Control-M is used as a job scheduler. Initially, when started, it was more or less used as a batch scheduler. It has evolved over time so much that even the name has been changed to Control-M Workload Automation, which completely justifies its name. It is not just a scheduler anymore; it does many more things than just a scheduler.
Control-M SaaS
BMC SoftwareExternal reviews
193 reviews
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Effortless Workflow Automation and Seamless CI/CD Integration
What do you like best about the product?
Control-M lets us design workflows as code and keep everything in Git. It fits well with CI/CD, so job changes can be tested and deployed just like application updates. This makes our automations more consistent and easier to maintain.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some advanced options take a while to learn, and creating new integrations often requires coordination with other teams. When multiple groups add jobs without a structure, the workspace can feel cluttered and harder to search through.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It gives us one place to create and manage automations, keeps tasks running in the right order, and reduces manual fixes. This makes our processes more stable and easier to maintain.
Effective Job Scheduling with Debugging Ease, But Slow Performance
What do you like best about the product?
I find Control-M incredibly helpful for job scheduling as it simplifies the process of scheduling tasks. The feature I appreciate the most is the ability to track failures and access debug logs, which are essential for troubleshooting. Whenever a job fails, I can quickly check the debug logs to instantly identify and solve problems, making the troubleshooting process much more efficient. This capability of Control-M adds significant value by ensuring that any issues can be resolved swiftly without prolonged disruptions.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find Control-M to be slow at times, which can be frustrating and potentially impact my productivity. Additionally, the software feels like it's based on legacy systems, which might suggest that it lacks some modern features or user-friendly interfaces that newer software options could offer.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M for easy job scheduling, tracking failures, and debugging logs, which simplifies troubleshooting processes.
Centralized Task Management with Proactive Alerts
What do you like best about the product?
Control-M shows all the tasks that feed into our applications in one clear place. I can quickly check if a data load, report, or system update ran the way it should. The alerts also help us catch issues early.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some menus take a few clicks to reach, and new users need time to learn where everything is. The design could be simpler, especially when you have many jobs linked together.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Control-M helps us see job status fast, fix issues before users notice, and understand how different systems connect. It reduces guesswork and speeds up daily support work.
Reliable and Efficient Workflow Management with Control-M
What do you like best about the product?
I really appreciate how Control-M simplifies the management of complex workflows. The centralized dashboards are extremely valuable to me, enabling a comprehensive view of all my jobs, dependencies, and SLAs in one location. This centralization significantly improves my efficiency by providing quick access to critical information. I also love how swiftly I can troubleshoot failures thanks to the clear logs and alerts, which save me a lot of time. Overall, Control-M makes my batch processes more reliable, automated, and predictable. These features collectively streamline my operations and ensure that our workflows are both reliable and highly efficient.
What do you dislike about the product?
I feel that the user interface of Control-M is a bit heavy and not very intuitive, especially for new users. This complexity sometimes leads to creating complex workflows requiring more clicks than anticipated. Additionally, the logs provided can be overly detailed, which makes identifying the exact error line time-consuming. While the platform is reliable once familiar, these initial challenges can be a hurdle.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M to automate and monitor workflows, minimize manual errors, ensure timely batch processing, handle dependencies, and swiftly resolve failures, enhancing the reliability and efficiency of our operations.
instrument for overseeing daily operations
What do you like best about the product?
Managing tasks across various systems without switching between tools is made simple with Control-M. The timeline view makes it easier to keep track of what's pending, what's running, and potential delays. Additionally, it provides unambiguous alerts, making it simple to respond before a problem impacts workflow.
What do you dislike about the product?
When establishing new workflows, some configuration steps seem a little onerous. In some places, the interface might use some updating. Because the platform is so feature-rich, it also takes time for new users to comprehend all of the options.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Control-M minimizes manual labor and scheduling errors by assisting in task coordination across various applications. It makes it simpler to locate bottlenecks by centralizing all job monitoring in one location. This keeps things running smoothly and increases the overall stability of our processes.
Effortless Scheduling That Saves Time
What do you like best about the product?
I like how it allows me to schedule jobs all on one. It gives me full visibility
What do you dislike about the product?
It looks really old and blocky, not good ui and not intuitive
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Apps on my team rely on scripts, or separate pipeline tools. Hard to track, no central view, and easy to miss failures. I don’t need to log into multiple servers to understand batch behavior. It saves time debugging because everything is in a single pane of glass.
Efficient Workflow Management, But Pricey
What do you like best about the product?
I appreciate Control-M for its ability to automate and manage various workflows, which significantly reduces the need for manual monitoring. It efficiently schedules jobs and tracks dependencies, ensuring that processes run smoothly, even when multiple systems are involved. One of the standout features for me is how it consolidates all workflows into a single platform, providing clear visibility over every job, its status, and its dependencies. This integration minimizes the need to switch between different tools, drastically reducing manual work and simplifying the management of complex processes. Overall, Control-M saves time, reduces errors, and enhances operational organization.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find Control-M to be somewhat complex initially, which slows down development. Its performance tends to be sluggish, particularly when managing multiple workflows. The pricing is quite complex and the licensing fees are very high, which makes the cost aspect challenging. Additionally, the user interface could use some improvement, and I feel that cloud integration needs to be enhanced.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M to automate workflows across systems, saving time and reducing errors. It centralizes job scheduling and monitoring, providing clear visibility and simplifying management. This reduces manual work and keeps operations organized despite initial complexity.
Reliable Task Completion with Control-M, Minor Real-Time Limitations
What do you like best about the product?
I really appreciate how Control-M manages to deliver tasks with impressive speed, ensuring swift completion that aligns well with my deadlines. This rapid execution does not come at the expense of dependability, as I find the tool's reliability to be a standout feature, consistently delivering on expectations without fault. It marks a solid implementation that I can trust for crucial workload automation and job scheduling. These aspects make my experiences with Control-M not just efficient but also instill confidence in the results it delivers. Additionally, I value the robustness of the outcomes, which seem to be built on substantial and hearty framework, rather than being superficial or temporary solutions.
What do you dislike about the product?
I would like to see more of a real-time event processing capability and more dynamic workflows in Control-M.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M to solve workload automation and job scheduling issues, benefiting from its speed and reliability, which ensures robust results.
Efficient Batch Job Management with Room for Improvement
What do you like best about the product?
I use Control-M primarily for creating scheduled batch jobs, which greatly assists in handling tasks such as the archival of customer support messages. I appreciate its intuitive UI, which simplifies the management of multiple jobs and makes it straightforward to trigger one job after another has finished. I like how easily I can run and set up jobs using the drag-and-drop feature. Additionally, Control-M is particularly useful for triggering simple stored procedures on a schedule and organizing batch jobs efficiently. These features significantly simplify my workflow and make it easier to communicate job processes to other team members, as they can easily see the description and a UI flow of the jobs in Control-M.
What do you dislike about the product?
I find Control-M becomes a bit disorganized in large enterprise environments with numerous jobs, making it difficult to manage efficiently. Searching for specific subsets of jobs I need to work on can be challenging. Additionally, editing jobs is sometimes cumbersome, which can slow down workflow. The search features could be improved, especially under the monitoring tab and when creating a workspace. Furthermore, an easy option to create a workspace directly from the monitoring tab would be beneficial. Guidance on the options available in a workspace when editing would also greatly enhance usability.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Control-M to simplify job scheduling, manage multiple jobs via UI, trigger jobs sequentially, and provide workflow visibility for my team.
Has supported fast integration with cloud technologies and streamlined complex job management through a user-friendly interface
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
Control-M, especially, is quick to the market with all the new products that are coming up, be it the integrations or the capabilities that are emerging. Any new technology that comes up in any stream such as AWS or Azure or GCP is addressed quickly. Control-M is very fast to the market when compared to other schedulers or other vendors where they develop these integrations and the rapid release of these integrations. The target is around three to five integration releases within a month, which is best in the market. The support that is received when a case is raised is really quick and very helpful when compared to others.
The best features of Control-M are highlighted by its GUI, which is a game-changer because it is so user-friendly. Any person who is logging into Control-M for the first time will know what each option or the parameter is. It is so self-explained, eye-catching, and very easy to use. Currently, Control-M is moving away from the thick client to the web client, which also maintains the same user-friendliness. Another key feature is that it keeps up to the market standards with respect to security, compliance, and everything. All the capabilities are available, and it is just a drag and drop of each to create jobs. In this DevOps world, integration with the DevOps pipelines is possible where job creation can be automated as well.
It is very easy to integrate technologies for DataOps and DevOps processes as things change, not only for DevOps processes but for any other tools in the market. There are more than 100 plus integrations that are already built within Control-M where you can just drag and drop to create and have a centralized view of all these jobs, be it ETL jobs, data lake jobs, or ADF jobs. Adding these dependencies and having a centralized view is something that Control-M thrives on. If any issues are faced during this process, the support model and documentation around it are very clear and abstract.
Control-M has helped businesses positively, especially when started as a scheduler without exploring most of the modules that were available. Over the last eight years, the first benefit was that when integrating with a DevOps process to maintain version control, a client had an in-built macro or PowerShell script which was incompatible when the version was upgraded. Standardizing it using the Workflow Change Manager, which promotes jobs between environments, was suggested. Control-M's Application Integrator helps to create custom job types rather than using in-built job types, which helped develop around 150 or 200 jobs with that approach. Control-M also offers a conversion tool that allows conversion of jobs from other tools to Control-M without requiring costly professional services.
What needs improvement?
There are areas for improvement, especially with the transition from the thick client to the web GUI. While Control-M's main game-changer is its GUI, the current web interface is less user-friendly than the thick client. A Windows client option should be maintained for flexibility, as it caters to users who prefer different interfaces.
For how long have I used the solution?
Control-M has been used for 15 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Control-M as a tool is very stable. However, stability can be affected by how the environment is set up, including network stability, storage, and database factors. Control-M itself is robust, and it would receive a rating of 10.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Control-M is a scalable solution, and its scalability would receive a rating of 10.
How are customer service and support?
When a case is raised, the response that is received is really quick and very helpful when compared to others.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Conversion of jobs from other scheduling tools to Control-M has been done. Jobs have been converted from Dollar Universe and TWS, IWS Maestro as they call it, to Control-M. There is working experience on Maestro and Dollar Universe as well.
How was the initial setup?
Deploying Control-M is straightforward; as long as you know how to deploy it, the first attempt may be more difficult compared to subsequent ones. Documentation and support are readily available, making the overall process easy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Compared to other vendors, Control-M is quite costly. However, all good things come with a good cost. The features, speed to the market, and quality justify the higher expense. Control-M may need to rethink how to make it more cost-effective because while many clients appreciate the tool and its features, the current economic climate and desire for cost optimization lead some clients to consider other options that may solely meet their scheduling requirements at a lower cost.
What other advice do I have?
Control-M does require maintenance, especially for the VMs in both on-prem and Azure environments, which need to be patched regularly. A separate team handles automated patching, and there is a move away from on-prem to have everything on a single cloud instance.
Maintenance is easy overall; applying patches does not take much time. The technical aspect of upgrading or patching is minimal, but the process around it can take longer. Gathering concurrence from job owners for downtime and executing the patching process usually takes time, even though the actual installation is quick.
Control-M would be recommended if you are looking for a scheduling or workload automation solution and are not overly concerned with cost but want to utilize features to enhance your estate and maintain a centralized view. This review has been given an overall rating of 9.
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