Automation has improved daily batch control and consistently ensures banking SLAs are met
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for Control-M is to control the batch for the day by scheduling the jobs, ensuring that all jobs run on time, and verifying that all conditions are met. Sometimes I force complete the jobs or rerun failed jobs by fixing the JCLs, and I ensure all batches are completed on time and all SLAs are met.
A specific example of a batch process I manage with Control-M is a weekly job which runs from Monday to Friday on all working days, and I ensure the job is completed on time. I also verify that if any files are pending to process which that job needs, the file is available so that the job can run once the file is available. Such scenarios are common in my work.
Regarding my main use case, I work on automation and ensure that there are no human errors. Everything we use is up to date, and we make sure to follow the SOPs perfectly.
What is most valuable?
Control-M offers several best features, including its user-friendliness. Compared to TWS and CA 7, Control-M is a tool wherein if you get training for 10 to 12 days, you can learn almost everything, and it is very good and simple to use.
What makes Control-M user-friendly for me is that we connect through the client interface, which is easy to log in to, and there is no downtime for it. Control-M is only recycled weekly. It is straightforward to define and monitor the jobs and to get insights from the zoom panel. The coloring shows us in yellow if a job is executing, red if it has failed, and other colors for different conditions, making it simple.
Control-M has positively impacted my organization, especially when new team members join as their first assignment. It is a tool we can explain quickly, giving them a few sessions to work in production or development environments faster compared to other tools like CA 7 or TWS.
In our organization, we work for a banking client where we handle 10,000 jobs running on Control-M daily. Managing those jobs would be difficult with other tools due to visibility issues. With Control-M, it is easier to manage workloads and handle abends, and the chances of missing things are significantly less compared to command-based tools like CA 7.
What needs improvement?
Control-M can be improved in several areas. Last week when creating a job, I found that the option for global conditions could be more streamlined, as well as the in and out conditions, which are a bit complicated. Integrating more AI options, such as automatically marking jobs that are known to fail as complete, would be beneficial.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Control-M for the last 16 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Control-M is 100% stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Regarding scalability, I would say it is good and there are always possibilities for scalability.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support from BMC, who owns Control-M, is excellent. They provide good support for critical issues, and I would rate it 99% out of 100.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have experience working on CA 7 and TWS. While CA 7 is a good tool, Control-M is better due to its simplicity and less complicated nature.
How was the initial setup?
To deploy Control-M, I would say two resources would be sufficient for proper installation and defining architecture, security levels, and access control.
What about the implementation team?
In our team, approximately 24 users utilize Control-M, with 15 members working 24/7 for batch operations and nine members focusing on scheduling tasks during business hours.
What was our ROI?
Regarding return on investment, training a resource on Control-M allows them to handle two or three clients at the same time, thus saving costs for the company and making it easier to train.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Those things are managed by the sales team. I do not have much visibility regarding pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Jobtrac, CA 7, and TWS before making our decision.
What other advice do I have?
The biggest lesson I have learned from using Control-M is time management, reliability, and the tool's availability, which makes our work easier.
I advise that if you have banking or insurance requirements or operate in a small industry, you can definitely consider Control-M as your first option.
I provided this review with an overall rating of 10 out of 10.
Reliable tool for job automation
What do you like best about the product?
I like how it makes it much easier to monitor jobs, manage dependencies, and identify issues
What do you dislike about the product?
The interface can be sometimes a little bit complex for new users
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It helps manage and automate jobs across different systems. The main benefit would be that everything is in one place so it’s much easier to monitor jobs and see if something goes wrong
Workflow management has become highly reliable and has saved significant scheduling time
What is our primary use case?
My use case for Control-M includes file transfer and workload balancing, but it is mostly focused on workflow management.
What is most valuable?
I love Control-M's reliability and ease of use. It offers ease of adaptability for upgrades, and the GUI features have been enhanced for better readability. Their reporting improvements are notable, and they developed software that helps manage licensing effectively.
Control-M is incredibly reliable, rarely having issues from an administrative standpoint. The high stability means I am rarely surprised by problems. Additionally, time-saving is significant; previously, scheduling involved paper and took much longer. Control-M reduced the scheduling time drastically, taking only about five to ten minutes to add a new job to the workflow.
What needs improvement?
One area that has room for improvement is support. Early on, support was fabulous, with efficient issue resolution processes. However, since approximately 2015, support has been lackluster, relying too much on email. I would suggest a return to hands-on support engagement.
Aside from the support aspect, I cannot think of anything else that needs improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I started using Control-M in 2000.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Regarding stability, I would give Control-M a ten. Control-M is such a reliable piece of software. I rarely, if ever, have to do anything from an administrative point of view. When someone calls me with a Control-M problem, it surprises me as it is mostly stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Control-M is scalable. The easiest way to express this is regarding licensing; as you are scaling up, you should keep up with your licensing. BMC does an annual review, and your account representative will reach out for a licensing software run that generates a report using all Control-M components.
How are customer service and support?
From one to ten, with ten being the best, I would rate their technical support about a seven.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Concerning Control-M, I previously started out with scheduling package software back in the old Uccel, which was bought by Computer Associates and called CA-7.
How was the initial setup?
Installing Control-M was really quite easy; you simply download it and do the installation. The biggest thing is the front-end work prior to installation, such as deciding which database you will use.
What about the implementation team?
My relationship with BMC is probably transactional. I rarely have to reach out to them.
The BMC service team could be better at being more involved in mapping out migration strategies, though they have a really good process called AMIGO that yields positive outcomes.
What was our ROI?
In terms of time savings with Control-M, I spend maybe thirty minutes a week, if that, on Control-M compared to other software products I have dealt with.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I did not have much engagement in the pricing area.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Regarding other solutions, Redwood was the only one I was familiar with. I saw a demo on that before 2010 when management was looking at maybe replacing Control-M.
What other advice do I have?
Deployment is on a Windows platform in a high availability environment.
I would recommend Control-M to others looking to implement it, but it is essential to ensure it fits your environment, so doing a proof of concept is always beneficial.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Effortless Job Scheduling and Reliable Automation
What do you like best about the product?
I use Control-M to build job chains with clear dependencies and schedules. It helps ensure tasks run in the right order and only when conditions are met. I often review job history and outputs to confirm changes worked as expected after deployments.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some automation features take time to learn, and keeping job definitions consistent requires discipline. A few configuration steps could be simpler.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Control-M replaces manual scripts with structured automation. It improves reliability, reduces failed jobs, and makes automation easier to support and maintain.
