Control-M vs Microsoft Configuration Manager comparison

The compared BMC and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. BMC is ranked #3 in PA , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 4.4% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #6 in SM , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 6.0% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Control-M

Read 120 Control-M reviews

3,737 Views
1,525 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Microsoft Configuration Man...

Read 81 Microsoft Configuration Manager reviews

2,285 Views
1,821 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Control-M

Microsoft Configuration Man...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Control-M and Microsoft Configuration Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Pega, BMC and others in Process Automation.

To learn more, read our detailed Process Automation Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Process Automation

March 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

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

120

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (3rd), Managed File Transfer (MFT) (4th), Workload Automation (1st)

Microsoft Configuration Man...

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (6th), Configuration Management (3rd), Patch Management (1st)

Mindshare comparison

Control-M and Microsoft Configuration Manager aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Control-M is designed for Process Automation and holds a mindshare of 4.4%, up 3.9% compared to last year.
Microsoft Configuration Manager, on the other hand, focuses on Server Monitoring, holds 6.0% mindshare, down 8.6% since last year.

Process Automation

Server Monitoring

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.

Read full review

MikeNelson2

IT Infrastructure Coordinator at NSW Government

Deployment recovery works well but requires configuration improvements

While I do not use the product frequently, many issues were due to configuration rather than the product itself. I cannot give an exact recommendation as it is not my area of responsibility. The team that uses it finds it adequate. It is presently good enough for us not to investigate other options. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Self Service, BIM features are most valuable. As no need to login to EM client and check the job status."

"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."

"Control-M has helped us resolve issues 70% to 80% faster. It provides us with alerts instead of having someone go to that particular server and check the logs to determine where the issue is. We can simply click on the alert information, then everything is in front of us. This provides us with time savings, human effort savings, and process savings."

"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 Control-M interface is good for creating, monitoring, and ensuring the delivery of files as part of our data pipeline. There's a wealth of information in both the full client, as well as the web interface that they have. Both are very easy to use and provide all the necessary material to understand how to do various tasks. The help feature is very useful and informative and everything is very easy to understand."

"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."

"Control-M is useful to automate all critical and non-critical processes. Using Control-M, we can automate application workflows as well as file transfers involved in application workflows. We can also use it to run batches related to applications. Automating these processes reduces the RTO and RPO, which helps in the case of failures. It also helps us to identify bottlenecks and take corrective measures."

"The File Transfer component is quite valuable. The integration with products such as Informatica and SAP are very valuable to us as well. Rather than having to build our own interface into those products, we can use the ones that come out of the box. The integration with databases is valuable as well. We use database jobs quite a bit."

More Control-M pros

"The initial setup is straightforward and not too complicated."

"With the right administrator, application deployment can do wonders."

"SCCM is a stable solution."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager is the availability of being able to manage the Microsoft estate. It handles many areas, such as asset management and tracking."

"The most valuable feature is the graphical-based reports of software updates that have been successful, the ones that have failed, and a summary of where the failures are what security breaches may occur."

"The most valuable features are Remote Connect, SUP, Cloud functionality, Report, Query, and third-party patching."

"Patching is very effective and reporting is very good."

"The product is suitable for our size, handling 800 devices."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pros

Cons

"The infrastructure updates could use improvement. Some of the previous updates that we have run to get to version nineteen were troublesome. So, a more seamless upgrade path for the infrastructure components would be useful. I don't know if they have replaced that in version 20 or if version 20 has an easier path, but I would like to see the upgrade from one version to the next version be a little smoother."

"The response time could be faster when you need a person to answer your questions. There are situations where availability becomes crucial."

"The company has been working with BMC on the MFT. There are still some things about MFT which don't work the way that we want with our needs. So, we would like to see that improved."

"A lot of the areas of improvement revolve around Automation API because that area is constantly evolving. It is constantly changing, and it is constantly being updated. There are some bugs that are introduced from one version to the next. So, the regression testing doesn't seem to capture some of the bugs that have been fixed in prior versions, and those bugs are then reintroduced in later versions."

"The reporting tool still needs a lot of improvement. It was supposed to get better with the upgrade, and it really didn't get better. It needs help, because it's such a useful thing to have. It needs to be more powerful and easier to use."

"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."

"I've never been very successful when researching ways to utilize Batch Impact Manager. It's a tool to set up dummy jobs in your job flow and it's supposed to come back to you and say, 'Okay, for this job flow, you are 50 percent complete at a certain point in time'...I would like things like Batch Impact Manager to be a little more user-friendly, out-of-the-box."

"The biggest improvement they could have is better QA testing before releases come out the door."

More Control-M cons

"The cost of the product can be improved."

"The configuration of Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager could be improved, it is a bit complicated."

"The tool's deployment is complex and depends on the architecture you want to implement."

"The solution should be more compatible with different versions of Linux."

"The operations could be faster and you need some patience with this tool."

"The database should be made to be more stable and robust, but not so much the configuration."

"There is a reboot issue with the patching. Sometimes, if patching runs into any issue whatsoever, it doesn't reboot but it doesn't tell you it errored out. It just sits there and we don't find out until the next day whether it patched or not. That was a big issue for us. We're working through that. They added some stuff in there now where you can actually tell reboot is pending. But we still need some kind of notification that if something fails or is pending, we know. We shouldn't have to go in and look. They don't have anything for that right now."

"There is no asset management package included."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Licensing costs are around $3000 a year."

"It is a little bit expensive."

"The license model is based on the number of jobs we run on the SaaS application or the number of executions, unlike the on-premise model options. If we have a handful of jobs, it's always good to consider Control-M, but if it's a large number of jobs, Control-M might not be a great option."

"This product saves hours in a day based on my experience working here versus other companies with manually operations."

"BMC does NOT have a great licensing model from my perspective."

"The pricing is reasonable. It's not an exorbitant amount. The licensing is pretty reasonable for the number of jobs that we run."

"This is an expensive product compared to other solutions, although I think that it is a good one. We are in a good position with licensing, as we can run 10,000 jobs."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

"Pricing and licensing are horrible. You have to not look at dollar value to use SCCM. It's super-duper expensive but it works. The acquisition cost is expensive, it's labor-intensive. But it works."

"We use the tool's free license. It is expensive."

"Presently, I am using a free trial version."

"We have a support license from Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager and the overall price of the solution is reasonable."

"Its licensing is quite complicated because we are getting the license not only for SCCM but for the full Microsoft package. We don't need to pay for a separate license. We need to have one license that includes everything we need, such as Windows, Microsoft 365, SCCM, encryption, and so on. So, we don't have a specific price for it. Perhaps, it is good that it includes the full suite of licensing of Microsoft. It is expensive, but we are getting a lot of features."

"Microsoft provides a steep price for their enterprise products, but they offer very competitive pricing for their legacy customers."

"For enterprises, there is an annual license required to use this solution. The price of the solution could be cheaper. However, this is mostly because of the exchange rate from the dollar to the Nigerian currency."

"Pricing and licensing are a downside of SCCM. It's expensive. I'd have to confirm this, but I think they changed the licensing to core-based instead of socket-based. It's not cheap, because you have to buy the software, you have to buy SQL. Another thing we learned from talking to Microsoft is that they provide you a license for SQL if you run it on the same box as the primary server. If you run it outside that box, you have to buy SQL. Microsoft does recommend you running it on the same box because of performance. But then, in order to run SQL, SCCM, and everything on the same box, you better have some resources. It's an expensive solution. There's no doubt about it."

More Microsoft Configuration Manager pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

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

How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...

See all answers

How to choose between ManageEngine Desktop Central and Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (formerly SCCM)?

ManageEngine Desktop Central is very easy to set up, is scalable, stable, and also has very good patch management. What I like most about ManageEngine is that I can log on to every PC very easily a...

See all answers

What do you like most about SCCM?

One of the standout features of SCCM is its application management capabilities. It allows us to create packages efficiently and deploy them to specific groups within our network. This streamlined ...

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

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 14% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 13% of the time

Tanium vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 8% of the time

BigFix vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 6% of the time

AWS Systems Manager vs Microsoft Configuration Manager

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Configuration Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Control-M

March 2025

Download Control-M product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Configuration Manager

March 2025

Download Microsoft Configuration Manager product report

Also Known As

Control M

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM )

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

Microsoft Configuration Manager helps IT manage PCs and servers, keeping software up-to-date, setting configuration and security policies, and monitoring system status while giving employees access to corporate applications on the devices that they choose. When Configuration Manager is integrated with Microsoft Intune, you can manage corporate-connected PCs and Macs along with cloud-based mobile devices running Windows, iOS, and Android, all from a single management console.

New features of Configuration Manager, such as the support of Windows 10 in-place upgrade, co-management with Microsoft Intune, Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise Servicing Dashboard, integration with Windows Update for Business, and more make deploying and managing Windows easier than ever before.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

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

Bank Alfalah Ltd., Wªrth Handelsges.m.b.H, Dimension Data, Japan Business Systems, St. Lucie County Public Schools, MISC Berhad

Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Pega, BMC and others in Process Automation. Updated: March 2025.

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We monitor all Process Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.