Control-M Reviews

The main use is for job scheduling. We are using Control-M to manage and schedule various jobs within our organization.

We are more comfortable with Control-M since we have people who know this tool well. It integrates seamlessly with other tools within our ecosystem.

The best aspects of the solution are the ecosystem and integration part. This makes Control-M particularly valuable for us.

Control-M could benefit from incorporating AI features for better job scheduling. For example, if a job fails, the system could automatically manage related failures and take remedial actions without manual intervention. This would make it more advanced.

I have been using Control-M in my current organization for the last six months.

We did not face any stability issues with Control-M. It has been very stable for our needs.

Scalability is very subjective to use cases. For our minimalistic use cases, Control-M is quite scalable. However, for larger use cases, such as those in banking where there are thousands of jobs, scaling might be different.

Customer support from BMC is good but not excellent. We always expect more from support, so I would rate it between three to nine on a scale of one to ten.

Positive

Before Control-M, there might have been an IBM scheduling tool in use. I am unsure why the switch happened as I have only seen Control-M being used since I joined.

The initial setup was straightforward. It did not require much effort as we had knowledgeable people in the team.

One person is generally enough for the installation and configuration parts. It typically takes around one day to complete the installation.

We found Control-M to be one of the best solutions available. I would recommend incorporating AI features for future improvements.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use this solution to automate batch processing, create automated workflows to support various applications, and integrate various endpoints in the workflow to support business processes.

File transfer between our company and partner is critical for us. MFT has provided this solution and we are now using MFT for internal and external file transfers.

With version 9.0.18, which included new features, it has increased the usage of Control-M.

Introduction of Control-M-managed file transfer has increased usage in our organization. BIM is a good tool to monitor SLAs, and being a financial organization, this is a very good feature for us.

The most valuable feature is the Autoedit variable resolution in planning. This feature allows developers to better understand the schedule, and allow them to correct any potential issues in advance.

The MFT dashboard is also a useful tool to track all file transfers. It provides detailed information about both source and destination.

Control-M MFT and Control-M API both need improvement.

The Control-M MFT has to support checksums for FTP transfer between our own Control-M agents.

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.

BIM needs further improvement to include any dynamic-type jobs with the workflow.

The support and bug fix timeline need improvement.

Technical support for this solution needs to be improved.

We did not use another solution prior to this one.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution.

Our primary use cases for Control-M are scheduling, jobs, monitoring, and acting on job scheduling.

We value Control-M mainly for the ability to control multiple nodes in a coordinated manner. Control-M has the ability to really coordinate across a lot of nodes. That's the most valuable thing. 

Control-M is a mature tool with many features. It's pretty stable and very easy to learn. You can become an expert in it within a short time.

We would recommend modernizing the look and feel of Control-M. They also need to move towards more self-service and development in their environment. It's very antiquated. Opening up to more open source tools and switching the connectivity to additional tools would also be improvements. 

Most of the tools that are available with Control-M are antiquated. The self-service is currently not as function-rich as competitors. Control-M is not the best.

It is stable.

Control-M is very scalable.

Comtrol-M technical support is done through a local agent. We are in Israel, so the agent in Israel is the one giving it. It's adequate, not perfect. It's okay.

Previously we used some collection of ad hoc tools. It was a consolidated solution, i.e. a single solution that was used across the board.

The setup of Control-M is okay. It was done before my time by the vendor or a vendor agent. A third party authorized by the company itself helped with our implementation.

This is the first time for us implementing the solutions using Control-M.

We use Control-M with two administrators on average, sometimes three. With self-service, it's about 15 people who use the self-service option of it for end users, if not more.

I would like to suggest that Control-M implement a more modern way of using new tools. They should look at what they implement to determine if it is a legacy type or a batch type, then it would work better.

If they intend on moving to more modernized tools, then this approach might not be best for them. Control-M is really good for legacy, corporate enterprise but less optimal for modern, open source environments.

Overall, the main great improvements needed in Control-M is for better self-service. Give it more functionality for this self-service. The tool itself needs better out of the box connectivity to additional standard market tools.

I would rate Control-M at a seven or eight out of ten because it fits legacy stuff but once you're stepping into modern environments then you find yourself struggling. Control-M is a workhorse, but it's not 100% perfect.

Our primary use case of this solution is to keep track of our help desk tickets.

The solution helps us to make sure that help desk tickets don't go unnoticed.

I find it very helpful to be able to keep track of all our help desk tickets.

We don't use the program that much, so it is stable enough for us.

I don't think the solution is very scalable. The version we're currently using is discontinued and I haven't upgraded yet. We don't plan to upgrade soon, because we're working on our other back-office software that's more for our business.

The technical support is okay, because it's an end of life product.

The biggest reason for upgrading what we currently have, is the workforce becoming more mobile and we need to give users easier access to submit help desk tickets. That is why we are looking for a solution that can offer this feature.

We used a consultant for the deployment and the initial setup was pretty straightforward and easy.

We haven't seen a ROI yet.

Licensing costs are around $3000 a year. 

My rating for this solution is five out of ten. It's not bad, but it's not good either. There's a lot of room for improvement and I think it can be more user-friendly. In the next version I would like to see something with integrated mobile device management so that I can keep track of software and devices, having it all in one software for our help desk. I think it would be very useful.

We use it to handle most of our batch processing and all of the transactions that we do on a daily basis. It's a large financial institution which handles quite a bit of processing on an individual basis, and we both mainframe and distribute it.

We are receiving files from another system, then we use the File Watch Utility (because we have no view into the other system and how it works). However, when files arrive on certain servers, we're able to pick them up and trigger further downstream processes from them.

Control-M has improved application reliability and the SLAs in our company by quite a bit. You can see if problems are coming. If we have an SLA in a couple of hours, we know well before that couple hours if processing is behind, and it allows us to take some preventative action.

• The ability to go from one system to another.
• To be able to trigger something off of it, yet we are still on a mainframe for our batch processing. 
• To be able to trigger something from the batch, then distribute that back and forth.
• The solution has always been very streamlined. 
• Ease of use
• The BMC customer service behind the tool has been most valuable.

They have Workload Change Manager, and I would like to see a little more of that. Being in the business that we're in, there's a lot of hesitance. We are very hesitant to change things in the banking industry. It isn't bleeding edge by any means. Getting people to buy into things is sort of the hard part, because everybody wants their money to be handled properly.

The solution is very stable. We have our mainframe as well, which has not been bad at processing, and it's pretty stable. With the application of Control-M, we've seen minimal downtime. If there has been downtime, it hasn't been with the application. It has been with the hardware, and you can't get around that part of it.

It is a good application for scaling. We're able to scale pretty fast, whether we're building a small or large set of jobs. When we have new servers being built, agents are already put on them, and we can work pretty quickly without having to step back to handle it.

The technical support is extremely helpful. You can provide just a basic description of your case. If they need to, they can log onto your system. They can shoot you into the right direction, whether it's a knowledge article, community forums, etc. Overall, it is great technical support. Though, it has been a while since I've had a technical call with them.

Sometimes, with technical support, they will take feedback, but you don't know where that feedback goes or if it proceeds along in the thought process.

They did previously use CA-7 for the mainframe. They switched for the ability to use both distributed and mainframe from one central point.

We did recently migrated to version 9.0. Our organization did use a reseller. Our national IT group manages the application. We are just the user of it, so I wasn't involved in any of that.

It has absolutely saved us time. It has made us more efficient. As far as the processing between systems, we don't have as many people. They have been able to focus on other efforts, because we have been able to automate more stuff with Control-M.

Do the trial demo. Reach out to others via the BMC community forums. I don't believe a license is required. It's just a sign on. There are multiple vendors who are resellers or BMC partners who will provide you with input. All you have to do is ask. Feel free to ask others. The people who I have dealt with have always been forthcoming with information. They will tell you what they see as a plus or minus.

It has helped us streamline some things in IT operations, which is probably a slight improvement. We haven't seen any negative impacts.

I've used it in different forms and versions for about 20 years now. I'm pretty familiar with it from an operations standpoint. The tool itself is a ten, and the customer service behind it has made that even more so.

It's worked pretty well. I haven't been able to take a lot of advantage of some of the new features, so I haven't been able to expand on those. For what we do now, it chugs along pretty well.

Product is intuitive, you can start working with it and figure out the basics pretty quickly. The built in modules (examples: File Transfer, Database, File Watcher etc.) help eliminate custom built scripts which accomplish the same thing.

One big example I can think of is the availability of the Self Service plug-in. The non scheduling IT users or business users will actually be able to have insight into their automated job flows which is a feature that we never had before.

Quicker adoption of the newest versions of the product by all would help work out the bugs sooner.

4 and a half years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

Mostly on our end, as we grow learning how to properly increase resources of the distributed servers and spread out the workload.

I've been happy not only with the customer service overall but also the speed with which I am contacted after submitting a case.

The level of technical support for Control-M continues to meet my needs.

CA Workload Scheduler, archaic, not intuitive, lack of features.

In house.

Price is based on how many jobs come into the scheduler each day (not executions) across all your different environments.

This evaluation was done a year or two before I started working with the product.

• The ability to view a history of jobs\tasks that have run: This makes troubleshooting a breeze.
• The ability to proactively forecast the runtime of a workflow: Managing SLA expectations and proactively generate alerts when the SLA won’t be met.
• Having a flow diagram of all workflows and the relationship between jobs\tasks: This is a visual representation of the entire workflow estate, which is updated in real time.
• Control modules: These are add-ons that further integrate Control-M with other third-party products, eliminating the need to write any custom code. E.g., Control-M For File Transfers makes it effortless to SFTP files externally or within the organization.
• Mass update: This feature allows for multiple fields of job definitions to be updated based on certain search criteria, with a very user-friendly interface.

It has given the organization visibility into how various applications relate to and depend on one another. It has reduced scripting and coding time down to almost zero with the out-of-the-box plugins.

There are many areas that have room for improvement in V7:

• Specific to Control-M for Files Transfer: Have a broader list or custom pre & post commands when running a file transfer.
• Customizable HTML shout emails, for a better user experience.
• Out-of-the-box New Day Process per table\application (This can be done with a custom user daily but requires a job to run at the specified “New Day Time”).
• Include some sort of label object (similar to a job, but only performs shouts and doesn’t have a cost), so you can categorize work flows.

Control-M V9 improves on most, if not all, of the pain points in V7.

In my professional career, I’ve been using Control-M for 12 years.

No issues experienced with stability at all.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. The way the product is tiered makes it easily scalable.

I find the level of technical support (Blue Turtle Technologies) to be exceptional. Whether it is a small query or a large problem, you will always get a timeous response and often one of the support staff members will be present on-site.

Control-M was here when I started at this organization, so I’m not sure if a different solution was previously used.

The initial setup was fairly simple. Once all the servers and DBs were set up, the installation of Control-M Enterprise Manager, Control-M Servers and Control-M Agents was painless.

Task-based licensing (number of active jobs) can get very expensive. Bundle multiple functions within a batch\script file.

I’ve tried and POCed many other workload automation\batch scheduling tools out there; none of them come close to functionality and ease-of-use as Control-M.

Decide on bulletproof naming standards\site standards. This will make implementation and promotion of workflows incredibly easy.

Our primary use case for Control-M is to order the jobs we have, like database entries and processes that need to be run in Unix or any other environment. With Control-M, we can run a set of flows at a specific time, like maybe on the fourth of every month or every second Sunday of the month.

The Control-M feature I find the most valuable is the ability to configure a lot compared to a contract. 

An issue we have run into in our lower environments is that Control-M can log you out frequently. This happens when you have a lot of applications running. Maybe it's just a configuration issue, but this is a pain point that would be good to look into. 

I have been using Control-M for a couple of years now. 

Control-M is a stable and reliable solution. 

I have not seen any issues with Control-M in our production environment. However, in the lower environment, we can see frequent log-outs. That could be an issue with how much they have allocated. 

In our organization, the development team uses it, as does the bank team. They monitor it. If a job fails, for example, Control-M sends out a notification and the team can take a look at what happened in the logs. They can do it on the fly instead of dealing with the issue later on. 

As soon as you have an issue, a ticket is created and the tech support is quite responsive. 

I did not set up Control-M in my organization, but the setup is straightforward. You just log in with your credentials and everything is already setup for you. You can access things in line with whatever authorization you have. 

I would recommend this solution because of the ease of use. To work with it, you do need to understand it and know how to configure it. But, once you do, you can take advantage of many features that are helpful.