Control-M vs Stonebranch comparison

Read 26 Stonebranch reviews

3,086 Views
1,409 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Control-M

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024

We performed a comparison between Control-M and Stonebranch Universal Automation Center based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

Features: Control-M offers a range of valuable capabilities such as Managed File Transfer, credentials vault, integration capabilities, Role-Based Administration, file transfer integration, collaboration, scheduling, ease of configuration, web interface, reporting, workload archiving, and forecasting. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center is commended for its strong performance, graphical representation, intuitive interface, job dependencies, rerun function, GUI, task monitor, stability, scalability, and reliable technical support.

Control-M could improve its microservices and API integration, fix bugs in the web interface, develop a lighter web version, enhance reporting capabilities, and improve support and documentation. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could benefit from cloud availability, improved analytics, easier task monitoring, and a mobile app for job hour calculation. Collaborating with the vendor for future releases would also be helpful.

Service and Support: Control-M's customer service has received mixed feedback, with some customers commending the prompt and knowledgeable support team. However, others believe there is room for improvement. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center's customer service has garnered high praise. Users describe support as very good and always available to help.

Ease of Deployment: Control-M's initial setup was simple and aided by useful guides and videos. Upgrades were seamless and caused minimal disruption. While customization and migration posed some challenges, Control-M proved adaptable and offered assistance. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center's setup was rated as mediocre in terms of ease. The infrastructure's complexity led to complications and necessitated the relocation of certain components.

Pricing: The opinions on setup cost for Control-M vary, with some users expressing concern about the expense associated with hardware and licensing for each job. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center is seen as a more cost-effective option compared to its competitors, leading to its popularity among companies.

ROI: Control-M has proven to be more cost-effective than Stonebranch Universal Automation Center, resulting in improved productivity, decreased downtime, and streamlined processes.

Comparison Results: Control-M is highly preferred over Stonebranch Universal Automation Center. Users appreciate Control-M for its user-friendly setup process, stability, easy maintenance, and smooth upgrades. They find its Managed File Transfer, credentials vault, integration capabilities, role-based administration, and dashboard collaboration features to be valuable.

To learn more, read our detailed Control-M vs. Stonebranch Report (Updated: December 2024).

Control-M vs. Stonebranch

December 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 824,053 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Control-M

Ranking in Workload Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

119

Ranking in other categories

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

Stonebranch

Ranking in Workload Automation

16th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of Control-M is 26.7%, up from 26.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Stonebranch is 5.4%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Workload 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.

Read full review

Earl Diem

Sr. Manager - Performance and Automation Engineering at PSCU Financial Services

Allowed us to develop workflows without having to train and develop very specialized skillsets

The Universal Agent is the most valuable feature. Being agent-based and being able to go across multiple technology stacks, which is what our workflows do, Stonebranch gives us the ability to bridge those disparate technologies. It enables us to remove the dependency-gap with the agent so we know the status of the workflow at each step. Workflow development in Stonebranch is straightforward. There is something of a learning curve, but it's not very steep. Being able to develop workflows without having to train and develop some very specialized skillsets to use the tool is very useful. Stonebranch absolutely helped enable digital transformation in our company and it still is. In our automation efforts, we're pushing everything to Informatica and, as we move those ETLs, we're automating the entire workflows. In phase-one and phase-two, there were 244 jobs migrated in from other ETL platforms to Informatica, and we've automated all of those. We have almost 200 jobs remaining. We're going to have something approaching 450 workflows in Stonebranch when we're done.

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

"Technical support is very helpful and available 24/7."

"We are now able to deliver data to our data warehouses and dashboards promptly."

"The File Watcher utility, cyclic jobs, and email alert notification are valuable."

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

"Most valuable feature would be the ability to detect and notify when a process has not completed successfully."

"Workload Archiving is a very good feature for us. It helps with our customer requirements in terms of reporting and auditing... Previously, when we didn't have any archive server, we managed the data in Control-M with man-made scripts, and we would pull the data for the last 365 days, or three or four months back. Since we installed the archiving, we have been able to pull the data, anytime and anywhere, with just one click."

"It is very easy to use. The HA feature is also very good."

"The pressure on our operations and our maintenance has been reduced."

More Control-M pros

"The most valuable feature is the reliability of the agents, because we need them accessible and we need to run stuff. The agent technology and compatibility are top-notch."

"When it comes to agent technology and compatibility with other vendors, from a platform perspective it was the one vendor that fit all the platforms that we have, from your old platforms - mainframe, NSK, IBM i - to the new ones, going into cloud and container"

"I love the Universal Controller. It's been great for us. We host it on-premise... It's High Availability, meaning there's failover from one server to the other if one goes down."

"We like that it has GUI and is not just a command line."

"I like the dashboard and the various workflows."

"We lean a lot on the multi-tenancy that they offer within the product, the ability to get other people to self-manage their estate, versus having a central team do all the scheduling."

"The ability to monitor tasks that are on the open-system side as well as our mainframe side gives us a one-window view of all our processes."

"I can name the aliases on the agent, so if we need a passive environment for an agent, that's one of the nice features. If our primary goes down, I can bring up the passive one and I don't have to change anything in the scheduling world. It will start running from that new server."

More Stonebranch pros

Cons

"Right now, Control-M is the leader in EMA analysis, which is similar to Gartner. However, clients want to invest in a strong technology, and therefore this product needs to keep up with the high expectations set for it."

"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'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."

"I would like to see automatic license management. And probably more importantly, some kind of machine learning to help identify the optimum automation path."

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

"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."

"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"

"An issue we have run into in our lower environments is that Control-M can log you out frequently."

More Control-M cons

"The Universal Controller is decent for the money it costs... It needs some work to have full features, compared to other products that are out there, specifically IBM's Workload Scheduler."

"Occasionally, we have an agent that doesn't come back up after patching. That doesn't happen very often... It's really just a restart of the agent and it comes back up. But that might be one thing that could be improved."

"I would rate Stonebranch somewhere in the middle for ease of setup. It wasn't too straightforward for us because our infrastructure is complex."

"It can't handle negative written codes."

"Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could improve the analytics."

"I have a request regarding our agent on the mainframe. It may time out when communicating to the Universal Controller, when the mainframe is extremely busy. That can cause a task which is running at that time to not see the results of the job that ran on the mainframe. It happens sporadically during times of really busy CPU usage. We're expecting that enhancement from them in the fourth quarter."

"There is room for improvement with its connectivity with the Microsoft SRS system. It is very weak. They keep telling us it works with it, and technically it does, but it does not provide a lot of visibility. We have lost a lot of visibility migrating to Stonebranch, compared with just running tasks on the SRS server. That's really about the only thing that is a sore point for us."

"One hiccup we've had is due to the fact that we have other internal scheduling tools. We're able to talk to them, but we have trouble with some of the networking between them, so we're still trying to work out the kinks there."

More Stonebranch cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"You must accept that BMC licensing can be very confusing. No one can easily understand how they calculate things, whether it is user-based, job-based, or server-based. The calculation is quite tough. How BMC calculates licensing is not easily available anywhere."

"We have account based licensing. There are two or three types of licensing. One of them is based on the number of jobs, so we a license close to 4,000 jobs per day. The cost is based on the different modules, which we buy from them. If we a buy a hardware module, which we are presently using and integrating, that is an additional cost, but I'm not sure of the amount. Each module comes with a different cost."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"They are expensive. If we were a small company, it would be complicated because we have to have strong sales and operations to be able to afford a tool of this level. Being a large company, the cost-benefit is covered, but it is not within the level of cheap solutions."

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

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

"The price of the solution is at a medium level compared to the competition."

"Outside of licensing fees, there aren't any other costs."

"When we reviewed this solution against other vendors, Stonebranch blew everybody out of the water in terms of cost."

"Stonebranch is cheaper than Control-M, so many companies are using Stonebranch."

"I don't have pricing information, but I do know it's cheaper than our old legacy system. Other than the standard licensing fees there are no additional costs."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Workload Automation solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

15%

Insurance Company

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...

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.

What do you like most about Stonebranch Universal Automation Center?

We like that it has GUI and is not just a command line.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Stonebranch Universal Automation Center?

The pricing is good. I would rate it eight out of ten. The pricing is similar to AutoSys. It's lower than Redwood, which was on the higher side in terms of pricing.

What needs improvement with Stonebranch Universal Automation Center?

It can be hard to manage the task monitor. We are still working with the vendor, and we are trying to make the changes as per our requirements. We are asking them to build some new solutions so the...

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Control-M

Comparisons

Compared 20% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 9% of the time

Automic Automation vs Control-M

Compared 7% of the time

Rocket Zena vs Control-M

Compared 6% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs Control-M

Compared 5% of the time

More Control-M Competitors

AutoSys Workload Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 22% of the time

ESP Workload Automation Intelligence vs Stonebranch

Compared 10% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Stonebranch

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Stonebranch

Compared 8% of the time

VisualCron vs Stonebranch

Compared 3% of the time

More Stonebranch Competitors

Product Reports

Download Control-M product report

Control-M

December 2024

Download Stonebranch product report

November 2024

Also Known As

Control M

Stonebranch Universal Automation Center

Learn More

BMC

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.

Stonebranch automates enterprise-level workload and task scheduling across platforms like Linux, Windows, and mainframe, managing thousands of daily tasks for improved efficiency and visibility.

Stonebranch enables organizations to streamline job scheduling by replacing older systems with a robust solution that automates complex workflows, batch processing, and secure file transfers. Its compatibility with multiple platforms and enhanced visibility aid teams in efficiently managing business processes, database interactions, and IT workflows. Equipped with a Universal Controller and Agent, it provides seamless integration across diverse systems, empowering users with greater control over their tasks. While it fosters digital transformation, there are opportunities for enhancements in areas like graphical workflow overviews and API functionality.

What features does Stonebranch offer?

User-friendly interface for intuitive navigation
Robust agents ensuring reliable task execution
Comprehensive workflow automation tools
Platform-agnostic compatibility for diverse systems
Secure file transfer capabilities
High scalability for growing needs
Effective error handling features

What benefits should users expect?

Improved efficiency in task management
Streamlined processes reducing operational complexities
Enhanced visibility and control over workflows
Seamless integration with existing systems
Support for digital transformation initiatives

Organizations in industries such as finance and healthcare implement Stonebranch for its ability to automate complex processes, manage mainframe and distributed environments, and securely transfer sensitive data. Its platform-agnostic nature caters to the demanding needs of these industries, providing a reliable backbone for essential operations.

Sample Customers

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

Nissan, Coop, United Supermarkets, Groupon, CSC, Orbitz, Johnson & Johnson, BMW, Qantas.