Control-M vs F5 BIG-IQ comparison

BMC and F5 are both solutions in the Process Automation category. BMC is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.7, while F5 is ranked #27 with an average rating of 8.0. BMC holds a 4.5% mindshare in PA, compared to F5’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Control-M

Read 120 Control-M reviews

3,737 Views
1,531 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

F5 BIG-IQ

Read 14 F5 BIG-IQ reviews

246 Views
91 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Control-M

F5 BIG-IQ

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Control-M and F5 BIG-IQ are both utilized within enterprise IT environments; however, they focus on distinct areas. Control-M specializes in automation and workflow scheduling across diverse technologies, which may provide an advantage for organizations with complex, multi-platform needs. Conversely, F5 BIG-IQ excels in managing multiple F5 BIG-IP devices, making it ideal for network and application delivery management.

Features: Control-M stands out with its cross-platform support, robust scheduling capabilities, and integration with numerous third-party applications like AS400. It is praised for its easy scheduling of complex workflows and significant integration abilities. F5 BIG-IQ specializes in centralized management of F5 BIG-IP devices, focusing on load balancing capabilities and WAF functionalities, which make it an excellent tool for network and application delivery management.

Room for Improvement: Control-M users express the need for enhanced reporting features and more flexible output analysis. They also request better customization options and improvements in the integration of certain modules. On the other hand, F5 BIG-IQ users would benefit from reduced user management complexity and improved automation processes. A more intuitive GUI for security rule configuration and decreased deployment complexity, especially in cloud environments, are desired.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Control-M offers deployment flexibility across on-premises, hybrid, and public cloud setups. It generally receives good support feedback, though complexity in integrations may affect support quality. F5 BIG-IQ operates mainly in on-premises and private cloud environments, with strong technical support, though users note challenges in engaging support teams and navigating technical details.

Pricing and ROI: Control-M is known for its high costs due to a job-based licensing model, yet it provides comprehensive functionality that leads to significant time savings and operational efficiencies, yielding a positive ROI for large enterprises. F5 BIG-IQ, while more cost-effective with device-based licensing, offers great value within the F5 ecosystem, though its limited functional scope may affect ROI in broader use cases.

To learn more, read our detailed Control-M vs. F5 BIG-IQ Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. F5 BIG-IQ

April 2025

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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 Process Automation

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

120

Ranking in other categories

Managed File Transfer (MFT) (4th), Workload Automation (1st)

F5 BIG-IQ

Ranking in Process Automation

27th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Control-M is 4.5%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IQ is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Process Automation

Featured Reviews

Pedro Fuentes

System Engineer at Community Loans of America, Inc.

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.

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AshutoshMalik

IT Architect at kyndryl

Seamless migration enhances user management for data center administrators

The product is excellent. It is easily manageable and user-friendly for administrators working on both the GUI and CLI. The best part is the seamless migration of the configuration from one box to another, even when hardware changes. This is particularly beneficial during migrations from old boxes to new ones. While other vendors might have issues, F5 BIG-IQ ( /products/f5-big-iq-reviews ) provides a smooth transition.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has multiple features. You can plan your execution in Control-M. It provides one single window where you can define workflows regardless of geographic boundaries and platforms. A batch process can be executed from this single window. It provides insights into your processes. Your business people will know what process they are running and what is the state of the process. Instead of knowing that they're not going to meet the SLA the next morning, the business people immediately know the changes in their process. Control-M is very easy. I can tell a non-technical person that this is how it works, and he would be able to easily understand it. Business people can understand the methodology of Control-M and the intuitive features that it has. It has a fantastic graphical user interface and is easy to understand. You just have to drag and drop but in a very intuitive way. Monitoring features are also good. It has different color coding schemes, which can help you to understand the status of your workflow. An operator who is not that technical and is just monitoring the status of the application can see by color-coding the status of a process. If anything goes wrong or a process is stuck, it gives you a hint. You can just right-click and see the logs and the output. Even if the system is not right there in the data center and is located somewhere else, you can monitor it right from there and see the workflows."

"In the client, it provides a unified view for me. I can alter the view that I want to see jobs and conditions. This is nice to have. The fact that you can see everything in one space is very important, especially these days where everything is about data and monitoring as well as because we are working from home on a global basis. So, I can monitor jobs in real-time, along with any failures or anything that might be stuck. The real-time monitoring and the ability to see everything in one place is important for us because we operate 24/7."

"The ability to dynamically predict batch run time is so valuable."

"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."

"It provides a unified view where you can orchestrate and monitor all your application workloads and data pipelines. That's very important because with cloud, software as a service, edge computing, traditional data center, and legacy apps, there are all these environments. If you don't have that single pane of glass or that one place to look at, you're going to invest a lot of time and resources into tracking things down when they go wrong."

"I think the administration part is much more valuable than any other feature."

"The most valuable features are the managing of file transfers and the product keeping up with technology."

"First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate."

More Control-M pros

"The customer service is great."

"F5 BIG-IQ reduces the propensity for error."

"The best aspect of the solution is that we can have everything integrated with a rather large capacity in order to personalize and configure specific rules."

"We use this solution on a daily basis, and it is very stable."

"Features like AFM, the gateway, and Global DNS are the coolest features that save work for us."

"The product is excellent."

"The most valuable features are load balancing and WAF."

"The reporting feature is quite good."

More F5 BIG-IQ pros

Cons

"The UI can be challenging for new users due to its learning curve. Additionally, there are some errors during automation. More detailed logs would be helpful."

"For installing or upgrading the PeopleSoft and SAP plugins, currently there is no way to do it via Control-M Configuration Manager. So, we are installing or upgrading the plugins, like PeopleSoft and SAP, manually. If BMC could provide an option via Control-M Configuration Manager to upgrade these plugins, it probably would reduce a lot of manual work as well as ease our work. This is one improvement that I personally want to see, because it would help our way of working."

"I would like to see more audit report templates added, and perhaps more customizability in terms of reporting."

"The MFT applications should have more functionality and flexibility within that tool. Having more flexibility with that tool for handling the one to many or many to one concept. Like being able to take data from one source and push it to many locations or pull data from many locations and bring it back into a single source. That's why we still use our TPS program for the file transfers just because we don't have some of those capabilities available to us within MFT."

"They should have a proper integration method that clearly defines the workflow."

"Finding documentation on the website can be a bit confusing."

"In general, it is a very good product, and we are very happy with it. It meets all of our expectations."

"We would recommend modernizing the look and feel of Control-M. They also need to move towards more self-service and development in their environment. It's very antiquated."

More Control-M cons

"Sometimes the solution does not work."

"The solution should improve pricing. It's expensive in comparison to other American solutions."

"Integration with VAS is something that they need to work on."

"I had trouble with high availability deployment in my environment."

"From a hands-on experience perspective, more resources should be available on the Internet, like labs and lab preparations."

"The shell, kernel, or Linux has something like a delay, especially with the Virtual Edition, when you are trying to implement it in the cloud and you want to access it remotely with web management. It would be great if they could improve their kernel. It was difficult for me, especially when I got started with BIG-IP. I was struggling to find which commands work with it. If you want to work with it, you have to be a Linux guy."

"F5 BIG-IQ is a complex solution, and it cannot manage everything related to BIG-IPs."

"They could use YAML or JSON if they wanted to make it a little bit easier for us."

More F5 BIG-IQ cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is generally affordable, though some features cost a bit more."

"The product price is reasonable. I rate the pricing an eight."

"Its pricing is a little bit high. They could provide an enterprise-level license for an unlimited number of jobs. Currently, it is based on the number of jobs, and if you exceed the number of jobs, there are charges. For example, if your license is for 3,000 jobs per day, but you run 3,050 jobs, you will have to pay for the extra 50 jobs. They charge $120 per job. So, it is too costly."

"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."

"The price is right because of the licensing schema, which is based on nodes and processes. You purchase what you use, no more and no less, and you can grow with time."

"Its pricing and licensing could be a little bit better. Based on my experience and discussions with other existing customers, everybody feels that the regular Managed File Transfer piece, not the enterprise one, is a little overpriced, especially for folks who already have licensed Advanced File Transfer. We understand that Advanced File Transfer is going away and is going to be the end of life, and there is some additional functionality built into MFT, but the additional functionality does not really correlate with the huge price increase over what we're paying for AFT already. This has actually driven a lot of people to look for alternative solutions."

"We have a five-year contract with task-based licensing."

"There are human costs in addition to the standard pricing and licensing of this solution."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

"There is only one licensing fee for F5 BIG-IQ and everything is included in the price."

"F5 BIG-IQ is a cheap solution."

"I would like the product to be cheaper."

"Users have to pay an annual subscription fee for the solution's iSeries."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?

It is a little bit expensive.

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IQ?

F5 BIG-IQ is a central management system for the BIG-IP.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IQ?

F5 BIG-IQ is a cheap solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IQ?

From the study material point of view, there are multiple certifications available. The challenge is there is hardly any study material available that can be referred to or used as a study material...

See all answers

Comparisons

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 16% of the time

Automic Automation vs Control-M

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 8% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Control-M

Compared 6% of the time

Stonebranch vs Control-M

Compared 5% of the time

More Control-M Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Control-M

April 2025

Download Control-M product report

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IQ

April 2025

Download F5 BIG-IQ product report

Also Known As

Control M

No data available

Overview

Control-M is used for enterprise workload automation, orchestrating finance, retail, healthcare, and supply chain processes. It handles batch job scheduling, managed file transfers, cloud integrations, and compliance auditing across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Organizations leverage Control-M to efficiently monitor and manage business-critical processes like payroll, HR, SAP, Informatica, and database tasks. It enhances visibility, security, and error resolution. Automating and optimizing workflows in data centers, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, Control-M supports diverse technological environments. The platform's robust capabilities make it suitable for effective centralized management of applications and data pipelines, ensuring enhanced collaboration and scalability.

What are Control-M's most important features?

Integration capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with various systems
Automation API: Facilitates automation through APIs
Managed File Transfer: Simplifies secure file transfers
GUI console: Intuitive graphical user interface
Role-based administration: Provides access control
Single-pane view: Centralized monitoring dashboard
Scheduling options: Flexible job scheduling
Workflow orchestration: Coordinates complex workflows
Reporting: Generates insightful reports
Monitoring: Tracks and manages tasks
Forecasting: Predicts future workloads
Self-service portal: Empowers users with self-service tools
Plugins: Extends functionality through additional plugins

What are the benefits or ROI of using Control-M?

Enhanced visibility: Centralized view of all processes
Ease of use: User-friendly interface
Error reduction: Minimizes manual errors
Improved collaboration: Facilitates teamwork
Scalability: Supports growth and scale
Support: Comprehensive customer support

Control-M is implemented in industries like finance to handle payroll and HR tasks, in retail for inventory management and supply chain processes, and in healthcare for compliance auditing and patient data processing. Organizations benefit from streamlined workflows and automated processes across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, ensuring efficient and secure operations.

BMC

F5® BIG-IQ® Centralized Management provides a unified point of visibility and control for the entire F5 portfolio, ensuring administrators remain aware on the pulse of F5 devices, modules, and licenses and enabling them to deliver optimal application availability, performance, and security.

BIG-IQ manages policies,licenses, SSL certificates, BIG-IP images, and configurations for F5 appliances and for the following BIG-IP moduals across hardware and virtual editions:

BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM)
F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall™ (WAF)
BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager™ (AFM)
F5 SSL Orchestrator®
F5 DDoS Hybrid Defender®
BIG-IP Access Policy Manager® (APM)
F5 Secure Web Gateway Services
BIG-IP DNS

Sample Customers

CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. F5 BIG-IQ

April 2025

Free Report: Control-M vs. F5 BIG-IQ

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