Control-M vs VisualCron comparison

BMC and NetCart AB are both solutions in the Workload Automation category. BMC is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.0, while NetCart AB is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.3. Additionally, 98% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetCart AB users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Control-M and VisualCron are popular task automation and workflow management tools within the IT scheduling category. Control-M offers significant integration options with support for complex environments, while VisualCron provides ease of use suited for non-programmers. Control-M appears to have the upper hand in terms of integration and cross-platform capabilities, while VisualCron stands out for user-friendliness and simplicity.

Features: Control-M supports complex scheduling, automation, and cross-platform functionality with integration options like SAP, DB, and VMware through its Control Modules. Its centralized monitoring is beneficial for diverse systems, including distributed and mainframe environments. VisualCron simplifies task management with an intuitive interface, making it accessible for non-programmers. It offers strong connectivity features ideal for simpler automation scenarios.

Room for Improvement: Control-M's output analysis could be enhanced to provide operations beyond string matching. Its reporting capabilities are often limited, necessitating external tools for detailed reporting. VisualCron could improve its interface for better usability. Enhancing its command console and documentation would refine the user experience. Expanding community support and integration options are also desirable for VisualCron users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Control-M is versatile, available on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments. User feedback on technical support is mixed—responsive yet challenged in complex issues. VisualCron's deployment is straightforward with easy setup and licensing. Users generally find its technical support satisfactory, with room for improvement in documentation and community engagement.

Pricing and ROI: Control-M's pricing reflects its features, seen as costly but justified for large organizations due to enhanced capabilities and process efficiency gains. Smaller businesses might find its cost prohibitive. VisualCron offers competitive and less complicated pricing, ensuring good ROI through affordable workflow management with minimal investment, ideal for less complex environments.

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

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. VisualCron

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Aspera Managed File Transfer

Featured Reviews

Michele Illiano

Head of Division at Innovery

Beneficial quick protocol, powerful, but limited use cases

Aspera Managed File Transfer should be packaged into another solution. Explaining to customers you need to have multiple solutions from multiple vendors for their use cases can get complicated for them to understand. The best way to propose a suite is to have an integrated suite where the customer could choose to license part of it. This solution could be one solution not two choices between 10 or 12 different solutions. The main feature of Aspera Managed File Transfer is the communication protocol, which is fast. There are a lot of different clients that are offering features related to these fast protocols. It's possible to create one unique suite that can handle this base protocol. It will be quite easy to propose to the customers.

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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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Sourav-Dutta

Technical Lead - Database Administrator at SMART ENERGY SYSTEMS LLC

It's user-friendly, and I didn't need long to understand the process

We use VisualCron for all our automation needs, like connecting to FileZilla, calling APIs, generating PGP keys, creating encryption files with the PGP key login to Azure, etc. It can automatically log in to SQL Server and execute SQL script jobs in bulk. We had 2,000-3,000 users at my previous…

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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

"Aspera Managed File Transfer is an optimal solution for customers who want to transfer large files to remote sites with lower bandwidth and in less time."

"The main feature of Aspera Managed File Transfer is that it's an incredibly fast protocol, you can use all the bandwidth available. If I need to send large amounts of data this is the fastest protocol on the market. I have been using it for some minor projects and it is very powerful."

"Good user interface and ability to set up multiple file transfer jobs."

"Maintaining and monitoring of workloads have been and continue to be the most valuable feature in our environment."

"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."

"The best part about this product is that it has a lot of features. Control-M doesn't limit us and we can use it for a lot of things."

"The unified view where you can define, orchestrate, and monitor applications, workflows, and data pipelines is important because we have more than one team working on Control-M. We have a support team, a job-creation team, and a SAP team. We can all work together on it. It avoids anyone from working on his part and not using the latest modifications."

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

"The most valuable features of Control-M are automation and orchestration. It allows a different schedule, and we can manage thousands of jobs. It ensures we can complete them on time accurately. This automation reduces our manual intervention, significantly reducing error."

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

More Control-M pros

"I love VisualCron because we previously spent a lot of time writing Power switches to connect to SQL Server. VisualCron makes it easier to execute services or connect to FileZilla by only adding the credentials to the master credentials stored in the solution."

"It helped us reduce manual steps."

"VisualCron is a very powerful program to automate different steps in your business processes. We use it to automate replacing files and inform departments about the replacement."

"What I found most beneficial from VisualCron is that you can directly connect it with different databases, user accounts, and credentials. You can run queries from one machine to another using the credentials, unlike PowerShell, that's run by the machine itself. With VisualCron, you can directly ask other machines and run requests through user credentials. Suppose you have an AWS or Azure environment. In that case, you can maintain the connection between on-premises and cloud-based machines, which is the type of setup in the organization I'm working for. You can directly call some of the services via VisualCron on your local on-premises machine, and I found that an excellent feature of the tool."

"It has improved our organization with more automation within the business departments and less administration and development in the IT department. Usually, as the IT department, we are the bottleneck for many requirements within the business. With this tool, the business departments are able to perform many task themselves."

"The ability to clone jobs to shorten the time it takes to implement a process has been invaluable, but its flexibility also gives us the ability to create a job that can handle a multifaceted process with a complex workflow."

"'ve only had a few cases where I've had to request support in the past 12 years of use, but the support response time and resolution were was extremely quick."

"The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%."

More VisualCron pros

Cons

"The solution's pricing is high and should be reduced."

"Aspera Managed File Transfer should be packaged into another solution. Explaining to customers you need to have multiple solutions from multiple vendors for their use cases can get complicated for them to understand."

"Deployment is complex and it was difficult to get support."

"Control-M should receive more notice when it releases new features. The user interface is also a bit complex, and the navigation should be streamlined."

"The report form and display function are weak; they are not very powerful."

"A lot of businesses are using ServiceNow, which is another tool. I would like there to be some integration with ServiceNow or other third-party tools as well as have easily available integrations. Right now, we need to write scripts. Apart from that, if there were some integrations with an ITSM tool, then that would be good. Because at the end of the day, most of our clients are using different ITSM tools. I know that BMC Remedy is easy to integrate with Control-M. However, if there was availability for Jira as well as other ITSM and DevOps tools, that would be a good improvement."

"We did encounter a few scalability issues. Sometimes, there are too many jobs in our environment on different servers, but that’s not the tool issue, we can simply increase the FS size. However, that requires bank cost; hence the scalability issue."

"Their technicians should be more involved when we're applying new technology to Control-M, such as cloud. We're working with cloud right now, with AWS, and getting the attention of a technician, sometimes, can take some time. It would be nice if they had somebody assigned to it. Dedicated support."

"The reporting functionality needs a lot of work. We have faced problems with different versions where we run the right report, but it gives us blank entries. Then, when we run the same report again, it gives the correct data."

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

"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."

More Control-M cons

"The error timeout and info could be better. When making web request calls, it will time out sometimes and we won't get any useful info out of the error response."

"There are some conditions in the mail trigger, but you can only use them as an "AND" condition, not as an "OR" condition. This is an improvement that could be useful. For example, some people put "invoice" in the subject and others put "invoice" in the body. If I want to make a trigger for everybody whose sending invoices, I have to make two jobs for this now."

"VisualCron's command console is a little bit difficult to understand and needs to improve."

"An area for improvement in VisualCron is its cluttered interface. It isn't always easy to find all functionalities, so what VisualCron needs is a user interface expert who can improve the interface. There's a learning curve in terms of finding what you need from the interface of VisualCron. The technical support for VisualCron also needs improvement in terms of response time. Currently, there's no live support or hotline you can call to get quick answers, so this is what I'd like to see in the next version of VisualCron. A less cluttered and more streamlined interface, where you don't need to hunt for some of the features, is also what I'd like to see in the next VisualCron update."

"Our suggestion to make it better and more manageable in terms of GDPR: Implement it in a very partnership way."

"I want to improve the UI in VisualCron, as it's not as user-friendly, particularly when setting up the task scheduler. If you're familiar with the tool, then no problem, but if not, you'll have a problem typing text because sometimes, the cursor points to other places, so there's an issue with text box alignment in VisualCron. That was painful for me when I was just a VisualCron novice, but when you become used to it, there won't be a problem."

"VisualCron seems to operate like an efficient machine when it comes to improvements and enhancements and new features. I always appreciate the quick response I get when bringing up an issue or coming up with suggestions. I've mentioned before that it would be great to see a move away from SQLCE and XML configuration files."

"VisualCron is software, and you will experience performance degradation when you scale up. VisualCron takes too much memory or CPU power. We have to increase the hardware resources of a specific server or system."

More VisualCron cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Aspera Managed File Transfer is not an inexpensive solution. I am not aware of many competitors to determine how affordable the price is overall."

"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."

"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."

"While it is quite flexible, the licensing cost could be more affordable, especially for small and mid-sized enterprises."

"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."

"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."

"Compare to other tools Pricing and licensing was more. It should be decrease."

"we are more looking for a better cost/license/performance model because BMC, while we could say it's the best, is also the most expensive. That is what we are probably most annoyed with. We are paying something like €1,000,000 over three years for having 4,000 jobs running. That's expensive."

"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."

More Control-M pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is extremely fair, and because of that I recommend purchasing multiple instances to split out the processing load across multiple application servers."

"ROI is one month."

"VisualCron is correctly priced because it wasn't very cheap, and it wasn't overly expensive, so the price for it was set correctly. When my previous company bought VisualCron, it was €800 per server per year. On a scale of one to five, I would rate the pricing for VisualCron a five because it was just right. The tool was affordable, and it has one of the most competitive pricing in the market."

"The price is a bit high."

"We are fine with a rather cheap setup. Licensing with VisualCron is fair. You have a simple one-year licence in different sizes. There isn't a licensing jungle with hundreds of options and opt-ins."

"ROI is 95 percent."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Healthcare Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Aspera Managed File Transfer?

Aspera Managed File Transfer is an optimal solution for customers who want to transfer large files to remote sites wi...

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What needs improvement with Aspera Managed File Transfer?

The solution's pricing calculation needs revision to be more competitive

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What advice do you have for others considering Aspera Managed File Transfer?

Aspera Managed File Transfer has superior technology. Overall, I rate Aspera Managed File Transfer a nine out of ten.

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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 b...

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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.

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

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

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What do you like most about VisualCron?

The tool has reduced our operational costs by 40%.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VisualCron?

The price is a bit high. However, it is okay.

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What needs improvement with VisualCron?

The documentation is a bit weak. The tool must provide a better set of documentation.

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM Sterling File Gateway vs Aspera Managed File Transfer

Compared 77% of the time

Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct vs Aspera Managed File Transfer

Compared 15% of the time

Axway AMPLIFY Managed File Transfer vs Aspera Managed File Transfer

Compared 9% of the time

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AutoSys Workload Automation vs Control-M

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

Redwood RunMyJobs vs Control-M

Compared 5% of the time

More Control-M Competitors

Microsoft Power Automate vs VisualCron

Compared 43% of the time

Stonebranch vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

OpCon vs VisualCron

Compared 7% of the time

MOVEit vs VisualCron

Compared 6% of the time

ActiveBatch by Redwood vs VisualCron

Compared 6% of the time

More VisualCron Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Managed File Transfer (MFT)

November 2024

Download Aspera Managed File Transfer product report

Buyer's Guide

Control-M

December 2024

Download Control-M product report

Buyer's Guide

VisualCron

November 2024

Download VisualCron product report

Also Known As

No data available

Control M

No data available

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IBM

BMC

NetCart AB

Overview

IBM Aspera takes a different approach to tackling the challenges of big data movement over global WANs. Rather than optimize or accelerate data transfer, Aspera eliminates underlying bottlenecks by using its proprietary fasp technology that fully utilizes available network bandwidth to maximize speed and quickly scale up with no theoretical limit. Using fasp, transfers are secure end-to-end and are largely unaffected by file size, transfer distance, or network conditions, making transfer times up to 100Xs faster than TCP-based protocols.

IBM Aspera offers SaaS, on-prem, and hybrid solutions to meet the needs of modernizing infrastructures. All solutions offer robust security and compliance, intuitive file sharing, workflow automation, central administration, and real-time visibility. Quickly and easily initiate transfers across hybrid infrastructures, including support for cloud-to-cloud transfers. IBM Aspera offers unmatched transfer speeds, end-to-end security, reliability, and exceptional bandwidth control.

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.

VisualCron automates tasks like file encryption, scheduling SQL jobs, system integration, data workflow management, and application triggering, making it ideal for handling nightly syncs, FTP server file replacements, job scheduling, and invoice processing.

VisualCron provides an efficient automation solution with features like error and status reporting, API connections, PGP key generation, encryption file creation, and bulk SQL script execution. It simplifies task automation through its mail and event triggers, job variables, conditional execution, and logging with error alerts. Users benefit from its integration capabilities, scheduling flexibility, visual interface, and support for databases and credential management without extensive coding.

What are the most important features?

Simplicity: Easy-to-use interface for seamless automation.
Mail and Event Triggers: Automate tasks based on specific events.
Job Variables: Customize tasks using various input variables.
Conditional Execution: Execute tasks based on predefined conditions.
Error Alerts: Logging and error reporting to ensure task reliability.
Integration Capabilities: Easily connect and integrate with systems and APIs.
Scheduling Flexibility: Create complex schedules with ease.
Visual Interface: User-friendly GUI for efficient management.
Database Support: Manage and automate database tasks efficiently.
Credential Management: Securely handle credentials for various tasks.
PowerShell Commands: Execute PowerShell commands directly.

What are the benefits or ROI users should look for in the reviews?

Efficiency: Streamline and automate repetitive tasks to save time.
Cost Savings: Reduce manual labor and associated costs.
Reliability: Ensure consistency and accuracy in task execution.
Integration: Enhance workflows by integrating with different systems.
Flexibility: Adjust quickly to changes and handle complex scheduling needs.
Support: Benefit from extensive post-sales support and configuration options.
Innovation: Foster innovation by eliminating the need for coding.

Industries like finance, healthcare, and logistics implement VisualCron to automate data workflows, secure file transfers, and schedule critical tasks. It is used to streamline invoice processing, manage large-scale data operations, and ensure compliance through encryption and error reporting. VisualCron enhances operational efficiency, scalability, and security in various sectors, making it essential for businesses requiring robust automation capabilities.

Sample Customers

Gwinnett County Public Schools, Evonik, Voith, BITMARCK, Oracle

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

7 Eleven, ABB Sécheron SA, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Amazon Europe Core, Apple, Assa Abloy, Aston Martin, Banco Santander, BMW (Australia)

Buyer's Guide

Control-M vs. VisualCron

December 2024

Free Report: Control-M vs. VisualCron

Find out what your peers are saying about Control-M vs. VisualCron and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

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