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.
Control-M SaaS
BMC SoftwareExternal reviews
External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Effortless SLA Monitoring and Automation
Reliable Automation with a Learning Curve
Streamlines Scheduling with Room for Improvement
Automation has saved hours of manual scheduling and improves monitoring for complex jobs
What is our primary use case?
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?
Control-M is stable.
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?
Negative
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?
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
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?
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?
The customer support for Control-M is good.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
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.
Empowers Seamless Workflow Automation
Control M Makes Debugging Easier with Predictable, Proactive Error Handling
Centralized Dashboard and Visual Dependency Mapping That Simplify Workflow Orchestration
Visibility focus: "The visual dependency mapping is excellent. It helps me understand exactly how different systems depend on each other and see where a delay might impact later steps in the process".
Reliable Automation with Initial Setup Challenges
Automation has reduced manual jobs and now supports high-volume 24x7 operations efficiently
What is our primary use case?
My use case with Control-M is for job automation and job scheduling. Instead of making 10 different technologies where we need to run jobs, automation allows us to reduce the number of people needed. Cost-cutting is significant; instead of 10 people, we can handle the work with only one or two people.
What is most valuable?
The best features in Control-M that I like the most are job scheduling and monitoring.
Earlier, I worked for many clients, and currently I am working for Zurich, Japan. There, we used different vendors such as Infosys, Cognizant, DXC Technologies, and two others. The project operates 24/7 as an insurance project where transactions happen during daytime, so we need to run jobs during nighttime as well to upload data, take backups, and complete other necessary tasks. Instead of managing this manually, I have automated everything related to job scheduling and job configuration.
What needs improvement?
The areas that have room for improvement are the GUI to make it more user-friendly. The interface is very easy, very good, and secure. Currently, I have not found any significant improvements needed. Every year the versions improve, and everything is progressing well.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Control-M for almost 16 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Control-M is a stable product, and I would rate it 10 as a stable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is an eight out of 10. It is easy to upscale or downscale.
How are customer service and support?
I can give the technical support a nine out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
With Control-M, I compare the solution with other solutions I have worked on such as TWS (Tivoli Workload Scheduler), CA7, AutoSys, Tivoli DC (Tivoli Workload Dynamic Schedule), and Job Scheduling Console. I find that Control-M is more secure compared with the firewall system.
How was the initial setup?
Deployment is very easy with no issues.
What about the implementation team?
For the clients, they have to buy licenses, which are reasonable.
What was our ROI?
With Control-M, I would recommend implementing this product. It is a more secure solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution requires easy maintenance because most of the time we take care of it on weekends like Saturday and Sunday, or during public holidays.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There is nothing difficult about integration. It is very easy to integrate technologies for data ops and DevOps processes.
What other advice do I have?
Currently, I am taking care of almost 10,000 jobs in an insurance company.
I would assess the BMC service team for helping map out migration as effective. For migrations, we perform them in development first. We configure the jobs in development, then move to SAT testing, UAT testing, and ST testing, and then to pre-production and production. If there are more jobs, we do migrations on weekends, on Saturday and Sunday, or at midnight one day before.
Deployment takes approximately one or two days and depends on the job types. Installing Control-M can take up to one or two days maximum. For scheduling, we need to configure different agents in different vendor systems such as UNIX systems, Informatica systems, or Tandem systems. For these configurations, we need to install the agents and define them in Control-M.
To make the solution a 10, there could be more automation. I would rate this review overall as a 9.