Control-M SaaS Starter Pack

My current use cases for Control-M are mostly for workflow modernization, including internal workflows related to OS type executions, file transfer executions, Azure pipeline, data ingestion, and BDNA workflows.

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.

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.

I have been using Control-M since at least 2014, which is about 13 years now.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My use case with Control-M is to handle scheduling and automation processes.

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.

The areas that have room for improvement in Control-M are the user interface enhancements.

I have been using Control-M for more than 10 years in our organization.

I rate the stability of Control-M as an eight out of ten.

Regarding scalability, I rate it a nine out of ten.

I rate the technical support of Control-M as a seven out of ten.

I find it very difficult to quantify the return on investment I have seen with Control-M.

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.

I compare Control-M favorably with other solutions and vendors in the market.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have been using Control-M for the past 13 years.

Control-M is stable.

Control-M's scalability is good.

Customer support is good.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We finalized Control-M without evaluating other options.

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.

I am using Control-M mostly to automate banking jobs and monitor the jobs at the same time. Since I have been using it for the last year, it is mostly an operator's job as a Control-M operator. What I do is monitor the jobs, and if there is any job delay or job failure, we go through it. I use it to find where the problem is, why the job is failing, or why the job is getting delayed. Then I work with the application team to sort it out.

My favorite feature is in the web version, since I have been asked not to use the UI. In the web version, what I mostly appreciate is that when a job is waiting for any reason, whether a prerequisite is not met or the in-conditions are not satisfied, I can simply go to the waiting info section. There is an option where I can just click on it and I get to know every detail, such as why the job is waiting, whether the prerequisite jobs or the earlier jobs are executing or have failed. So in just one click, I get to know everything about that particular job, including why it is waiting and where the job flow is getting stuck. That is my favorite feature.

I heard that Control-M is going to discontinue the UI version. When I search for a job and ask for the neighbor jobs, such as the predecessors and the successors, it does not give a sequence; the jobs are not in sequence. I have to do some settings and navigate through multiple screens and clicks, and then I find out the information. If I could get the jobs in sequence by default, that would help me a lot in troubleshooting and understanding the job flow, particularly which job is going to run first and which job is going to run after that. This is the thing that I mostly do not appreciate.

I have been using Control-M for the last one year.

In the last year, I have never seen Control-M environment lagging or crashing. Sometimes some servers are down, which is a different matter, but I do not have any experience in the last year where Control-M was down. Failover is a different consideration.

Control-M might be scalable because I remember in April of this year, I attended a roadshow for Control-M and there were very new features, including AI integration. All these features have already been released in April of this year. Seeing those features in Control-M, the AI integration and how easy it has made the job is impressive. For example, in simple English, I can type it down in my environment and jobs get started. With the help of AI, I can make scripts, and if a rerun is required for any particular job, I can do that just by using very simple English language. I would say it is scalable.

I have used multiple tools, but nothing similar to Control-M. I have used Dynatrace, I have used Splunk, I have used SCOM, but nothing similar to Control-M.

It was not very difficult to learn how to use Control-M. It was something new for me, a totally new thing. It was not that difficult. I started learning things, and it hardly took me three months from scratch to understand how things are working in Control-M.

Control-M was already deployed when I joined and started working.