, but we run a lot more than that because you can load a job and run it hundreds of times.
How are customer service and support?
I'm going to give Control-M's support an eight on the scale from one to ten, with ten being the highest. That rating is mostly because of the reasons I've already mentioned.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I've used plenty of alternatives for Control-M in the past. Though some of them don't exist anymore or they probably still do. One of my former employers was a big CA-7 shop on the mainframe side, and on the distributed side, I used the IBM tool Workload Scheduler.
How was the initial setup?
The setup for Control-M is not horrible. Once you get the server built out correctly initially, it installs relatively easily. There are some things in the update format that I don't favor. They used to have an update and migrate model, which would allow you to move from one system to a new system if you needed to upgrade your operating system or switch to a different platform. Going from Windows to Linux, or from SUSE Linux to RHEL Linux was easy to do. That migrate model was very good, but they went to an upgrade in place model. You can't do it that easily anymore because what you have to do is upgrade in place where you are and then build a new box and then move the data over, which is a bit of a pain. It was one-stop shopping previously. They stopped that at version 9.18.
The implementation is handled by me and maybe one other person who are specifically doing the deployment and maintenance of Control-M.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I don't really have any thoughts about the pricing for Control-M. I don't deal with that, or I haven't in a very long time. I know one of the pricing models is based on workload, specifically how many tasks you load in a day. I don't know if there are any other pricing models other than that. That's the only one I'm familiar with.
What other advice do I have?
Control-M does require some maintenance on your end, as with any software. There are fix packs released or patches, and you need to be aware of that. BMC is very good about notifying you when they post out new patches or fix packs. It usually requires a downtime, but it's a very short downtime. It takes longer to take the product down than to apply the patch for Control-M. You have all the processes to shut down, apply the patch, and bring them all back up, and the up and down takes longer than the actual patch application sometimes. I would rate this review a nine out of ten.
Workflow automation has improved reliability but still needs built‑in scripting options
What is our primary use case?
We use Control-M for enterprise workload automation, cross-platform job scheduling, and orchestration of critical banking processes. One of our most important use cases is End-of-Day (EOD) processing, where Control-M coordinates and monitors complex job dependencies across IBM i, Linux, Windows, databases, and core banking applications. It provides centralized visibility, improves operational efficiency, and reduces manual intervention and operational risk.
How has it helped my organization?
Control-M has significantly improved our visibility into end-to-end business processes that span multiple platforms and systems. It has enabled faster identification and resolution of process execution issues through centralized monitoring and alerting. Additionally, by automating tasks that were previously performed manually, Control-M has substantially reduced operational errors, increased process reliability, and improved overall operational efficiency.
What is most valuable?
Control-M is a very robust solution. The product is stable and robust, providing reliability in operations.
What needs improvement?
One area where Control-M could be enhanced is by providing native scripting capabilities directly within the platform. Today, when we need to perform complex logic, data manipulation, or multi-step workflows, we must develop scripts externally (for example in Bash, Perl, Python, or other languages) on the target execution server and then invoke those scripts from Control-M. It would be valuable to have a built-in scripting environment that allows users to develop and execute workflow logic directly within Control-M, without relying on external scripts or operating system dependencies.
For example, a workflow could execute a query against an Oracle database, process the results, generate an Excel report, send it by email, and then trigger additional processes on other platforms such as IBM i (AS400), Windows, Linux, or cloud environments—all orchestrated through a native Control-M scripting language.
This functionality would reduce implementation complexity, improve portability, simplify maintenance, and provide greater flexibility for advanced process automation.
Additionally, greater access to variables, conditional logic, and workflow programming constructs within the platform would make Control-M even more powerful for organizations managing complex enterprise workloads.
Another area for improvement is licensing flexibility. Some capabilities that many customers may consider part of the core workload automation experience, such as extended log retention and archiving, currently require additional licensed components. A more integrated approach could provide greater value and simplify adoption.
One improvement that could be made to Control-M is the way jobs captured through SBMJOB on IBM i (AS/400) are handled. On the Extractor side, it would be helpful to have a more flexible and efficient way to manage extraction rules.
On the Interceptor side, having a single folder per AS/400 library is not very practical. It makes it more difficult to organize jobs, use conditions effectively, and manage our workflows, especially when they are affected by the New Day process
For how long have I used the solution?
Our institution has been using Control-M since late 2022. However, I have been familiar with the product and its capabilities since 2010 through my professional experience managing enterprise workload automation and job scheduling environments.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Control-M is very stable for us and very robust.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Control-M has proven to be highly reliable and capable of supporting large-scale enterprise workloads. From a scalability perspective, I would rate it around 8 out of 10.
The platform scales well in terms of the number of jobs, workflows, and systems that can be managed centrally.
However, when integrating new applications or platforms, significant development effort is sometimes required on the target systems. Complex automation scenarios often require external scripts or custom integrations, which can increase implementation and maintenance effort.
For this reason, while Control-M is highly scalable from an operational and workload management standpoint, I believe there is room for improvement in simplifying integrations and providing more native workflow development capabilities. Reducing the dependency on external scripting would make onboarding new systems faster and further enhance the platform's scalability.
How are customer service and support?
We typically work through our implementation partner, who serves as our primary point of contact for support and manages most interactions with BMC on our behalf.
Overall, I would rate BMC's technical support 7 out of 10. The support quality is generally good, and issues are ultimately addressed. However, we have observed longer-than-expected response times in some cases, particularly when incidents require escalation to higher support tiers. The escalation process can be slow and sometimes extends the overall resolution time.
Despite this, the expertise of the support teams has been satisfactory, and we have no major concerns regarding the quality of the technical assistance provided.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Yes. Prior to adopting Control-M, the institution used HP Operations Orchestration for the automation and orchestration of core business processes, as well as IBM Advanced Job Scheduler for IBM i workload scheduling. We transitioned to Control-M to consolidate workload automation across multiple platforms, improve end-to-end visibility, enhance monitoring and dependency management, and provide a more centralized and scalable enterprise scheduling solution.
How was the initial setup?
The initial implementation was relatively complex. A significant part of the effort was not the Control-M installation itself, but the application and process changes required to adapt our existing workloads to operate within the Control-M framework.
Many of our existing processes had to be modified to integrate with Control-M, which increased the complexity of the initial deployment. This was especially true for legacy applications and workloads that were not originally designed for centralized workload automation.
However, once the foundational integration work was completed and standards were established, onboarding new applications and developing new automated workflows became much easier and more efficient. Today, implementing new processes is significantly more agile than during the initial adoption phase.
What about the implementation team?
Yes. As the customer, we worked with a BMC Business Partner that provided both the software licensing and the implementation services. Our experience was positive overall, as they supported the deployment, knowledge transfer, and initial configuration activities, helping us successfully adopt the platform within our environment.
What other advice do I have?
Control-M does not sell any perpetual licenses right now. I have to constantly renew my contract as a software subscription license. I think the pricing is a little high, but the solution is very robust and stable. I mean, I am paying for a Mercedes, and I am getting a Mercedes. My overall rating for Control-M out of ten for the solution overall is a seven. It is pricey, but it is stable. On the other hand, I have to work a lot to adapt my software to run with Control-M.
Unified scheduling has simplified complex enterprise processes and has reduced operational silos
What is our primary use case?
We are a service provider company using Control-M for implementation for other companies and our customers. We are a partner of BMC and work closely with our SIs, direct customers, and BMC. We operate as a reseller, partner, and service provider, offering both services and professional services.
When we enter the environment of any customer using Control-M, we understand their processes, how they are performing them manually or with other tools they are using. We gain a deep understanding of what processes they are running, what manual interventions are required, and what notifications or automation is needed. Accordingly, from the Control-M perspective, it is very easy to translate these processes into Control-M jobs. Control-M jobs have advanced-level scheduling options available, and we can create multiple dependencies in multiple ways. This makes it very helpful to schedule jobs, configure jobs, and monitor jobs.
What is most valuable?
From a single control panel in Control-M, we can control all enterprise-level processes. We can administer, monitor, and control all processes, which is the basic feature of Control-M. Beyond that, we have MFT and multiple integrations available. We can control each data pipeline with no limit from the enterprise level and no limit on integrations because BMC continues to add out-of-the-box integrations. If any customized integration is required for any application, we can use the Automation API and create the jobs.
Control-M makes this very easy. Out-of-the-box integrations and Control-M modules are available through which we can connect to DataOps and data pipelines.
Every application in any organization uses multiple applications. In the enterprise-level companies where we work with customers, they are running hundreds of applications. Each application has its own scheduler. For example, MS SQL application has its own scheduler, SAP application has its own scheduler. For normal scripts or processes, you have cron jobs on Linux systems and task scheduler on Windows systems. These schedulers are sufficient to run their processes in themselves, but they operate in silos. Control-M helps in bringing these different silos and platforms onto a single console where we can configure, monitor, and control all enterprise-level applications in a single platform. You do not need to have multiple application schedulers and teams to manage these applications in silos separately. A single Control-M monitoring team can monitor all application operations, which drastically reduces operational cost.
What needs improvement?
In one project where we migrated from JAMS Workload Automation to Control-M SaaS, I saw that application had a workflow designer on the left panel where you could drag and drop each logic piece and it would be created in their system. That feature is something I would like to see in Control-M.
Control-M is on the costlier side. When we try to sell it, it should be to a large enterprise company where they have a budget for automation. Otherwise, small companies use their in-house automation scripts to run their small jobs and do not want to invest in this costly product. It depends on the volume of jobs and the size and scale of the organization. Control-M is only applicable when it is suitable for them.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Control-M for almost ten years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability of Control-M as nine. I am leaving one point just for the scope of improvement. Otherwise, I have never seen any instability in the platform in my ten years.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability with Control-M is again nine. I am leaving one point just for the scope of improvement. Otherwise, I have never seen any instability in the platform in my ten years.
How are customer service and support?
I rate the technical support of Control-M as seven out of ten.
Whenever we contact BMC support for Control-M, they ask for logs and then take their own time to analyze them. They have software that does the analysis for logs and provides the output, but the time they take to analyze these things can be painful when trying to close open issues. We are working in the customer environment and the customer expects issues to be closed as early as possible. Sometimes it depends on BMC and it takes time. The turnaround time should be minimized.
How was the initial setup?
Control-M has a simple setup. You just need to understand the process. It is based on the logic of the process which is running in the back end. If you understand the logic, then it is very easy to create in Control-M.
The ease of setup depends on the team working on it. If you have the expertise, it is easy; otherwise it will be complex.
What about the implementation team?
We have a team of twenty people working on BMC products including Control-M.
Our relationship with BMC is both transformative and transactional. For the transactional purpose, we work as a reseller selling their licenses. From the transformation perspective, we provide services for consultation and implementation, and we conduct POCs for them.
What other advice do I have?
I will absolutely recommend Control-M. I rate Control-M as nine out of ten from a product perspective, and I give this review an overall rating of nine.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Centralized orchestration has transformed complex workflows and now ensures reliable SLA compliance
What is our primary use case?
I have been using Control-M for more than five years. Our main use case for Control-M is using it to automate, orchestrate, and monitor our complex business workflows across multiple applications, servers, databases, cloud platforms, and data pipelines from a single platform.
We are using Control-M for batch processing where we are running end to end of our transactions or any kind of report generation. We are also using it for data pipeline orchestration by extracting data from ERP or from other solutions to transform and load into our warehouses or getting the data directly from our Power BI environments. The third use case is for application workflow automation where we are executing workflows involving our servers, APIs, and custom applications in the correct sequence.
We are also using it for IT operations automation by scheduling backups, system maintenance, log cleanup, patching, and health checks regularly.
It is also being used for SLA monitoring and for our cloud and hybrid workloads because we are coordinating jobs across our multiple cloud providers such as Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS, as well as for on-premises infrastructure. It also tracks our critical jobs against deadlines and sends alerts or escalates if they are delayed or there is any failure.
What is most valuable?
Control-M offers several best features that are widely available in the market, and it has very large areas of strength. It has an excellent orchestration feature where for any job failure or any kind of notification triggers, it instantly notifies all the users. It has a very huge integration ecosystem where you can integrate any kind of third party application or your legacy application such as SAP, Informatica, Oracle, Azure, DataBricks, or anything else.
It is also providing central visibility so that our operation teams can monitor thousands of jobs from one dashboard. It provides benefits such as SLA tracking, failure analysis, audit trails, historical executions, and business service monitoring. It is also very helpful for our enterprise governance because it provides governance mechanisms such as Role Based Access Control, audit logs, compliance, and approval workflows.
We are using integrations through the APIs, integrating our SAP, Snowflake, AWS, Azure, or DataBricks directly with Control-M so that we are getting information from very truthful sources. It has a very large integration mechanism, so we do not have to worry about whether the application is working or not. We have peace of mind on our end.
One of the great things about Control-M is that it has a very large community base across the globe. If you need help at any moment, you can easily reach out to the community groups and the community members, and the support system is also very excellent, so you do not worry about who to contact about small things or any kind of complex related issues. You can get help at any moment of time.
What needs improvement?
Even though Control-M is considered a market leader, there are several areas where customers find they want improvements. A simpler user interface is the highest priority. Many users or team members have provided feedback that creating and managing workflows could be more intuitive. Potential improvements could be a modern drag-and-drop workflow designer, easier job configurations with fewer clicks for common tasks, and better dashboards for non-technical users. Introducing AI-powered operations would also be beneficial.
Control-M offers automation, but AI capabilities could go further, providing better cloud networking experiences, easier integrations, enhanced analytics, lower licensing complexity, and faster troubleshooting would make it more beneficial for enterprises. Stronger AI governance and improved DevOps support can be added in some parts.
Control-M has AI capabilities, but regarding AI governance, future capabilities could include features such as AI-generated workflow recommendations, policy-based approvals, explainable automation decisions, and risk scoring for critical workflows. That would be beneficial for the enterprise.
Cost control improvements in customer support and better UI, business process visibility, some features such as digital twins for workflows, autonomous self-healing, and intelligent resource optimization are a few other needed improvements.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working in my current field for more than 15 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Control-M is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Control-M's scalability is also stable.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is good. I would rate it nine out of 10.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have evaluated and used different solutions previously. In my experience, I have seen tools such as Windows Task Scheduler, Broadcom Automic, Stonebranch, and Redwood RunMyJobs. We switched because we found Control-M to be more powerful and more useful according to our organizational requirements.
How was the initial setup?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is moderate. Control-M is positioned as a premium enterprise solution, so the pricing is generally on the higher side compared to open-source schedulers or simpler workload automation tools. The initial setup cost is high because it generally includes licensing, infrastructure, and implementation services. Although the licensing is comprehensive, it can be complex depending on factors such as the number of environments and agent modules you are leveraging. I would rate the pricing competitiveness as six out of 10, licensing as seven out of 10, and ROI for large enterprises such as us as nine out of 10. The value for buying Control-M is between 8.5 to 9 out of 10.
What was our ROI?
The time saved is about 22 to 25 percent. The return on investment is overall nine out of 10, and Control-M saves money on human efforts by 35 to 40 percent, reducing our overall headcount.
It has returned the investment that we have because it has all the features that any organization requires. For example, it has automated orchestration features, higher operational efficiency, provides business benefits, reduces our downtime, enables faster processing, offers greater reliability, and improves visibility across our organization by using a central dashboard for monitoring jobs for any kind of status failures and SLAs. It also helps with our regulatory compliance, scalability, and business continuity areas.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Broadcom Automic and Stonebranch are a few of the options we evaluated.
What other advice do I have?
The biggest lesson I learned from using this solution is that Control-M is my favorite. The biggest lesson is that workflow orchestration is much more than scheduling jobs. It is about managing dependencies, handling failures gracefully, ensuring SLA compliance, and providing end-to-end visibility into business processes. As environments become more distributed across cloud and on-premises systems, centralized orchestration becomes increasingly important.
Control-M is very helpful for building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring our workflows. It is a very mature, highly reliable platform that performs particularly well in large enterprise environments with complex and business-critical operations. For managing workflows, it offers centralized administration, role-based access, workload prioritization, audit trails, and lifecycle management. This helps standardize operations across multiple teams, environments, and geographic locations.
It reduces our manual efforts and operational errors by 30 to 35 percent. It provides a unique and centralized dashboard for better visibility into workflow execution, which again helps us reduce our manual efforts by 25 percent. It provides faster incident detection and recovery and manages our incident responses by 25 percent. It improves compliance and auditability by 12 percent and enables easier management of hybrid cloud and on-premises workloads, resulting in improvements of about 15 to 20 percent.
Integrating Control-M with technologies for our DataOps and DevOps processes is moderate. I would rate it seven out of 10. Control-M provides a broad set of out-of-the-box integrations and APIs for enterprise technologies. In our environment, we have integrated Control-M with technologies such as SQL databases, cloud services deployed in AWS and Azure, REST APIs, Kubernetes, and enterprise data platforms. These integrations enable us to orchestrate end-to-end workflows from data ingestion through processing and reporting while improving our overall visibility and reducing manual intervention. Our technology landscape involves containerized applications, cloud-native workloads, CI/CD applications, pipelines, and API-driven services. We ultimately reduce our reliance on legacy batch scripts and manual scheduling tools by consolidating all workloads into Control-M. This centralized approach improves governance, standardizes scheduling, simplifies monitoring, and strengthens SLA management.
For building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows, I would rate Control-M nine out of 10 because it helps us in all these areas. It is one of the most natural enterprise workflow automation platforms, particularly for organizations running complex business-critical processes across hybrid environments. Workflow orchestration is extremely important to both DataOps and DevOps initiatives because it ensures that the data pipeline executes in the correct sequence, and data is available on time for downstream analytics and reporting to remain reliable. The biggest business value is reliability because instead of managing hundreds or thousands of independent jobs, organizations gain end-to-end visibility, automated failure handling, SLA tracking, and governance, which ultimately reduces operational risk, improves productivity, and helps ensure critical business processes are completed on time. I would highly recommend this solution to prospective buyers. I have given this review an overall rating of 10 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Workflow orchestration has improved document digitization and still needs better integration options
What is our primary use case?
We are a system integrator specializing in document digitization and DMS applications, and we encounter various workflows within documents and data. I have been using Control-M for less than one year, primarily on workflow process applications where we work with clients on digitizing backlog conversion projects. We use it when there are complex structured documents with AI-enabled workflows. We encountered this orchestration platform where we need to work across documents and applications to integrate whenever there is a critical business workflow.
What is most valuable?
The best features of Control-M are the seamless and simple process that any business user can understand and adapt to. Control-M also provides low-code and no-code capabilities that allow business users to work on workflow orchestration in a straightforward manner.
I assess Control-M as having ease of use and being simple to deploy and configure at a business level. When workflows are structured, it appears simpler and easier to create and integrate data pipelines for on-premises and cloud environments. For complex workflows, we need to fine-tune and understand the system before deployment.
Control-M currently saves approximately 15 to 20% of time compared to our previous support system.
What needs improvement?
The areas that have room for improvement for Control-M include integration and different data structures. Additionally, whether the deployment is on-premises or hybrid requires careful consideration. Both applications we worked on were on-premises, and we did not work on any cloud applications. The challenge regarding latency and other connectivity integration will likely be a key challenge for Control-M, and understanding how this will impact ease of use and deployment will be important.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Control-M for less than one year, primarily on workflow process applications where we work with clients on digitizing backlog conversion projects. We use it when there are complex structured documents with AI-enabled workflows. We encountered this orchestration platform where we need to work across documents and applications to integrate whenever there is a critical business workflow.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability of Control-M as seven. I rate it a seven because it is still in the initial phase. We need to deploy other workflows and observe how the application scales and how the stability of the whole application with an increased number of users deployed across different locations will perform.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the scalability of Control-M as eight.
How are customer service and support?
I rate the technical support of Control-M as a seven on a scale of one to ten.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not migrate from Broadcom, CA, or Redwood because this was a straightforward implementation of the application from the start.
How was the initial setup?
I did not encounter any challenges with Control-M or with the deployment process because this was just an initial starter pack to begin with. It was a small project and was straightforward.
It is difficult to assess how easy or difficult it is to integrate Control-M for our DevOps and DataOps processes because we have not done any integration. It was a standalone use of the application. Our scope was limited and we have not encountered the integration part.
What about the implementation team?
We had only one specialist working with Control-M, and we hired third-party resources to work on the project.
What was our ROI?
Resource-wise, we have realized approximately 20% value from Control-M, but financially, it is premature to assess regarding ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Regarding the pricing of Control-M, I believe it looks competitive compared to other vendors. Whether it is a SaaS application or an on-premises application varies, and they have different structures such as a starter pack or a value pack. We went with the starter pack.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I cannot compare Control-M with other solutions or vendors because this request came from the end user, so I cannot provide live feedback.
What other advice do I have?
Currently, we do not use Control-M to orchestrate workloads across multiple environments; all usage is on-premises.
I have not used the Control-M Python client or API because no API was within our scope, so I cannot comment with any correct feedback.
Automation has improved time‑based job scheduling and supports streamlined batch operations
What is our primary use case?
Control-M is a scheduling software for scheduling jobs, and I have been using it for four to six years.
What is most valuable?
The best feature of Control-M is that it is a SAP module we use to schedule jobs in SAP for the delivery of goods, and mainly it's time-oriented. Time-oriented features and whatever reports we can fetch are very easy in Control-M.
It is easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for DataOps and DevOps. Currently, our next project is underway regarding the integration.
Control-M supports DataOps and DevOps initiatives by enabling us to update batches we get from the BMC tool, and we are currently using both for development and testing purposes. I hope it will be beneficial for us moving forward. If we implement a DevOps project in our application, it will save significant time by reducing human intervention as jobs will be scheduled automatically.
Currently, the solution saves us around 15 to 20% time during the primary phase.
What needs improvement?
Regarding areas for improvement, there are some additional features that you must give concerning the available features. The job scheduling time is a little bit consuming, and it should be simplified into very straightforward steps, such as a web-based application for all the scheduling jobs, as this would be helpful.
There are a few bugs I found while implementing Control-M, which are minor issues. We can minimize those bugs, such as applications not running at scheduled times. If there's a time schedule, we might get a report with logs, and 98% of the time it runs on time, with only 2% being slightly problematic regarding job execution.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Regarding stability, Control-M application is stable, and there is no second thought on this. If any error arises from a job that hasn't run, we simply need to address that issue. I rate its stability as eight.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate scalability as eight.
How are customer service and support?
I rate the support for the solution as a seven, around 7 to 8, specifically a 7.5.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have not yet migrated from Broadcom or Redwood or any similar solutions, but we have conducted workshops and other preparations for that.
How was the initial setup?
It is simple to integrate Control-M, particularly in the cloud. We need to have the host or an agent to run commands with the application name, and it is comparatively easy when compared to others.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It's not cheap; it's a little bit costlier compared to others due to database processing and finishing jobs, which have some dependencies, so I don't think it's cheaper.
What other advice do I have?
Control-M, which is the BMC workload automation tool, is mainly used for scheduling. When we integrate Control-M into a SAP basis, we can automatically fetch records. We have to schedule and run jobs at a particular time, going through phases such as initial phase, build phase, and delivery phase. In that process, we handle job scheduling, workload management, creating OS and file transfer of database jobs, and reporting and configuration management involving automation capabilities.
Currently, our client is using BMC's Control-M software, so we must go as per the client's requirements. We are not in a position to decide whether we can proceed with it or not because the client uses Control-M for batch scheduling.
I definitely recommend BMC; Control-M is excellent for handling very large batch scheduling jobs. We have many jobs to complete in our daily activities, and this is one of the best tools. I would also recommend it to my partners for different clients who need batch scheduling; Control-M is a very good tool or application.
Primarily for email and SNMP, as well as monitoring tools, we use Control-M compared to other solutions or vendors. I would rate this product an overall eight out of ten.
Centralized job management has reduced manual work and improves alert-driven operations
What is our primary use case?
Control-M is mostly used for centralized job management of different environments: Windows, Unix, Solaris, and Azure. If you are looking for a solution for centralized job management, especially if you have more than 100, 500, or 1,000 jobs you are maintaining, Control-M is the best solution.
Many sub-companies in my organization have more than 500 jobs, and if you are looking for a solution to make those jobs centralized, more alert-prospective, minimize outage, and minimize manual work, Control-M is the ideal choice.
What is most valuable?
Control-M has all kinds of job manager features. Azure is there, AWS is there, and SQL jobs are also there. The meaning of centralized is that it is completely used for centralization. All jobs can be managed in a single folder or a single way.
Control-M has improved considerably. It is very helpful because when I see the large amount of jobs coming in, it is very difficult to manage on a single server. It becomes high memory, high CPU; all the difficulties are there on servers. Control-M makes it very easy. We can centralize it, we can monitor it as well, and we can configure alerts for that as well.
What needs improvement?
The documentation for Control-M could be more clear. The documentation is clear, but in some areas it becomes difficult to manage. Another thing is for cloud-based things. If we could connect directly from Control-M, that would be better. For example, for SQL, we also need to put an agent on a server. For cloud access, we also need to put an agent on a server, and then we need to configure the connection profile and everything. If we could connect directly from Control-M, that would be better. For on-premises or these things, we have to put the agent, but for cloud-based services, we also have to put an agent on the server.
Integrating Control-M for my DevOps and DataOps processes is easy, but agent management is a little difficult. I have not used DevOps. I have configured it for Azure, but it was not completed. The project got lost. Everywhere we need to put the agent where we want to configure the agent server configuration. For Azure, we have to put an agent on some server, and from there, it connects to Azure. If we could directly connect to Azure or SQL from Control-M, that would be better.
For how long have I used the solution?
My experience with Control-M is approximately two years at this company. At my last company, when I left, it was under the configuration process. I think it was there for approximately six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Control-M is very stable. I have not seen any outage.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Control-M is also very scalable. I have not seen any kind of outage or shortage.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support for Control-M is very good. They respond very quickly. Whenever we raise a case, they respond to that case in approximately one hour. The technical response is very quick and fast.
How was the initial setup?
The deployment of Control-M is very easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I have not worked with the pricing. It is a management-level thing. I am working as an admin of Control-M.
What other advice do I have?
Control-M is utilized at a large scale. Control-M is very useful and is used by many businesses.
I am a customer. My company bought this project. They are getting the project to onboard it to Control-M. We are supporting that onboarding, agent installation, agent upgradation, and all the things we are managing on the back end.
Deployment of Control-M is both. We have both. Control-M in our environment is on-premises.
Control-M is utilized in an MNC, enterprise-level. My last company was Wipro. Control-M was also being used there. It is also being used at this company.
My relationship with Control-M is work-related, not transactional. My relationship with BMC is information-based.
With Control-M, we configure it when they come with what they are doing manually. What they are currently doing is manual, or they are doing manual things by putting a manual person on it. We are analyzing those. We are thinking that if that can be onboarded to Control-M to automate. If we find that this can be done by Control-M, we get those things onboarded on Control-M in their environment. If it is a vendor or partner, we get one server from them, we configure all the things on their environment, and we run from our side.
If they ask, I will be a reference for the vendor. Our company is a merger of five companies, including Guy Carpenter, Oliver Wyman, Mercer, and Marsh. These all companies are together. They all work on their business. If Mercer has the solution of Control-M and Guy Carpenter needs that, that business comes to us for onboarding their environment. It works this way. I would give Control-M an overall rating of eight out of ten.
Modern workflow orchestration has empowered teams to own APIs, pipelines, and data operations
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
What I like most about Control-M is the modernized API, which allows me to integrate with many other applications to create job flows using JSON. Application teams can own their own responsibility to create jobs instead of relying on a Control-M admin to create a job every time they need it.
What needs improvement?
Control-M should evolve into a more web-based SaaS level product, which they are looking into. They should improve the features that were available in Control-M localized installations. For example, if I have the server on-premises, more features are with the client, whereas with the web-based version they moved to now, many features have been missing that we expect should be coming as well. Configuration and CCM are missing most of the features that are in the on-premises version. Those features should be coming very soon, and that would be the best improvement they could bring.
Additionally, auto deployments and patch management always require manual work, so those should be coming through auto deployment, which would help significantly. Software upgrades and similar processes should be more optimized.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Control-M since at least 2014, which is about 13 years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Regarding stability, I would say it is based on the environment. For my bank, I never had an issue with crashing or anything; the performance was good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is easy for me. It is all based on the plan regarding how many jobs I am going to use. I do not see any complications with scalability.
How are customer service and support?
I have contacted technical support and we raise cases with them before every single upgrade or migration. We have a method of procedure plan where we check with them about recommendations. Most of the time, BMC does not recommend against proceeding, and they say I am good to go with it.
When there is an issue, the quality of support for a P1 case is good, but the solution they provide can be complicated sometimes, which takes time for them to investigate. Then they have to engage their developer team. Sometimes I would have already known that this is not solvable and only the developer team can advise on it, but they do not take it immediately. They take their own time to provide the solution, meaning they take one or two additional hours. If I were to put support on a scale from one to ten, I would give Control-M support a score of seven.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used alternatives like Redwood and some other internal tool called Insights software. Comparing Control-M to Redwood, Control-M is better; however, Redwood has a simpler tier level architecture than Control-M.
I did not migrate from Redwood to BMC; I worked on that software at my previous company where both software were used. AutoSys has also been used there. I have seen developers compare AutoSys to Control-M.
Migrating from other software does not require much work from my side; it is easier even for the developers. Control-M requires a little understanding of how these things work. For example, when the application person reaches out to me, they need to understand first how job creation works and how their job executes on their agent, and it is not more transparent for them. I have to conduct a learning session to help them understand these things, and those aspects are complicated in Control-M. However, Control-M is more optimized in that part. When they understand the tool, they prefer Control-M to any other solution.
How was the initial setup?
When I joined my current bank, Control-M was already deployed but with a very old version. I took care of upgrading it to the very latest version. We were ten years behind, and there was no support, but I managed to get it upgraded to the latest version.
The upgrade was challenging at first. The OS flavors were very old, which Control-M does not support with the latest version. We had to plan carefully, thinking about how we would move to which version, and then we did a parallel build in Red Hat to move it. It was a very comprehensive plan we had to develop. However, it went well. When I am more experienced with the tool, I know how to execute the migration properly.
What about the implementation team?
When it comes to deployment and maintenance, maintenance stays with the administration team, which is my team. We currently work as a core of five people for the deployments. When it comes from the application team to create a job, workflows, or whatever they need planned, it involves four to five people.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Regarding pricing, BMC is a little costlier. They need to come down with execution-based pricing. For my understanding, BMC charges based on executions, whereas Redwood charges or AutoSys charges based on successful completion. BMC is a little higher on that.
What other advice do I have?
Integrating with technologies for my DataOps and DevOps processes as things change is easy. We use DevOps and data pipelines related to Azure data pipelines, and it has been easy for us because the latest version does have the support. We use our own application integrator developed by ourselves, so it was easier for us since we know the tool. My review rating for Control-M is ten out of ten.
Workflow automation has increased efficiency and has streamlined cross‑department operations
What is our primary use case?
My use case with Control-M is to handle scheduling and automation processes.
What is most valuable?
Control-M's best features are its reliability and user-friendly interface. Control-M has improved our organization by streamlining our workflow and increasing efficiency.
What needs improvement?
The areas that have room for improvement in Control-M are the user interface enhancements.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Control-M for more than 10 years in our organization.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability of Control-M as an eight out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding scalability, I rate it a nine out of ten.
How are customer service and support?
I rate the technical support of Control-M as a seven out of ten.
What was our ROI?
I find it very difficult to quantify the return on investment I have seen with Control-M.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My thoughts on the pricing of Control-M lean towards it being expensive; I would rate it a ten out of ten as very expensive.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I compare Control-M favorably with other solutions and vendors in the market.
What other advice do I have?
I find it easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for our DataOps and DevOps. Control-M is being used extensively across multiple departments in our organization. Approximately 100 users utilize Control-M in our organization. Control-M does require maintenance, and I would say it is complex in some aspects. My relationship with BMC is more transactional than transformative. My advice for others looking to implement Control-M would be to focus on improving their documentation and consider the challenges with add-on products like Workflow Insight, which does not have RBAC, making implementation difficult in organizations like ours.
Automation has secured complex telecom workflows and reduces manual effort for critical operations
What is our primary use case?
Control-M provides automation workflows for the telecom environment. A specific example of how I use Control-M to automate workflows in my telecom environment includes application workflows such as billing, billing systems, infra setup, backup, storage, and requests, all of which are taken care of by Control-M.
What is most valuable?
With the 9.21 version of Control-M, I find quite good features with MFT and API integrations, as well as Azure and Kubernetes.
MFT has made the biggest difference for my team; it has been the main feature we are using as of now, with a lot of configurations with managed file transfer in place.
Having a secure file transfer is very crucial in today's world of cyber security threats; that is the additional part or the best functionality available with Control-M.
Control-M has positively impacted my organization by providing a platform to automate the workflows in complex environments while having data security in place, which has really helped the organization grow positively.
What needs improvement?
For Control-M to improve, the vendor support can be more improvised. If a solution is not existing, providing a patch for a vulnerability would be more helpful than always stating to move on to the higher version of the application.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Control-M for the past 13 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Control-M is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Control-M's scalability is good.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We migrated from Autosys, CA Autosys to Control-M.
We switched to Control-M from Autosys because Control-M has better integration options and the GUI is far better.
How was the initial setup?
My deployment took place around 14 years ago; it is a very old deployment that we are using, and we have been upgrading the system now and then.
The migration was smooth, so we were able to migrate on time and on budget without any disruptions.
What about the implementation team?
We have around 1600 Control-M users in our organization for our particular license; the users vary from first level support to monitor jobs, some application users with browse access, and a few admin users.
A part of the admin team of Control-M, around 25 members, takes care of deployment and maintenance.
What was our ROI?
I do not have experience with the usage and investment calculations myself; however, discussing benefits, the employee count is reduced, and we can achieve quite a lot of FTE saving by having Control-M integrated.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that the pricing is on the higher side with respect to the license, but overall the tool is good.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We finalized Control-M without evaluating other options.
What other advice do I have?
The biggest lesson I think I have learned from using Control-M is that the technology is vast, and we need to keep exploring, learning, and integrating more to ease out our life.
Control-M is used widely in our global environment; we have a licensing of around 75K, and currently, we do not plan to increase the usage.
I assess Control-M as a good tool for building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows; it is important for my DataOps and DevOps initiatives, but I have not explored DevOps deeply.
I assess Control-M as a good platform tool for modernizing and transforming our business; it removes human dependencies for mundane tasks and eases out the workload, which is easily possible with Control-M.
It is very crucial to free up IT personnel to focus on essential operations; this allows them to focus on the latest technologies and also implement POCs for the latest technology integrated with Control-M, which ultimately helps optimize the complete workflows.
I would advise others looking into using Control-M to explore Control-M. I rate this product an 8 out of 10.