BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer Reviews

Our primary use cases of Managed File Transfer are monitoring jobs, transferring files, and doing some encryption and decryption. We work on insurance-based clients, so we have a lot of files that come in every day. The business does some manipulation on that, which, in turn, reflects in the New York Stock Exchange, so we use Managed File Transfer for all SLEs and things like that. 

We are using the version before the latest update. This solution is deployed on-premise. 

One of the most valuable features is the encryption and decryption which happens within the job. Usually, with other tools, we do a file transfer and then we have to encrypt and decrypt it, but in BMC Managed File Transfer, we can do it in one go. Another great feature is the ability to manipulate a file during a transfer. I think that with the new version, they also have a dashboard which gives a GUI-based view of what's getting transferred—how many files, how much time, and all that—so, from a single point, you can look at what's happening within the organization. If someone asks, "Where is this file?" or how much time it takes, you can just go to the dashboard, search for that file, and your information is there. 

Managed File Transfer could be improved with some more cloud features. Things have been moving to cloud, and the modules of AWS and Azure are there in Control-M, but we still end up writing codes to do that. If there were some embedded modules, it would be really helpful. 

As for additional features, we have been looking to integrate with SharePoint. This feature is not available. 

I have been using this solution for 12 years now. 

Managed File Transfer seems pretty stable. At times when it is not, the vendor does release some patches and stuff like that, which we might end up installing, which helps with the stability. We had faced some issues and reached out to them, and they said that there was a newer version that we had to update it ourselves, so we did that and it was fine. 

For maintenance, it requires you to apply the latest fix packs and patches, while at the same time keeping the database updated. We handle maintenance on our own. We have around eight people in our company who are working with Managed File Transfer. 

This solution is definitely scalable. 

BMC technical support is really good. Their turnover time is within one hour, which is pretty good. 

I worked for about six months with two similar tools, one of which was called JAMS. JAMS was more related to Windows, whereas with Control-M, it doesn't really matter which operating system or which environment you're trying to connect to. So with any distributed system, it's a very easy setup—with others, I have felt that it was a task, since it took some time to do. 

The initial setup is a simple process now. With the new versions, it's pretty simple—depending on the size of it, I believe it should take somewhere between twenty minutes to one hour to deploy. 

We implemented this solution through an in-house team. 

The pricing of Control-M is a bit on the higher end, compared to any other tools that we have seen. Pricing will depend on the sales approach and agreement between the companies, but I think they give some discounts. They have their standards, but the pricing can be negotiable, and they are flexible regarding certain features. 

I rate Control-M an eight out of ten, so there's some scope for input. 

To those considering implementation, I would advise you to have a good plan of what you need to set up—what does your environment really look like? Because to change your environment or database midway into something is a hefty task. So before starting it, I would advise you to check what your company's database looks like. Some use Oracle, some use Microsoft SQL, but BMC comes with a default one as well. It's better to plan that out because changing it midway is a task in and of itself. 

We use the solution to transform essential files into an accessible format.

The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to reduce the number of jobs by passing various variables. It saves a lot of time for maintenance.

The solution's price could be better.

The solution is very stable.

I rate the solution's scalability as seven. Our team of around 30 monitoring executives uses the solution.

We contacted the support team for a failover issue. They fixed the error remotely.

The solution's deployment process took a day to complete.

We implement the solution with the help of a consulting company.

The solution is expensive.

I rate the solution as a seven.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer has a scheduler and what they do is capture the steps based on the script, and then they put it into the Control-M job, or task. Any system that has the script behind it the solution can do it.

The GUI needs to be improved, they cannot provide a good GUI. That's the first improvement they should do.

I used BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer within the past 12 months.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is highly stable. It is enterprise-grade software. Doing a job of 10,000 to 20,000 the solution is very stable.

The solution has very few bugs.

I have contacted the support from BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer. We have contacted them a lot, but only for technical aspects of the solution.

Their level two support is not very good. My team was able to solve a problem before they were able to. Level one support is us, the local support, in my country. Level two is usually from, India or another location because their R&D is in India. Level three, I don't know where the level three team is located, but the level three agents are the best. Level two support is not the best.

The license model is based on the number of tasks or jobs required. The price overall is expensive. In my country, we don't have any choice but to use them because no one can match their capability.

I rate BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer a nine out of ten.

I believe that the API should be upgraded with security control from the DM. There is Currently no security for the app API solution.

I have been using the solution for more than 10 years.

The solution is stable. I can say that in the previous version there was a problem. However, it is a stable solution.

The scalability of this solution is very good.  The current solution is used wide spread in my company, but I don't have any plans to expand.

I rate customer service and support a ten because it is the greatest.

Positive

I used a different solution called Computer Associates. I switched because my client switched to that solution. I never went against the solution or suggested to switch over again, because I like BMC.

The solution is complex, but it is very easy to administrate all the components from this solution.

The administration is currently done by two people. 

It pays for itself. In the last two years, I switched for mainframe to distribute systems. 

I switched to this solution within the last year. I switched from the servers payment package to the job payment package, and it is very expensive. 

I rate BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer nine out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for when you want certain cases to be executed, like file transfers when it is business to business. The solution is mostly used in the banking and finance domain. We are premium partners with BMC. 

This is a flagship product. The solution offers every feature that a customer could want, whether it's the architecture or the use case. It supports all file transfers. 

The solution used to have a graphical user interface for reporting. That is lacking now and it's unfortunate because customers liked it and it's no longer available. In order to compete with IT service desk management, they need to make the product more lightweight, more of a SaaS-based offering. If that were implemented they'd get back to the top. Currently, authentication and authorization portals are provided only in the case of external uploads but that should change.

I've been using this solution for 13 years. 

The solution is stable and provides good performance. 

This solution is easily scalable.

The initial setup is simple and takes about a day. We provide all the implementation and  maintenance services. The solution is generally for medium to enterprise size companies. 

Licensing costs can be negotiated depending on what the count is or how big the implementation is. I've seen even small banks using the solution and I believe licensing costs are reasonable. 

I think it's important to have knowledge about the infrastructure required, and the right data needs to be provided to the implementation partner. Once that's done, the solution is quite flexible to accommodate all requirements.

I rate the solution nine out of 10. 

The primary use case of this solution is workload automation in a batch environment, in clients' environments. This tool extends support to a number of applications and can be integrated with plugins like PeopleSoft and Informatica. It's a centralized monitoring system, so from the controlling client, you can monitor the entire batch environment of your client. It can also be used for disaster recovery. 

This solution is deployed both on-prem and on the cloud. We are using the latest version. 

This solution has a vast amount of features and with every new release, there are lots of new features introduced. The application has high availability—we have multiple customers and it's highly available. On an application level, if something goes down with the primary, then the application goes over to the secondary, so it's very, very easy to do disaster recovery. 

From an application integration point of view, it has a lot of APIs, rich APIs. Every month, they are releasing new APIs and new updates, like Java, but more than that. Now they are introducing a couple more APIs, which you can use to integrate your controlling environment with any applications you want. 

The only improvement I would suggest is the license pricing should be a little reduced. Apart from that, I don't see anything else as a major concern with the tool right now. 

I have been using this solution for more than 11 years now. 

This is a stable product. 

This solution is scalable. We have more than 200 clients using Control-M.

I've been working in the production environment for more than 11 years, but we created a high priority ticket for BMC when we first introduced it. They went all the way to resolve it and help us find a solution. Not only that, but they also helped us identify and analyze the root cause. In terms of customer support, BMC is at the top, in my rating. 

I have raised seven tickets and, within 15 minutes, we would get a call from their technical support. They never leave us in the middle of an issue, they go all the way to help us resolve it. Their support is the best. 

The installation is pretty straightforward. Anybody who has just two or three years of experience in this tool can do the installation. Their documentation is really nice. If you have a little experience in these tools and installation, then you can easily install Control-M. The installation took 10-15 minutes, maximum, and you can do it yourself. 

I implemented this solution myself. 

The licensing is a bit more expensive than other tools, so if a client is focused on the cost, that would be something to consider. The licensing should be cheaper. 

I don't have experience in AutoSys, but my team also operates in AutoSys. 

I rate BMC Control-M a nine out of ten, because of the stability and the customer support. The only reason I wouldn't rate it a ten out of ten is because their licensing is a bit expensive. Otherwise, BMC Control-M is the best tool I have ever worked on. 

I would absolutely recommend this solution to new clients. Lots of new clients are converting to this Control-M tool because of the stability and the support model. So I wouldn't only recommend it externally, but, internally, we also recommend it to our clients. If they can compromise on cost a little, then this is the best tool to go with. 

The MFT product is for transferring files with external partners, and on-premises as well. We use it in both of these use cases. We're doing file transfer internally on our on-premises network, between sites or servers. Then, we also do that via a secure connection with an external partner or on a separate network. It is basically the same as file transfer over an FTP.

The most valuable feature is the integration with the workload automation solution.

It has a nice dashboard for loading up the file transfers, so it's easy to follow the success or failure rates of the operations. You get notified when transfers fail, which is an important feature.

At this time, you can receive file transfers but it is not possible to send them. Ideally, we also want to be able to send files using this solution.

Scalability is something that needs to be improved.

We have been using BMC Managed File Transfer for about one year. It is a relatively new product. We have been using the larger Control-M workload Automation for close to 15 years.

This is a stable solution.

This solution is not very scalable. It can handle a lot of traffic very easily and I think that small to medium-sized businesses will have no problem with it. However, if you want to set it up in a highly available environment and you need multiple sites then these kinds of options are not yet supported.

In our company, there is only a team of a few people using this product. They are engineers and are responsible for the file transfer functionality.

I have been in contact with BMC technical support, although it was for the workload automation tool and not specifically for the MFT product.

Technical support is responsive and I would rate our overall experience with them as moderate.

Prior to using this solution, we were using Axway B2Bi. We are still currently using it, alongside with the BMC MFT product.

The initial setup is straightforward. It took perhaps a week to deploy.

We did the deployment ourselves.

This product is not feature-rich but it is a solid file-transfer solution. I would say that the features they have now are very good, although the product is not complete because you cannot send files.

I would recommend it but at the same time, I think that everybody needs to test it and see if it meets their needs. The supported features are very good but obviously, if there is a protocol or something else that you need that isn't supported then it will not be suitable.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I am a partner and an implementer for Control-M. Once purchased by my clients, I implement this solution and provide daily support for this scheduling tool.

This solution could be improved by making it possible to better control GUI when interfacing with other systems. 

Secondly, this solution is very expensive compared to others in the market. Previously it was the only solution in our country to offer this kind of functionality. However, technology has caught up and many competitors offer the same at a lower price.  

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This is a stable solution with very few bugs, whether being used for 1 or 20,000 jobs. 

Their L2-support Is not that good and often our team have managed to solve problems which their team could not. However, if there's a problem that needs to be escalated to Level 3, for example, then their engineering support is very good.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.