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Control-M vs ESP Workload Automation Intelligence 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

Control-M
Ranking in Workload Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (3rd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (4th)
ESP Workload Automation Int...
Ranking in Workload Automation
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Control-M is 23.1%, down from 26.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ESP Workload Automation Intelligence is 2.4%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer1609584 - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable, connects with everything, and has great technical support
The new version is going to have more web services where you could string together various web services so that you can create a workflow across multiple web services, which I don't think is there today. It's not easy to do today. You have to use other tools to accomplish things. However, if the functionality exists, we haven't tested that out yet.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has certainly helped speed things up."
"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."
"We used Control-M's Python Client and cloud data service integrations with AWS and, as a feature, it was very customizable. It gave us a lot of flexibility for customizing whatever data maneuver we wanted to do within a pipeline."
"I find it very helpful to be able to keep track of all our help desk tickets."
"The ability to dynamically predict batch run time is so valuable."
"It has absolutely saved us time. It has made us more efficient. As far as the processing between systems, we don't have as many people. They have been able to focus on other efforts, because we have been able to automate more stuff with Control-M."
"It is very easy to use. The HA feature is also very good."
"The Automation API has opened up a world of possibilities for us, including the ability to create workflows on-demand using traditional DevOps tools."
"The solution can scale."
 

Cons

"We did encounter a few scalability issues. Sometimes, there are too many jobs in our environment on different servers, but that’s not the tool issue, we can simply increase the FS size. However, that requires bank cost; hence the scalability issue."
"There are numerous boxes to tick and things to check to ensure everything is in order before the upgrade happens. The process is very long"
"I'm not sure how the solution fits together with our business modernization initiatives, as there are things outside of my area, even though Control-M is the scheduling tool of the company. They may use other things, e.g., Big Data."
"With the current version update, I'm not sure why we needed a separate database upgrade. Why not put it all in one package? Previously, you could do it either via a manual upgrade or an in-place upgrade but it wasn't separate."
"It can definitely expand promotions, so that a single job can be moved. Currently you can only promote a job by promoting the entire table."
"The history module only contains a maximum of 10 days, but we would like to have access to more. For example, it would be helpful to have 30 days or two months of history available."
"In general, it is a very good product, and we are very happy with it. It meets all of our expectations."
"Control-M reporting isn't that good. It is very limited. We would like the ability to create our own reports as well as the ability to publish dashboards in the cloud, which would help us. Improved reporting will help us determine statuses and get the answers that we need. However, I personally think BMC is not focusing on the reporting. I have even visited the BMC office in India, and asked, "Why haven't you improved the reporting?""
"The new version is going to have more web services where you could string together various web services so that you can create a workflow across multiple web services, which I don't think is there today."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are two different types of licenses available. The first is based on the number of jobs that we run per day, and the other is based on the number of agents that we install. My current project has a contract for five years."
"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."
"It works on task-based licensing."
"The pricing is reasonable. It's not an exorbitant amount. The licensing is pretty reasonable for the number of jobs that we run."
"The solution is not cheap, it comes with quite a hefty price tag. Control-M is the market leader, but we still want the price to be as friendly as possible."
"Pricing is generally affordable, though some features cost a bit more."
"We are paying way more for Control-M than we've paid for any of our other scheduling tools."
"It is a little bit expensive."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Control M
CA Workload Automation ESP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
Sandvik, DHL, Landmark Group, SAIF
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, Broadcom, Redwood Software and others in Workload Automation. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.