External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
I have multiple use cases in Control-M. I have used MFT, SAP R/3, SAP BW, the File Watcher, the Informatica module, and OS scripts. I have used almost most of the modules in Control-M.
I have worked with multiple companies over the past eight years. In one of the companies, we are the partner, and in one of the companies, currently we are the customer for Control-M.
In Control-M, what I appreciate the most is the visualization and the orchestration it provides to us. I have used other scheduling tools also, such as Autosys and cron jobs. Control-M has multiple features, including one in the MFT where we can perform seamless file transfer. I have not seen this kind of file transfer without a script, with just the help of a GUI. We can perform the file transfer with multiple domains, multiple platforms, and multiple servers. I feel this is excellent. We can even integrate Control-M to ServiceNow, where it is a ticketing partner. If the job fails, it will directly create incidents, P2, P1, and so on. The integration is seamless. I really appreciate these features in Control-M.
Year on year, I am seeing upgradations from Control-M. Earlier when I started my career, I was using Control-M version 7. The GUI was adequate. However, now every year, they have upgraded their tool. They have even released the web version of Control-M with browse-only access for others. I am purely the scheduler and administrator of Control-M. Control-M is my day-to-day activity. I go to clients to gather business requirements and pitch how we can integrate Control-M into their processes. I can see that Control-M is performing well. We have seen many new features. Recently, they have integrated AWS where we are performing file transfer directly from AWS S3 to other partners. I feel this is a good tool, and they are evolving. They are enabling us to evolve better as well.
I can say around twenty to twenty-five percent productivity increase has been realized, and even the margins have been increased. The resources have also been reduced with the integration of Control-M to other ticketing tools and other systems. I can see at least fifteen to twenty percent of the company's revenue has been increased at the infrastructure level by using Control-M.
With DevOps, I feel it is somewhat challenging. We have to use Control-M APIs. I do not see a simple drag and drop interface, similar to what we use for Control-M job creation. It is not that straightforward when we have to integrate with other APIs such as Git and other partners for DevOps, Snowflake, and all. I do not see it is that easy, but we can integrate. We need an API that is more user-friendly. I suggest that BMC provides plug-and-play APIs so that we can integrate with multiple applications.
In Control-M, the area that needs improvement is related to the cost. I have checked with other customers, and the licensing cost is somewhat heavy compared to other competitors. A few of the customers are transitioning away from Control-M because those tools are not yet as sophisticated. However, due to the cost and purchasing structure in their businesses, they are moving towards other tools. I recommend BMC to reduce the licensing cost. That is one of the major drawbacks of BMC. Regarding maintenance, I have heard that in the SaaS model, they are only performing administrative functions. However, the current three-layer architecture of BMC is somewhat complex. For beginners, they will not understand the Enterprise Manager, the Control-M servers, and the Control-M agent points. If BMC integrates Control-M EM and the servers in one part of the architecture, it will be helpful. It will make it easier for everyone to use Control-M.
I have been using Control-M for the past eight to nine years.
I can rate the stability an eight. I do not see many unstable issues. I can say it is most of the time stable. If it is unstable, it is because of our Control-M server issue, not the BMC issue. Due to the high CPU utilization of our servers or any kind of network issues within our internal on-premises servers, it will go down. However, I do not see any issues from BMC.
I can rate the scalability one hundred percent. It is a scalable solution. However, at the end of the day, it is a matter of licensing cost, whatever we are paying to BMC. They are charging upwards of fifty dollars per job or twenty-nine thousand dollars per year. It is a scalable solution.
My impressions of BMC as a strategic partner or a trusted advisor are positive. They are prompt in providing solutions. Whenever we have a P1 or P2 incident raised to BMC, they will mostly resolve it within the ETA. A few things they still need to upgrade. They will send those queries to their R&D, and they will get back to us. However, overall, with the licensing or with customer interaction or those kinds of things, we can trust them for a few more years.
I can rate the technical support a seven. I rate it a seven because a few of the technical staff who attend to our queries do not have the knowledge about major issues. If there is any major impact or major issue, they will also not know about it. They will say they will check with R&D and they will get back. The ETA will be somewhat high for P2s and P3s. Only for P1s, they will come on the call and they will try to resolve. I cannot say they are the worst or the best. They are adequate.
Positive
I one hundred percent recommend Control-M to our customers, the clients, and the multiple companies I have worked with. I will recommend BMC as an advanced scheduling tool for orchestration. There are areas of improvements for BMC as well. As the trend is going towards AI now, I have heard they are working on it, but we have not seen that in our versions of Control-M. However, as the trend is going towards more AI and generative AI, if they release anything related to AI in Control-M, such as a chatbot or something where if a job fails, a chatbot can tell how it has failed, that would be beneficial. We are spending half an hour to one hour to find the root cause of how a Control-M job has failed. If they do something about it, that would help significantly. We have multiple AI solutions coming up. If we can schedule those AI solutions through Control-M as well, it will be at par with the industry standards now. Otherwise, it will become legacy. I recommend this to all my customers because I feel this is one of the best advanced scheduling tools I have used. I can see very few competitors to Control-M as of now.
The solution was a partner purchase from one of the clients I am working for. They have purchased it. We also have an AWS module they have purchased from BMC.
The deployment has presented challenges a few times due to the compatibility issues of Control-M software with the other servers. It might be due to the Java version or some glitch in the patches we are receiving from BMC. A few times it is challenging. It is not straightforward. We need experienced resources or a proper administrator to redeploy this kind of thing.
My current relationship with BMC is both transformative and transactional. I am involved in both the licensing and technology upgrades. Recently, I have attended one of their roadshow events in Bengaluru. We are constantly in touch with the BMC customer. They have one dedicated customer support manager for our team. We will be in touch with them for any of the features or any cost or anything related to renewal of the licenses and everything.
My organization has more than one hundred employees. In only one office, it is one hundred. If I consider my overall company who are using Control-M, it is around one thousand plus employees using Control-M.
I have provided this review with an overall rating of seven.
I mainly use Control-M for scheduling jobs according to my requirements, which allows me to include holidays or exclude Saturdays, Sundays, or any specific time.
I also use cyclic jobs that run in a recurring period and can set up prerequisites before the job runs.
I can implement a File Watcher to establish a rule that a particular job can only run after the upstream job is completed.
I have created several new jobs using these capabilities.
Within Control-M, I use smart folders and jobs, and I can approach scheduling the way I want, so I have used it fully from start to end.
Control-M is straightforward for building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows.
I use the XML side for configuration, which requires importing, and I find it user-friendly.
Control-M has been used for building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows, especially at JPMorgan Chase Bank where most production support is monitored through Control-M.
I worked as a developer, developed jobs, and sent them to production, and the process was seamless.
My favorite feature about Control-M is the rule-based calendar feature.
The initial deployment of Control-M is straightforward, as it involves a simple installation of a Control-M agent within the server.
Control-M demonstrates strong scalability.
My application alone uses approximately 65 jobs, and for each folder, there are thousands of jobs that can load immediately in production.
When using a filter, the search is quick, and overall scalability has been excellent.
After migrating to Control-M, the positive effect on business-critical applications is evident: whenever a job ends successfully or fails, notifications are sent immediately.
These notifications go to EventBridge, alerting the team to any critical jobs.
High-priority jobs trigger alerts to engage developers immediately, ensuring there is no delay in response.
One area for improvement in Control-M could be in the logs, as they only show when the job started and whether it ended successfully or not.
Since the Control-M agent is running on the servers, we could pull up logs and display the actual error to aid in debugging.
I have been using Control-M for approximately eight to nine years in my career.
Regarding stability, I do not experience any lagging, crashing, or performance issues with Control-M.
Control-M demonstrates strong scalability.
My application alone uses approximately 65 jobs, and for each folder, there are thousands of jobs that can load immediately in production.
When using a filter, the search is quick, and overall scalability has been excellent.
I have never contacted technical support or customer support from BMC regarding Control-M because we have sufficient in-house expertise to share knowledge about it internally.
Positive
I started on TWS, Tivoli Workload Scheduler, which is an older tool with a poor user interface.
After transitioning to Control-M, I have been very satisfied with it.
I have not identified pain points until now because the use cases I addressed were fully satisfied by Control-M's capabilities.
Whatever use cases I needed, they were fulfilled by the product.
I used Tivoli Workload Scheduler earlier, but now the company has standardized on Control-M without using any other schedulers.
The initial deployment of Control-M is straightforward, as it involves a simple installation of a Control-M agent within the server.
Only one person is required for deployment, and it can be completed without needing a team.
For both job deployment and software installation, one person typically handles it, as we use an automation process with no manual work, making it a self-service operation.
I have personally used TWS as an alternative to Control-M.
I prefer Control-M over TWS.
The biggest difference between TWS and Control-M is that TWS has a poor user interface, while Control-M has an excellent user interface and alerting capabilities.
TWS requires monitoring on one page without navigation directions, whereas Control-M uses smart folders with parent and subfolders, maintaining a clear graph structure and allowing the creation of custom workspaces.
Regarding data pipelines, I have not explored integrating them via Control-M.
Non-technical users or business users do not need to use Control-M, as they primarily rely on developers or application support.
Currently, all employees at JPMorgan use Control-M for everything except mainframe jobs, which are monitored and developed through Control-M.
For maintenance, a patching team manages it, and I do not experience any downtime with Control-M.
I might not notice maintenance communications since they could be performed behind the scenes or during off-business hours.
I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.
My main use case for Control-M is working as an administrator and scheduler, setting up AFT jobs with respect to their AFT and OS jobs. Apart from that, I also work on connection profiles and their respective connection setup between two servers, troubleshooting Control-M agents and their respective configurations.
For example, if I want to schedule a specific job for a specific day, Control-M is very useful, allowing me to schedule or set up a job with respect to either a monthly, weekly, or daily basis while considering specific holidays configured on that particular calendar. In addition, if I want to run some script, I can use OS jobs to run a specific script on that server. I can also transfer files between two servers using Managed File Transfer or AFT, transferring files by setting up their configuration on both ends. These are the major tasks I typically work with.
I use these scheduling and file transfer features daily as part of my workflow. I mostly set up jobs in production and non-prod environments, organizing the respective job setups in different categories. For AFT jobs, I typically transfer files from an S3 bucket to a Windows Server or a Unix server to a Windows Server or Unix to S3 bucket, using various platforms such as server to server, server to shared drive, or shared drive to server. In AFT file transfer, I set up connection profiles between two servers for host one and host two, ensuring both hosts communicate properly using Control-M Configuration Manager, also known as CCM. Once the connection is set up, I configure the job using the same Control-M connection profile. I provide details such as source and destination path using that configuration for proper communication.
Managing a Control-M agent is one key part; in case Control-M agent fails, I troubleshoot it using basic troubleshooting skills, such as selecting the troubleshooting option on the agent to reflect the initial level of error. Additionally, I check the library and error log for a specific agent. I also review the new day process (NDP) to ensure that all jobs load daily to avoid production failures. Calendar setup can also be beneficial for any job scheduling. I work on creating new Control-M jobs that operate under the planning and are created concerning the workspace. Furthermore, I track jobs that flashback from the regular cycle. If there are issues with different Control-M servers across my environments in the UK, US, and Asia Pacific, I troubleshoot any server outages or failures.
Regarding measurable improvements since using Control-M, when jobs fail due to specific errors, I am notified promptly, which is essential for handling issues in the production environment. Instead of manually checking all failed jobs, I configure notifications based on priority, enhancing my time-saving efforts across job management.
The biggest lesson learned from using Control-M is understanding how jobs get scheduled within minutes and can function independently without intervention. I have gained insights into configuring job properties such as command jobs, file transfers, file watchers, SAP jobs, and more. My extensive experience of over nine years with Control-M offers me great opportunities, and I look forward to improvements, particularly in AI features relevant to Control-M.
In my experience, the best feature Control-M offers is the File Transfer capability, especially useful for larger sizes. I am currently working on a project transferring files larger than 6 GB, which is easy to accomplish. Additionally, the File Watcher job type is valuable as it checks for files in a specific path and triggers actions based on file availability.
For the File Watcher feature, it helps me keep an eye on specific files, triggering transfers as soon as they become available. When setting up a File Watcher job, I ensure specific configurations, such as file availability time and run cycles. The job detects file availability on the platform; once the file is available, the File Watcher job triggers, triggering its successor job. This eliminates the need for constant monitoring of file availability, allowing me to focus on other tasks. Additionally, AFT file transfer for larger volumes is smooth and efficient; other tools take a lot longer for significant file transfers. Control-M lets me track the percentage completed during file transfers as well, enhancing my monitoring. CCM allows me to track all Control-M components effectively, including agents, servers, and add-ons.
Control-M is exceptionally useful for building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows. It allows me to set up jobs promptly and test them collaboratively with input from my operations and development teams without delays. Control-M enables my IT personnel to refocus on critical operations once jobs are set up for recurrent activities such as monthly or daily runs. For example, one of my teammates established a payroll job that now runs automatically, reducing manual effort and allowing for more focus on different project requirements.
For improvements, there is some slowness in terms of logging, as Control-M can be a heavy tool that could benefit from reducing file size. Overall, the tool is great, but it would be helpful if it were lighter and easier to use in my daily operations. In my non-prod environment, I notice significant lag, making it difficult to work effectively. Enhancing the tool's speed and perhaps integrating AI-related features could significantly benefit daily activities.
I choose nine because once the tool is available in a lighter version, it would be even more useful. The features are excellent, but the heaviness of the tool makes it take longer to open and close, causing frequent hangs during multiple activities. For instance, switching from monitoring to history can cause significant delays. This impacts productivity, especially in a production setting where speed is crucial.
I have been using Control-M for around eight to nine years.
Control-M is indeed stable.
Regarding scalability, Control-M scales well, allowing me to operate in four different environments across four regions without concerns.
Customer support from BMC is excellent; whenever I create a case, they respond promptly, ensuring there are no issues. I would rate customer support a perfect ten.
Positive
Previously, my organization used tools such as OPC and Tivoli before switching to Control-M, as my organization recommended it. The GUI in Control-M is significantly more user-friendly for managing daily activities and job setups.
The deployment of Control-M servers takes about one to two hours on the AWS platform.
For deployment and maintenance, I find that two to three people suffice for maintaining a single server. However, if I need to manage multiple servers across different environments, more staff will be necessary. The requirement really depends on the configuration size and deployment needs.
Although Control-M is costly, it does yield a return on investment for larger organizations, but it is not suitable for small teams or individuals. The pricing is quite high, which can be a disadvantage for smaller groups, although the efficiency gains do save time and money overall.
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, I am not heavily involved in those areas, as that falls under my network team. However, the pricing for Control-M seems high compared to other tools, and licensing can be complex, with annual renewals required. The cost has been substantial compared to similar tools I have encountered.
Before selecting Control-M, I evaluated other scheduling tools such as Tivoli and Mainframe job track but decided to stick with Control-M for my long-term needs.
For those considering using Control-M, I would advise it is an excellent choice for managing workflows and orchestrating jobs as per project demands. I have been using Control-M in various roles over the past 10 plus years, and I recommend it, provided you understand processes and setups. I give this review a rating of 9.
The use case for my clients involves everything, as it depends on the customer environment and the platform. I have managed around 60 business cases during the last five to seven years. My customers use Control-M for the management of the production plan to manage other internal applications, cloud services, or infrastructure services. The minimum infrastructure I integrate or manage is around 1,000 jobs per day, and the maximum is around 200,000 per day.
Integrating data ops and DevOps processes for my clients is straightforward.
The scale I work with depends on the service. In the Silkan organization, we have six different houses with different practices. For time and materials services, integration is relatively easy because we work with the customer's technical team to advise and implement the tools based on the previous production plan. The customers I deal with are generally from the CAC 40 in France and are typically very large companies like those in the SBF 120 or SBF 250. For managed services, I engage with companies that have between 500 to 5,000 employees and just below 2 billion in turnover per year.
I work with all industries and do not have a specific sector.
The best features and what I appreciate about Control-M are the power of the tool, the ability to manage different applications, and to have a comprehensive overview of the production plan. Another aspect that my technical team appreciates is the continuous improvement of the tool because we know that more than 200 developers enhance the tool every year. Additionally, I have skills for other schedulers, but my main partner is truly BMC for the quality of the support, the tools, and the relationship with the alliance team.
Deploying Control-M is straightforward, and while the installation can be completed in less than one day, the migration and full integration require visibility on the production plan to estimate the time needed effectively. For different volumes, such as a production plan for 1,000 or 100,000 jobs, the time management varies significantly.
Maintaining Control-M is easy, and it does not require complex updates or renewals.
The area for improvement pertains to the next generation of scheduling tools, particularly integrating the capacity to translate business team feedback into technical jobs. A large part of my role today is transforming business team feedback and needs into technical jobs. However, my main value is to accompany the customer in their technical journey to migrate and manage their enterprise's critical applications. Therefore, the scheduler is primarily a tool for organizing production plans. If it becomes possible for business teams to directly interact with Control-M through an LLM to automatically create jobs with just a review by an engineer, I believe it would save significant time for managed services providers and enhance Control-M's perception among business teams.
I have been working with Control-M for 15 years.
I would rate the stability of Control-M as a nine, as I find it to be stable with minimal bugs, glitches, or downtime.
In terms of scalability, I would give it a seven.
The reason for my seven rating is due to the challenges when I have various environments across different continents and countries. I have to duplicate environments and handle multiple issues. Network problems, even short cuts, can cause some complications. Scalability involves delivering services globally, which customers demand, and while synchronization works well when confined to a single country with one or two environments, more complex arrangements can introduce challenges.
I would rate the vendor's technical support as an eight.
Positive
When comparing BMC Control-M with other products, I note that there are other technologies I manage, such as Vtom and Dollar Universe. However, I focus on managing alliances, so BMC remains my only partner for scheduler tools, although I know the technical team oversees various schedulers.
Control-M setup is straightforward.
I do not typically work with the BMC technical team to create migration strategies, as my experts manage, design, and implement the tools for my customers independently. My relationship is mainly focused on licensing pricing, daily sales meetings, and an annual technical summit to discuss features and future developments of Control-M.
Control-M represents good value. It is important that you understand my limits on Control-M because I sell it for my customers. I have some knowledge about the licensing and the relationship with the partner team of BMC. The main people who manage the alliance with BMC are my associates, including Antoine Bitran, who will have more information about Control-M. Regarding the technical part, I have a few people internally, around 15 experts who are Control-M certified, who handle the technical aspects. On my side and regarding my job, it is more about the relationship, the knowledge, and the feedback about customer satisfaction.
I would recommend trying the BMC cloud environment as the best way to experience Control-M. Implementing a few jobs using a free demo license for a few days or weeks is advisable, though it really depends on the customer's maturity, size, complexity, and criticality of the application, making it a nuanced recommendation.
Overall, I would rate BMC Control-M as a nine.
I work with Control-M from a commercial aspect and engage with IT and operation teams across different industries, which gives me direct exposure to how Control-M is used in real production environments. My role is to deliver tangible value to these teams.
The valuable features of Control-M depend on the specific customer needs. Some customers have business-critical processes, strict SLAs, and hybrid or multi-cloud environments where Control-M provides end-to-end visibility of all these processes. Control-M also offers different modules, such as MFT, which allows users to transfer files with the tool. As a commercial professional, I cannot personally attest to specific features since I do not typically use the tool directly, but I can share what customers have told me they value about the product.
As a commercial professional, I think one of the downsides of Control-M is that not all people know they can use a tool such as Control-M, and they think that Control-M is going to be very expensive, which is the reason why they don't want to use it or seek more information about it. However, when they are accustomed to using this type of tool or Control-M as a scheduler, they feel better with it and with their role inside their enterprise. For example, if they don't have any scheduler, they don't know that they can use a scheduler to automate different business processes. When they recognize that they can use this type of tool, one of the objectives is to reduce costs. They may spend money in the short term, but in the medium or long term, they will probably have more benefits than risk.
Control-M has everything that a person needs because the problem is not high cost. Control-M is available on-premises and in the cloud, and they are having more apps every week with the app integrator. I don't have anything that I dislike about Control-M. Possible areas for improvement could include documentation, configuration, and pricing. Being more flexible and having out-of-the-box reporting for business stakeholders would be beneficial. Continuing to simplify licensing and packaging for smaller customers would also help improve customer conversations. Reporting is often mentioned as an area where Control-M could continue to evolve. Many customers would appreciate more out-of-the-box business-friendly reports. Control-M has operability with SLA-focused reports, but developing something with less customization would be better.
I have been using Control-M for more or less two years.
I think that some instability is normal because everything is in the cloud, and I can remember a few months when the AWS cloud crashed. If you see the SLA reports or responses from different customers, they are very happy with the tool. Control-M achieves more or less 98% or 99% uptime in the cloud, which is a fantastic rate. I think 100% is impossible to achieve, and 99.8% is a good number.
Control-M, developed by BMC, which was previously part of BMC Helix and is now BMC Software, is focusing on Digital Business Automation processes. They are developing many different modules in Control-M, and the scalability is fantastic. Probably in a couple of years, Control-M is going to be the best scheduler. Currently, they are competing with other schedulers such as Redwood, Broadcom, and Stonebranch, but in a couple of years, maybe one or two years, Control-M is not going to have any competitors.
I have used technical support from BMC when we need to do demos for instances in the BMC tool. The technical support team are very good professionals and they do their jobs excellently. Since I don't use Control-M directly, if I have a problem with Control-M, the technical team from my enterprise would need to talk with the technical team from BMC. I usually talk with the commercial team from BMC rather than the technical team. I talk with the technical team when I need to make a demo, proof of concept, or proof of value, and we need to customize the future instance for the client. If I need to rate the technical support from BMC, I would give them a 10 because whenever I want to do something with them, they answer me, and I am very happy with them.
Positive
I don't use any alternative schedulers. I know that you can talk about Redwood, Broadcom, or Stonebranch, but I don't use any one of these schedulers.
I don't have a lot of contact with deployment. Probably if I think about some customers, they tell me that there is also interest in simplifying upgrades and environment standardization, particularly for organizations with multiple Control-M instances. If you talk with a small customer, they are going to be happy with deployment, upgrades, or the environment.
Control-M has an upgrade more or less every year or every two years. If you want to use the latest upgrade, you need to upgrade your tool.
The implementation team depends on the person doing the deployment.
The current pricing is good. Other vendors such as Broadcom are increasing their prices, so right now, Control-M is not one of the highest-cost schedulers. My customers have never told me anything negative about the pricing or licensing. BMC can be very amenable with the pricing of the tool. I have small customers, and I think that is a good point of view because they think they can't have the budget for a tool such as Control-M, but they do have the budget. Control-M is a tool for every kind of customer. You can sell Control-M for 15K on-premises and you can sell it for 7 million or 11 million. I think that people need to change their thinking because Control-M is not just an expensive tool. It is a tool for everyone, for every enterprise.
I would rate Control-M at nine.
Control-M is used for scheduling, specifically scheduling application jobs. We have always been using Control-M, as we inherited it. We work with all technologies within the business using Control-M, including WebMethods, Axway, and IBM MQ. In the managed file transfer space, using Control-M, I find that it is not as user-friendly as other products available for MFT.
The best features in Control-M are its ease of use and robustness; it is very feature-rich, which is what we use it for—scheduling. It is easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for our DataOps and DevOps processes as things change. The integration aspects of Control-M are out of the box, so they are straightforward to use. From using Control-M, I have seen improvements as they grow with the versions; with the newer versions come enhanced functionalities, such as the latest version allowing access through a web GUI instead of the client GUI that you have to install, which is quite helpful because you can access it from anywhere.
We are not on the latest version of Control-M; we currently have version 20 and 21.
I have been using Control-M for 10 years.
Regarding stability with Control-M, I would rate it nine out of ten for downtime, bugs, and glitches.
Control-M is very scalable, and I would rate it a nine.
I would rate the vendor's technical support for Control-M as a nine.
Positive
We have tried to look at other products, but there is no other product out there that does what it needs to do as Control-M does, which is why it is still around—it simply does what it needs to do.
The deployment of Control-M was quite complex to get in, but once it is in, it does what it needs to do. It took weeks to get Control-M deployed.
Control-M requires maintenance from our end, as we have to perform patching whenever needed, but that does not happen very often—probably once a quarter. Patching for Control-M is easy.
I have definitely seen a return on investment with Control-M in terms of time and resources, but I cannot speak to the financial aspect—I do not know. I would estimate that I have saved perhaps 20% to 30% on time and resources using Control-M.
From what I know about pricing, I would probably put Control-M in the expensive category, but you do pay for what you get; you are paying for a premium product.
We looked at AWS products for scheduling with Control-M; I cannot remember the actual name of the scheduling tool at AWS, but it is nowhere near as advanced as what we need.
Approximately 100 users work with Control-M. They are not all Australia-based; some users are from India, so we have offshore resources as well. My relationship with BMC is both transformative and transactional. Regarding the transformative aspect, I have impressions of BMC as both because we partner with them; we might not be strategic partners, but we value their advice all the time—not just product advice, but sales as well. We consider ourselves a partner with the vendor, but I do not know if we are officially a signed partner; we are a partner at the base level. When I refer to our relationship with the vendor, we are considered an entry level partner; we are not a reseller, so we cannot resell their products, but we are partners and we consult while using their products internally and with customers to support their customer base. Our clients are generally enterprise businesses. I would recommend Control-M to other users; I know they are going all web-based, which they believe is the best way to go, but I can tell you that everybody I have spoken to has said the contrary—they actually prefer the client GUI that you can install, which is easier to use and more feature-rich, while the web GUI is very hard and difficult to navigate through. I have rated this review a nine out of ten overall.
BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is extensively used by our clients mainly in the BFSI sector, where we see around 5,000 to 10,000 file transfers for a few critical customers. We use it for data from their vendors who provide inputs for their end clients, including insurance agents who provide data in these files, facilitating both B2B and B2C processes.
Regarding the usability of BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer, I have been using it since 2009, and I have encountered no issues. I appreciate that no code is required, it is centrally managed through account management, validations are in place, and file transfers are tracked in an audit through which account they occur. It is one of my favorite solutions, existing since 1980, and I have written a lot of papers on Control-M, including one on my LinkedIn called 'A Leader's Journey' before BMC published the journey of Control-M.
My impressions of application workflow orchestration with BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer are that it is a fantastic tool I have been using for 16 years. I have even received appreciation from the development team in Israel, stating that no one has used the solution to the extent that my team and I have for one of our customers. The orchestration process allows easy accessibility to different applications, and it facilitates configuring with drag-and-drop functionality to set dependencies.
If you can share an email, I can provide pointers on potential improvements for BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer, focusing on customer-centric enhancements. For example, providing checksums for file metadata in reports could significantly help with file transfers.
I have been working with BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer for more than three to four years.
Regarding stability, there were some issues reported during implementation and usage by our customers, but I would rate it an eight out of ten.
The scalability of BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is impressive due to its ability to handle large quantities of data and files, but there are certain features that could be added to make it a game changer.
From a support perspective, BMC technical support needs improvements. There are novice users needing help, but for customers such as us, who have been using the solution for over a decade, the response needs to be more timely and efficient, utilizing L2 and L3 support effectively.
Neutral
The initial setup process for BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is very simple for us, as it requires a component to be deployed in the DMZ, from where the file gets transferred centrally to the server.
We are the premium partners for BMC products implementations, recognized as Bihom partner of the year multiple times. I have deployed BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer since 2011 for our customers, and it has been working flawlessly, with people speaking highly about the solution as the heart of their organization.
BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer has indeed helped our clients reduce IT operation costs. For instance, I implemented it for one of the largest banks in 2012, which reduced their loan process sanction from four days to just two hours, and now it completes in 30 minutes. Additionally, the timeline for the policy dispatch to insurance end clients, which initially took up to ten days, now happens in two hours.
BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer has some competitors in the market, but according to the Forrester and Gartner reports, nobody is even close to this solution, and I prefer not to use open source options.
BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is my favorite product, so while I would typically rate it around 9.7 or 9.8, I would ultimately assign it a rating of 10.
Control-M is used to run Oracle scripts with scheduled jobs including monthly, weekly, and yearly schedules. Around 50 or more jobs are run every week. Control-M connects to the database, triggers all procedures, performs the operation, and generates the final report. The log is sent to mailboxes detailing how the process went, any issues, or any errors. If there are issues, the mailbox is checked; otherwise, a message indicating successful completion is received along with statistics such as how much time the process took and which processes were run. Jobs are scheduled once, Control-M jobs are created, timing is set up, and the jobs fire automatically at the particular time.
Control-M is used to connect to Oracle products, and through Control-M, a Tableau dashboard is maintained. Most of the scheduling jobs use Control-M to schedule. Control-M helps all products, making it a utility that can be used wherever scheduling features are needed. It is not just for DevOps, databases, or front-end applications; it can be used anywhere without manual intervention to perform particular activities. Wherever there is an opportunity for scheduling jobs, Control-M is the first option.
For migration, Control-M is considered very good. Once all the source and target details are configured in Control-M, it can automatically migrate data. It requires proper configuration and specifying the necessary changes for target technology along with the source system scripts. If properly configured, the complete migration can be triggered end to end. Data migrations and reporting, along with all scheduling activities, can be efficiently managed.
The best features in Control-M include sending emails to mailboxes after the process is completed and providing proper acknowledgement reports. The timing is impressive; it connects very fast and performs activities efficiently. The UI is very friendly, making it easy to configure jobs in Control-M. If core technology scripts are available, creating Control-M jobs is a five-minute task. The GUI is very friendly, which simplifies task assignment, scheduling, canceling, and all these operations, making it easily navigable.
Every week, 50 jobs are run using Control-M. If those 50 jobs were being run manually, it would take more than a week. Through Control-M, the jobs are able to be scheduled within two days, saving around five days of effort.
Before Control-M, jobs would be run on Friday evening so that the process would end by Sunday night, allowing the business to start on Monday. Without Control-M, everything would have to be run manually throughout the week. Thanks to Control-M, around five days are being saved. Otherwise, old data would be received for the current week's business, but now the latest data is received.
Control-M has room for improvement in displaying dashboard-like graphical reports once processes are completed. For example, after scheduling 50 jobs, if a dashboard showing the completed scripts, status, and time taken is displayed within Control-M itself, it would be very helpful. Currently, mailboxes are checked for reports; if it were in Control-M, anyone could check it. Only those configured with specific mail IDs receive emails, so if a few members are not set up, they will not see the reports. If it were available in Control-M, those users could directly check the dashboard.
Control-M has been used for the last two years from the beginning of the project level. Earlier, it was already there in Control-M that the client was using.
The same score for stability is a nine out of ten.
Control-M is capable of handling a large volume of processing if the necessary memory space is provided to the server.
Great support is received, with a rating of nine out of ten.
Positive
Control-M would definitely be recommended because it saves a lot of time. If everything were being done manually, it would take a lot of time to run and validate scripts. If everything is configured in Control-M, even non-experts like front-end staff can trigger jobs, making it simple. It is a one-time configuration, and anyone can trigger it. That is the best part; significant time is saved, and there is no waiting time; the next process starts immediately once the current one is completed. If dependencies are set in Control-M, it starts the next task automatically. That is why Control-M is highly recommended for scheduling.
The client is a big enterprise client.
Control-M requires occasional maintenance, maybe yearly or once every six months for upgrades. A Control-M team manages activities such as maintenance every six months or once a year, including cleaning up scripts or memory.
Around 15 members are using Control-M.
The overall review rating for Control-M is ten out of ten.
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.
Positive
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.
Control-M manages pretty much everything in our hemisphere, helping us meet our financial regulatory obligations, file transfers, running scripts, PowerShell, and SQL, making it critical to our day-to-day operations.
Control-M supports our DataOps and DevOps initiatives by providing an avenue for our DevOps teams to problem-solve in an easy way, giving them a platform to build on rather than having to start from scratch.
The measurable benefits or improvements we've achieved with Control-M are critical in the finance industry, as it keeps us on target with all regulatory requirements. Without Control-M, I don't know where we'd be, and if we shut it off, the business would probably run for about six hours before we faced serious issues, highlighting its role as a key component to our success.
Control-M has definitely enabled new capabilities and business processes that weren't possible before, allowing us to go to other departments and problem-solve for them, eliminating manual tasks that have been done for years. Departments now benefit from not even needing to look back at whether a task is being done since the information is readily available, providing them more time in their day for productivity and enhancing life for our customers.
Control-M is a great product already, but everything can do with a bit of improvement. Personally, I'd like to see a little bit more color in the web interface, and in terms of its technical ability, the one thing I would be critical about is a bit more user-friendliness with the reports and the way we input information into it.
I've been working with Control-M for three years.
Once we have tested things and gotten them into play, during the three years that I've been working with Control-M, I've encountered only one problem, and BMC's support has been quite good, allowing us to solve that issue quickly and easily.
Once we have tested things and gotten them into play, during the three years that I've been working with Control-M, I've encountered only one problem, and BMC's support has been quite good, allowing us to solve that issue quickly and easily.
Neutral
The biggest return on investment from using Control-M, from my point of view, is the ease of use and the time it gives our employees back in their day to be more productive.
I would give Control-M a very good rating in building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring workflows. It is pretty easy to use, and we have taken people without any type of formal training and been able to get them into using Control-M fully as a scheduler within weeks, proving its ease of use. In terms of its use for scheduling and building, it provides options, and it comes back to having flexibility, which is appreciated by anyone who has worked in the build area. With all the plug-in options and various job types that you can create, it increases the flexibility and the avenues available for using Control-M as a solution.
I've not had much interaction with licensing. In terms of costs, I think in life you have to pay for what you want, and generally, if you want quality, you've got to pay for it, but in my limited knowledge of pricing outside of Control-M and BMC, I think it is competitive, recognizing there's not a lot out there like Control-M, making it difficult to determine what the price should be as it is a critical piece of work worth its value. I would rate this product an 8.5 out of 10.