Effortless Task Management with Moderate UI Improvements Needed
What do you like best about the product?
I like Control-M for its handling and managing of complex tasks. It provides a single point of contact for managing disconnected IT systems, which solves many complex challenges. The reduction of manual tasks through automation and the automatic identification of risks really stand out for me. It makes things more efficient by reducing the need for manual intervention.
What do you dislike about the product?
The UI can be enhanced a little, as the menus and buttons are not user-friendly.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M to manage and monitor complex applications, providing a single point of contact for disconnected IT systems. It handles complex tasks, automates processes, reduces manual intervention, and identifies risks automatically.
Unified automation has improved cross-application workflows and simplified complex file transfers
What is our primary use case?
I have several use cases for Control-M. I have been implementing Control-M for a long time in several enterprises in Brazil, and then five years ago I moved to the US. I started working here in the US as well. I have several use cases for insurance companies and bank companies in Brazil, and currently, I am working with Bank Charles Schwab using this tool to transfer internal files between systems and applications.
We also have user-defined transfers to move files to business partners. Overall, I have been using this solution for 17 years and have many use cases to speak of.
When I joined Bank Charles Schwab, Control-M was already implemented, but I also work on implementing Control-M from scratch.
Recently, I did an integration involving Control-M with Pentaho and Power BI. Even though Control-M did not have the plugin for Pentaho, I managed to run a data pipeline using scripts and successfully integrate it into Power BI dashboards.
What is most valuable?
In general, the ability to check all your processes in a unified view that Control-M provides is what I appreciate the most about it.
Control-M helps to integrate processes across various applications in big enterprises, making it significantly easier since you have a single point of control and can see failures and impacts on the flow.
Now, with the new plugins that they launch every month, it is easy to integrate with technologies for my DataOps and DevOps processes.
What needs improvement?
I think they are going in the direction of managing data that Control-M orchestrates. Currently, it is hard to get data from the process that Control-M is processing.
The ease of deploying Control-M depends on the architecture chosen, as some configurations can require more setup.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Control-M for 17 years overall in my career.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of scalability, I think it is good. I have seen effective escalation when necessary during issue resolution.
How are customer service and support?
I have contacted BMC technical support, especially when I cannot solve certain issues myself, but I have a good handle on it due to my long experience.
The quality of support is fast during production emergencies, but it can take longer when issues are not critical, with interactions sometimes taking several days.
They have limited support for native language issues, which can create challenges for non-English speakers.
How would you rate customer service and support?
What about the implementation team?
Usually, I handle the deployment myself, but I need a team to implement large numbers of jobs after the deployment.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I do not have experience using alternatives to Control-M, as I was directly presented with Control-M when I started working with workload automation.
What other advice do I have?
Control-M tends to be the most expensive compared to other competitors. However, I believe it is worth the price since it delivers the most.
It requires some maintenance on my end occasionally, especially when compliance or security updates are needed.
Seamless Data Workflow Management
What do you like best about the product?
I used Control-M for workflow automation, and it helped me manage the data workflow for my organization. I really like the very user-friendly interface and the advanced scheduling functionality. The initial setup of Control-M was very easy, and everything was working great for me. I am very likely to recommend it to friends or colleagues, as I rated it a 10.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M for workflow automation, helping manage the data workflow for my organization.
Efficient IT Task Automation with Room for Improvement
What do you like best about the product?
I use Control-M for automation, specifically to schedule and manage my complex IT tasks. I like how it helps in orchestrating these tasks by automating job scheduling and provides reliable monitoring. It gives clear visibility into all tasks, and I love the user interface. It has been helpful in quickly detecting failures and managing dependencies.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes the UI can be a little complex for new users, and the initial setup takes a little time.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M for automating job scheduling, orchestrating complex IT tasks, and it provides reliable monitoring and clear visibility, which helps manage dependencies and quickly detect failures.
Reliable Automation with a Steep Learning Curve
What do you like best about the product?
I like Control-M’s reliability and centralized scheduling. It makes managing complex job workflows easy, provides clear monitoring, and ensures smooth, automated execution with minimal manual intervention. Control-M solves scheduling complexity, reduces manual errors, ensures reliable job automation, improves visibility, streamlines dependencies, and guarantees consistent execution across environments. Its reliability ensures my Java automation jobs run consistently without failures, building trust in nightly test executions and releases. The centralized scheduling lets me manage all workflows from a single dashboard, making it easy to track dependencies, monitor job status in real time, and quickly troubleshoot issues. This saves time, reduces manual effort, and improves overall test pipeline efficiency.
What do you dislike about the product?
Control-M’s interface can feel complex for beginners, setup requires expertise, troubleshooting sometimes lacks clarity, and licensing costs can be relatively high.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Control-M schedules and monitors my Java test runs, solving scheduling complexity, reducing manual errors, ensuring reliable job automation, improving visibility, streamlining dependencies, and guaranteeing consistent execution across environments.
Effortless SLA Monitoring and Automation
What do you like best about the product?
I like Control-M's automated services and find its batch job scheduling service very useful. It provides great help with predictive analysis and everything works well and smooth. I also appreciate that it's very easy and user-friendly.
What do you dislike about the product?
Everything is working well
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M for SLA monitoring and predictive analysis. I like its automated services and batch job scheduling, which make everything run well and smoothly.
Reliable Automation with a Learning Curve
What do you like best about the product?
I like Control-M's reliability and centralized job management, which ensures that workflows run consistently without frequent issues, providing confidence that critical jobs will execute on time. The monitoring and alerting features provide real-time visibility into job status, making it easy to track running, completed, or failed jobs. If a job fails, it quickly alerts, allowing for prompt issue identification and resolution. I also really appreciate how Control-M handles job dependencies and complex workflows smoothly, even with multiple systems and applications involved, which reduces the need for manual coordination. Overall, Control-M simplifies daily operations, reduces stress for support teams, and enhances overall efficiency by automating and streamlining workload management.
What do you dislike about the product?
While Control-M is a very powerful and reliable tool, there are a few areas where it could be improved. The biggest challenge is the initial learning curve. For new users, especially beginners, the UI and configuration options can feel a bit complex at first. If onboarding and tutorials were more beginner-friendly, it could make adoption easier. Another area is the user interface, which sometimes feels slightly dated and overwhelming due to the number of options available on a single screen. A more simplified or customizable UI would improve the overall user experience. Additionally, the licensing cost is on the higher side, which may not be ideal for small teams or organizations. More flexible pricing options would make it accessible to a wider range of users. That said, these are minor concerns compared to the stability and functionality Control-M provides in enterprise environments.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M to automate, schedule, and monitor batch jobs across environments, saving time and reducing errors. It solves manual and error-prone job execution, manages complex dependencies, and provides real-time monitoring, improving reliability and operational clarity.
Streamlines Scheduling with Room for Improvement
What do you like best about the product?
I use Control-M to monitor automated jobs and manage workflow, which is very helpful for scheduling tasks and handling alerts. I like that it ensures smooth and reliable application operation daily. Control-M reduces manual monitoring, prevents job failures, improves workflow visibility, and ensures timely task execution. It simplifies control with its centralized scheduling, which improves visibility and reduces errors. Automating cross-job dependencies is also done efficiently.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find the UI complexity a bit of a challenge. The licensing cost can be high, which is something to consider. There's also a steep learning curve involved, which can be daunting at first. Additionally, the limited cloud-native flexibility restricts some operations.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M to monitor automated jobs, manage workflow, and schedule tasks. It reduces manual monitoring, prevents job failures, improves workflow visibility, and minimizes downtime. Control-M centralizes scheduling, simplifies control, reduces errors, and automates cross-job dependencies.
Automation has saved hours of manual scheduling and improves monitoring for complex jobs
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Control-M is job scheduling. I use Control-M for job scheduling by scheduling jobs for the asset team, like OS jobs, MFT jobs, and AFT jobs. I exclusively use Control-M for scheduling.
What is most valuable?
The best features Control-M offers include monitoring, planning, and forecast. Planning stands out the most for me in Control-M, as it helps me to schedule jobs.
Control-M has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to automate a lot of manual activities, so we are saving time.
What needs improvement?
Control-M can be improved with GUI features such as job failure monitoring, where the duration can be increased from 30 days to one year so that we can monitor long durations of job failures.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Control-M for 11 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Control-M is good.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for Control-M is fine.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not previously use a different solution.
How was the initial setup?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that it is cheaper than other automation tools in the market.
What about the implementation team?
We require five staff members for deployment and maintenance, and they all are consultants.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a return on investment, specifically in terms of money saved. We are saving a lot of time, as many activities that used to take around three to four hours by manual activity have been reduced to 30 minutes to one hour.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that it is cheaper than other automation tools in the market.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Control-M, I did not evaluate other options.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others looking into using Control-M is that it is easy to use, flexible, and stable. The features in Control-M are good, and the GUI of Control-M is actually very fantastic.
Currently, 500 users are using Control-M in my organization, where the majority of them are from the application team and a few are admin and schedulers. Control-M is currently used extensively, and while we do not have plans to increase its usage, we are using Control-M in different domains.
The biggest lesson I have learned from using Control-M is that it makes automation easy. It is easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for my data ops and DevOps processes as things change. I have automated activities on the Linux server while integrating with Control-M.
I would rate this product a 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Automation has reduced batch time and now needs more features and wider adoption
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Control-M is to schedule jobs and automate the workflow. A specific example of a workflow I've scheduled and automated with Control-M is a batch flow through which a number of customers receive an automated message about their transaction details on their mobile phones using Control-M jobs.
What is most valuable?
The best features Control-M offers include automating large workflows, allowing us to run jobs on a scheduled time basis, and requiring no manual intervention.
What stands out to me about the automation and scheduling is the error notification service, which I find very helpful because we do not have to monitor our jobs on a daily basis. Whenever there is an error, the team receives notification regarding the job failure, which makes our work easier.
Control-M has positively impacted my organization by saving a considerable amount of time, and manual intervention is not required for most operations because most things are automated with Control-M. I work as part of the batch operations team, and we used to run Indian batches which typically took around two hours on a daily basis. With the help of automating the batch through Control-M, the batch now takes approximately fifteen to twenty minutes to execute and run, which means we save around one to one and a half hours on a daily basis.
What needs improvement?
Control-M could be improved by offering more additional features and ensuring that more people are aware of Control-M.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Control-M for five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Control-M's scalability is good.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for Control-M is good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
What about the implementation team?
For the deployment and maintenance of Control-M, we require majorly four teams: one is needed for operations, one is needed for scheduling the jobs, and one is needed for maintaining Control-M.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise others looking into using Control-M that it is a good tool if you want workload automation to be done and if you want to save time. I have given this review a rating of seven out of ten.
