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 9.0, while VMware is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.2. BMC holds a 4.4% 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 120 Control-M reviews

4,031 Views
1,565 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

vCenter Orchestrator

Read 50 vCenter Orchestrator reviews

199 Views
159 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Control-M

vCenter Orchestrator

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. vCenter Orchestrator

January 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)

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 February 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of Control-M is 4.4%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Orchestrator is 0.2%, down from 0.6% 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.

Read full review

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.

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

"I would definitely recommend Control-M to every institute because it is extremely helpful to manage every task without any manual error."

"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."

"In Helix Control-M, we have the automation API that allows us to customize and do integrations easily in any script, such as Java or Python. It is all integrated within the integration API."

"It is an enterprise tool that integrates with all the applications in our organization. It has made our life easier because we don't need to wake up at midnight and do monitoring, etc. It does everything. It also sends precautionary alerts. If a job or activity is running for more than the specified time, it alerts the application team. So, our teams do not need to sit in front of a laptop or any open application to watch the jobs. They can do their other regular activities while Control-M takes care of all the jobs. It notifies them when there is job completion, delay, and error."

"We use Control-M for maintenance on our Oracle and SQL Server databases. It automates maintenance on packages, including standard procedures on the databases themselves, snapshots, checking integrity, verifying the RDBMS of the databases, etc. It ensures they aren't clogged and that they are running smoothly and that there aren't any jobs stuck, eating up the performance of the server or any of the CPU cores."

"It's very easy to use. Compared to other softwares, Control-M has significantly simplified our monthly release process, making it easier to move things forward."

"It has certainly helped speed things up."

"The scheduling feature and scheduling tool are the most valuable features. I like the scheduling services that we have in Control-M, which are very beneficial to our organization because they are automating things. There is also less manual work. We can schedule a task without any manual interruptions."

More Control-M pros

"vCenter Orchestrator is very reliable and stable."

"The storage motion is a good feature. It is a very good tool."

"It is the most cost-effective method for moving data between machines."

"I am impressed with the tool's easiness to work with VMware solutions."

"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 how easy it makes it to manage the VM."

"The most valuable feature is workflow automation."

"The tool is very beneficial for automating workflow."

More vCenter Orchestrator pros

Cons

"There can be some complexities with the UI part, especially with the advanced features."

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

"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 UI can be challenging for new users due to its learning curve."

"They can improve their interface."

"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 stability could be improved. I ran into an issue with a recent Control-M patch. The environment would become unstable if security ports were scanned. This is an area they need to improve on, but ultimately it's a relatively small improvement."

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

More Control-M cons

"It could be integrated with third-party hypervisors."

"The price of this product is high and could be improved."

"We would like more flexibility in sizing data storage and virtual machines, as the current options aren't very adaptable."

"The solution needs to integrate with Cloud facilities like AWS and Azure."

"The custom workflows are very difficult and confusing."

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

"The GUI should be enhanced in the future."

"There can be compatibility issues."

More vCenter Orchestrator cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Initially, our licensing model was based on the number of jobs per day. That caused some issues because we were restricted to a number. So at our renewal time we said, 'We want to convert from number of jobs to number of endpoints.' That cost us extra money but it gave us additional capabilities, without worrying about the number of jobs."

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

"In our environment, pricing depends on the total number of maximum jobs that can run, which is fine. Therefore, if the number of jobs increases, then the licensing fees will increase."

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

"BMC's price is based on the number of jobs."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

"My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."

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

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

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

"vCenter Orchestrator is an expensive solution."

"The licensing module is somewhat complex. Calculating the cost is complicated. Many of our clients are unclear about the billing system and the traffic metering."

"The concept of hyper-convergence is smart. I don't know if it can be applied with less cost to be more affordable for small or medium-sized companies. The cost is a very important factor for it. We are currently depending on SAN storage. However, the hyper-converged solutions are depending on the storage within the hosts, such as vSAN in the VMware. It is a smart solution."

"vCenter Orchestrator could be more affordable."

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

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

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?

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

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 17% of the time

Automic Automation vs Control-M

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Workload Automation vs Control-M

Compared 8% of the time

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Control-M

Compared 6% of the time

Rocket Zena vs Control-M

Compared 5% of the time

More Control-M Competitors

VMware Aria Automation vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 60% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 27% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 13% of the time

More vCenter Orchestrator Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Control-M

February 2025

Download Control-M product report

Buyer's Guide

vCenter Orchestrator

January 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

January 2025

Free Report: Control-M vs. vCenter Orchestrator

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