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Azure Automation vs Control-M comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Automation
Ranking in Process Automation
32nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Control-M
Ranking in Process Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Managed File Transfer (MFT) (4th), Workload Automation (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Azure Automation is 0.8%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Control-M is 4.7%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

MS
Can be used to automate the CI/CD pipeline, from data ingestion to endpoint generation
We use Azure Automation to automate the CI/CD pipeline, from data ingestion to endpoint generation The most valuable feature of Azure Automation is the scripting. The solution’s user interface is also another valuable feature. The solution’s user interface could be improved. I have been using…
Pedro Fuentes - PeerSpot reviewer
Cost-effective, excellent support, and centralized access and control
They have a department that handles requests for enhancements. I talked to Control-M guys back in October or November when they had a gathering here in Atlanta. We talked about not being able to go back in history in Helix Control-M for more than two weeks. We submitted a request for enhancement. They told us that they are working on it, and they are thinking of expanding that to 30 days. We would like to see it expand to 90 days, but they are working on it. In Control-M, we were able to go back 180 days, but that was on-prem. The storage of that data was on our own servers. We know that storage is money, and we do not expect them to store that much of the data, but at least 30 to 60 days seem proper.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Azure Automation is the scripting."
"If a job fails, that development team is notified right away, which improves reliability. Previously, it was on the operators to notify the developers that their job failed, erred, or aborted. Now, it's all automated."
"The most valuable features are the managing of file transfers and the product keeping up with technology."
"Before Control-M, we didn't have a centralized view and could not view what happened in the past to determine what will happen in the future. The Gantt view that we have in Control-M is like a project view. It is nice because we sometimes have some application maintenance that we need to do. So, in a single console, we can hold the jobs for the next hour or two. We can release that job when it is finished. This is a really nice feature that we didn't have before. It is something really simple, but we didn't previously have a console where we could say, "For the next two hours, what are the jobs that we will run? And, hold these jobs not to run." This is really important."
"The solution is innovative. Specifically for the overseas and time differences, you can feel the efficiency of Batch Impact Manager on jobs, batch processing, and impact management. It works the best on these kinds of issues. It saves us time and money, which is important. We save a lot using Control-M."
"Control-M has helped to improve our data transfers because it allows us to monitor the execution of the process. With other technologies, we cannot do that."
"It is an enterprise tool that integrates with all the applications in our organization. It has made our life easier because we don't need to wake up at midnight and do monitoring, etc. It does everything. It also sends precautionary alerts. If a job or activity is running for more than the specified time, it alerts the application team. So, our teams do not need to sit in front of a laptop or any open application to watch the jobs. They can do their other regular activities while Control-M takes care of all the jobs. It notifies them when there is job completion, delay, and error."
"It integrates seamlessly with other tools within our ecosystem."
"The most valuable features are the GUI console, stability, and workflow."
 

Cons

"The solution’s user interface could be improved."
"A smartphone interface would be welcome."
"The main area that could be improved would be documentation, just like every other software product out there!"
"I would like not to have to reach out to a third-party application company to do automated notifications. Right now, we still have people manually calling people and emailing people. There's a company called xMatters - and there are others - that has an API through Control-M that can automate any aspect of failure management. I'd like to see it build right into the product. I'd like to see a better notification product."
"It has a slight issue with daylight savings time while advancing the clock in the Spring."
"Its installation can be better. Currently, we have to install it manually. The file transfer feature can also be improved. It is not very easy to transfer a file from business to business. In terms of new features, they can include new technologies. It can have API integration."
"The unifying features between Control-M for different platforms needs improvement. The scheduling options on the Control-M mainframe jobs are different than they are on our Linux server. There are a few differences here and there."
"We've also had a few database bugs within our organization. I think we are migrating to OpenJDK rather than just regular Java and that has since shown some issues with our Control-M instance, timing out and causing our jobs to stop running. We are still working with BMC to fine-tune that and get that resolved."
"We develop software. More frequently, we are working with microservices and APIs, using our integration tool, MuleSoft. While Control-M is really a good tool to integrate with other tools, it is important for them to continue improving their microservices and API."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is reasonable. It's not an exorbitant amount. The licensing is pretty reasonable for the number of jobs that we run."
"For the tooling that you get, the licensing is acceptable. It has competitive pricing, especially with all the value that you get out of it. There are additional costs with some of the additional modules, but they are all electives. Out of the box, you get the standard Control-M experience and the standard license. They're not forcing some of the modules on you. If you decide that you do need them, you can always purchase those separately."
"Compare to other tools Pricing and licensing was more. It should be decrease."
"The cost of the hardware is high. Because you need to license each job, it is costly."
"One of the restrictions that we had was with some of the licensing, and not having any insight on the financials part of the product. I don't know what the licensing on the product is, but we don't have an unlimited enterprise license. So, there might be a limitation on either the cost of the licensing or the number of seats."
"Initially, our licensing model was based on the number of jobs per day. That caused some issues because we were restricted to a number. So at our renewal time we said, 'We want to convert from number of jobs to number of endpoints.' That cost us extra money but it gave us additional capabilities, without worrying about the number of jobs."
"This is now from my previous years as support for banks and big companies. If it's not enterprise scale, I find that it's too expensive for smaller companies. You really have to be quite big and need to have a dedicated support staff to run it, then you'll be fine. What we've seen at smaller companies, it's too expensive because they want to automate everything. Now, stuff that can literally run once a day for the rest of their lives is costing them $3 a job a day. It becomes too expensive, eventually. They are not seeing the return on investment because it's not business critical. Nobody is going to die or they're going to lose money if that job didn't run exactly at 11 minutes past 4:00. It's definitely for bigger enterprise companies, especially banks or healthcare providers. We have had an instance where Control-M was unavailable due to external factors for 20 minutes and there was a loss of almost a million euros because the solution involved logistics."
"You're going to spend a lot of money upfront, but the benefits you're going to get out of it are going to quickly pay for it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure Automation?
The most valuable feature of Azure Automation is the scripting.
What needs improvement with Azure Automation?
The solution’s user interface could be improved.
What is your primary use case for Azure Automation?
We use Azure Automation to automate the CI/CD pipeline, from data ingestion to endpoint generation.
How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?
Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful because nothing gets left unattended since it is all visible in one place, and th...
What do you like most about Control-M?
First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?
Pricing is generally affordable, though some features cost a bit more.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Control M
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Adobe 2. BMW 3. Coca-Cola 4. General Electric 5. Johnson & Johnson 6. NBCUniversal 7. Pfizer 8. Samsung 9. Siemens 10. Toyota 11. Verizon 12. 3M 13. Accenture 14. Airbus 15. Allianz 16. American Express 17. AT&T 18. Bank of America 19. Boeing 20. Cisco 21. Dell 22. ExxonMobil 23. Ford 24. General Motors 25. IBM 26. Intel 27. JPMorgan Chase 28. Microsoft (self-use) 29. Nestle 30. Procter & Gamble 31. Shell 32. Walmart
CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Pega, BMC and others in Process Automation. Updated: December 2024.
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