Control-M vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

BMC and VMware are both solutions in the Process Automation category. BMC is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.7, while VMware is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.1. BMC holds a 4.5% mindshare in PA, compared to VMware’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Control-M

Read 121 Control-M reviews

3,737 Views
1,531 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

vCenter Orchestrator

Read 50 vCenter Orchestrator reviews

165 Views
127 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Control-M

vCenter Orchestrator

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

vCenter Orchestrator and Control-M both compete in the automation software category. Control-M seems to have the upper hand in comprehensive workload automation and integration with third-party systems.

Features: vCenter Orchestrator offers virtualization and workflow automation capabilities, making it suitable for virtual machine management and operations like vMotion. It provides centralized management and integrates well within VMware environments. Control-M provides cross-platform scheduling, managed file transfers, real-time monitoring, and API integrations. It also includes a self-service portal for operational efficiency.

Room for Improvement: vCenter Orchestrator could improve its multi-provider support and cross-platform integration. Enhancements to its scripting environment and GUI simplification are also suggested. Control-M could benefit from better cloud support, more intuitive reporting tools, and integration with additional modules. Both products have potential improvements in affordability and user-centric functionality.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vCenter Orchestrator is typically deployed on-premises, and while users report good technical support from VMware, there is a need for more responsive service. Control-M offers diverse deployment options, including cloud environments, providing flexibility. BMC’s support for Control-M is efficient, although some licensing management issues have been reported.

Pricing and ROI: vCenter Orchestrator is considered expensive and its pricing model is complex. It delivers high ROI for large-scale virtualization but may not be cost-effective for smaller clients. Control-M is also expensive but offers optimal ROI for large environments due to its comprehensive automation features. Both solutions provide value, though clarity in licensing and affordability could enhance their market appeal.

To learn more, read our detailed Control-M vs. vCenter Orchestrator Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. vCenter Orchestrator

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

121

Ranking in other categories

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

vCenter Orchestrator

Ranking in Process Automation

10th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

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 vCenter Orchestrator is 0.2%, down from 0.5% 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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David Villota

EMEA Hosting Engineer at Yanfeng Automotive

Provides automatic monitoring capabilities that save time for users

In my company's IT environment, we use the tool to deploy production environments for products, including live manufacturing systems. The product improves my company's IT automation processes since we can use fewer resources currently. In my company, we need to spend less time considering that vCenter Orchestrator monitors everything. In general, we don't have to be present in our company to do active monitoring. Automatic monitoring is available for everything with vCenter Orchestrator, so we have proactive alerts in our company. The most valuable feature of the product in streamlining our company's workflow stems from the fact that we need to spend fewer resources and less time in general. Our company can spend time on more effective tasks like working with the plans to improve processes and so on, instead of taking care of the systems. The benefits of the product's integration capabilities were useful for HPE. My company has HPE infrastructure, and we are keen to integrate everything into the host, VMware ESXi. It is really important to have an easy integration method that allows for everything to be installed easily in a matter of minutes. I was not involved in the product's setup process. My colleague took care of the product's setup process. From what I know, I can say that the product's setup phase was straightforward. Some custom setups were to be done manually in the tool, but everything was well documented. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. One of the benefits of the product is that it is a low-cost and stable solution that offers a lot of resources. I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

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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 helps us meet our service-level agreements. It is integrated into our CI/CD pipeline. It enhances our operational productivity."

"It integrates seamlessly with other tools within our ecosystem."

"The scheduling and management were really good. Monitoring was also better. It had a good visual presentation. It showed me charts and all such things. It was really good on that side."

"The initial setup is largely straightforward."

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

"Our ability to integrate with many different solutions has been invaluable. The new approach of the automation API and jobs-as-code is also valuable."

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

"The most valuable feature is the reporting function. It allows us to pull up reports for specific information that the end-users are looking for."

More Control-M pros

"The most valuable features are the graphical UI for designing the workflows and the interfaces that come out of the box."

"The most valuable feature is workflow automation."

"The most crucial feature of vCenter is its scalability. We can use it to expand our network, so we don't have to report our client devices. The network configuration features are also helpful because we can migrate entire networks."

"It is very stable. I have been using vCenter Orchestrator from version three now to six plus."

"The implementation phase for vCenter Orchestrator was easy."

"The most valuable feature is how easy it makes it to manage the VM."

"I find that managing all my vCenters from one console is the most valuable feature."

"We can manage and relocate resources easily."

More vCenter Orchestrator pros

Cons

"Consider adding a mobile application for remote management."

"The Control-M API does not support SQL database-type jobs, where a job has been configured to use the SQL catalog to locate SSIS."

"One feature I would like to include is in the middle of the monitoring domain. In the monitoring domain, if I have to update a number of jobs, the only way to do it is by manually clicking on each job. I would like a feature that allows me to do a mass update in the jobs, which I feel is still lacking."

"I would like to have a web version of Control-M to replace the client. Currently, our support and jobs-creation teams are using the client and that needs to be installed on a PC. It's very heavy, consuming a lot of resources compared to the web portal. I know that they're trying to improve the client with the latest version, but for me, there hasn't been enough improvement yet."

"They can improve their interface."

"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."

"Its initial setup is a bit complex. They could provide more documentation and tutorials to make the initial setup easier to understand. Enhancing the documentation could simplify the setup process."

"I think it's slightly expensive but at the same time it's a good product."

More Control-M cons

"VMware tools would benefit from more automation. When installing our devices and servers, we often need to install the VMware tools manually. This process should be automated during the VM installation process."

"Using this solution requires a lot of experience."

"I would like to see more automation added in the future."

"I believe a transparent view and better terms of condition between Oracle and vCenter Orchestrator would be helpful."

"After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed."

"The scalability option provided by the solution is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

"There are some update-related issues with the product."

"When the SSO certificate needs to be renewed, the upgrading and testing are quite complicated."

More vCenter Orchestrator cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"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."

"Its cost is a little bit higher than other solutions such as AutoSys or DAC. For the demo, there were some plans, such as start plan, scale plan, etc. Pricing was based on the plan."

"Control-M isn't cheap, but this is an enterprise model."

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

"The pricing of Control-M is reasonable."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product price a seven to eight out of ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

"The licensing cost is manageable because they have different versions available, standard, essential, and advanced."

"We renew the solution's license every one or two years."

"This solution is expensive and the licensing is more attractive for Haveri."

"The price is reasonable, and one of the reasons that this product was selected."

"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. We pay for the license and then we pay the support every year."

"vCenter Orchestrator could be more affordable."

"We provide the VMware solution to our clients, for which they pay a perpetual license."

More vCenter Orchestrator pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

12%

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

What do you like most about vCenter Orchestrator?

The stability of the product is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Orchestrator?

We're running a low-profile budget. This is not our main focus on investment technology, so we're trying to reduce costs due to the change from perpetual to subscription licenses.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vCenter Orchestrator?

After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed. We are considering alternatives since we lost the perpetual aspect, and support is changing.

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 7% 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

VMware Aria Automation vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 56% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 21% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 11% of the time

More vCenter Orchestrator Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Control-M

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

vCenter Orchestrator

March 2025

Download vCenter Orchestrator 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

VMware vCenter Orchestrator simplifies the automation of complex IT tasks and integrates with VMware vCloud Suite components to adapt and extend service delivery and operational management, effectively working with existing infrastructure, tools and processes.

VMware

Sample Customers

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

Beiersdorf Shared Services

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. vCenter Orchestrator

April 2025

Free Report: Control-M vs. vCenter Orchestrator

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