Control-M Reviews

I think the administration part is much more valuable than any other feature. I don’t really remember the commands though, but working on the server is better than the GUI.

The project that I am working on is a banking project and a valuable customer to my organization; we get high revenue from it, hence the environment is very critical.

BMC keeps on improving this solution; there are many levels of improvement, customers can actually try the free trial version and provide feedback accordingly.

I have been using Control-M for the past four and a half years.

The product is stable, but in our environment, due to the huge amount of data, the product is a little slow.

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.

The technical support is good, I would rate it a three out of five.

Previously, I have used network and server monitoring for one and a half years; it was migrating to a different tool so I switched.

The setup was straightforward, i.e, in terms of CA NSM.

It’s a good, easy to use, and automated product. It is already used in every organization.

• User friendly interface
• Self-service portal
• Support for AS400 and mainframes
• many more.

Not all central scheduler tools have agents for iSeries, z/OS and UNISYS 2000. These are valuable features because I don't have to use many tools and I have one central tool for all platforms.

Reduces cost, failure, and human error.

I would like to see a decrease is the licensing price.

We have been using this for eight years. (Versions 6.4, 7, and 8.)

I did not encounter any issues with stability.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability

Technical support has a very weak first line of support, but a very good developer team in Israel.

I didn’t use a previous solution, but I saw and compared it with OpsWise, TWS and AutoSys.

It's like comparing iPhones (Control-M) with other phones (OpsWise, TWS and AutoSys).

Control-M has the best and most user friendly interface. It's very easy to use when you are just beginning your journey with central schedulers.

There are many features like modules for VMware, Hadoop, BladeLogic, databases, PeopleSoft, SAP and many more.

The installation was quite simple. There was very good documentation.

The licensing is quite expensive.

We evaluated OpsWise, TWS, and AutoSys.

Make sure you plan well when you begin automating jobs in Control-M.

• AFT
• Job scheduling with various platforms
• Blending options for module compatibility

Although I work with various modules for Control-M, i.e., SAP, Informatica, DB, OS, and Windows. We can't do AFT with either Windows scheduler nor with Linux cron jobs. Control-M is the center for all of the applications, where it acts as the mediator between the application and the servers. Not only is it secure, but there are various major applications we can work on.

All tasks related to Windows scheduler and Unix (linux) cron jobs are converted with BMC Control-M scheduling.

Version compatibility is one of the very few areas with room for improvement, but it is a big issue with minimum support. When we need to upgrade the product, we have to follow the exact Control-M prerequisites.

For plenty of applications, there are limits. Control-M uses options for configuring items such as the remote host for servers in the DMZ.

I have used it for 4+ years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Currently technical support is awesome, 100%.

I did not previously use a different solution, such as Autosys and IBM Tivoli.

Initial setup is easy to understand for any end user who does not have any prior knowledge of the product.

Pricing and licensing depends on the infrastructure and the jobs they can purchase.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

It is an awesome product in the automation area, very robust and user friendly.

• No product downtime
• Easy to administrate and use
• A lot of integration tools and control modules

We use the BPI (Java and web services) DB integrator, AFT file transfer, CM for Informatica Control-M modules that easily integrated the non-basic batch jobs with the regular batch jobs. There was no need to script file transfer or SQL query jobs; all of that comes straight from the BMC Control-M box.

The knowledge of the jobs has become transparent and business users can monitor and manage their own jobs through the self-service portal.

The reporting overall should be better; right now, external report tools have to be used. Reporting should be end-user modifiable; and there should not be a need for a separate reporting client. There should be more reporting options, for example, scheduling of the table/jobs, with nice charts.

Crystal Reports based reporting tool, need to be installed in the same box where the EM client resides. Also there has to be control-M agent in the same server to be able to run the reports in batch mode. The better solution would be to run BMC in the house developed reporting and get the date from EM database in the server level (no need to windows Server, unix/Linux is better).

In the current reporting tool, there are predefined templates which are working ok but defining own it’s not easy or impossible. You can get the data out but it’s not usable to export to excel format without heavy modifications in the excel or qlickview for example.

I have used it for about two years.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

Technical support is the best among the biggest software delivery houses.

Setup was very simple.

It is expensive; the smallest IT service providers can’t implement it.

We evaluated IBM TWS and UC4 before choosing this product.

Plan the hardware setup carefully, favoring *nix OS systems in the CTM-Server engine. Try to follow “best practice” instructions about the database considerations and software setups.

The GUI for operators.

Scheduling has changed from basic to more complex as our developers get acquainted with the ability and flexibility of the product.

Report builder is cumbersome. Not all interfaces work out-of-the-box and there are a lot of adjustments to the product and configurations after installation.

We have used this solution for three years.

Connectivity to agents is a constant challenge due to security and Firewalls.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

Customer support is good. The support site, searching, and accessing knowledge modules, and accessing product downloads is very slow.

Technical support is excellent.

We were a manual shop, where operators ran selected routines through menus.

We had do perform several install configurations until we finally achieved the stability we required.

We work with a vendor group and they were very good. The BMC support contributions for design were flawed and we had to make several adjustments.

I am not sure.

There are various methods available for licensing, and we use the task/day load process.

We evaluated Compugen, CA, and Cisco.

• AFT
• SAP
• DB

We use AFT, DB and other modules extensively. They have reduced a lot of human error and achieved our SLAs.

In each module, one or more improvements need to be made. However, that is out of scope for this review. In a sense, if anything cannot be done in batch mode, it requires online processing with middleware.

I have used it for nine years.

I have not encountered any stability issues. Control-M is a bulletproof product and very stable.

I have not encountered any scalability issues. It is a very scalable product.

Technical support is 8/10. However, a lot of techies use the online forum. If you are knowledgeable, you can solve issues yourself; otherwise it’ll go to level 3 support, which makes tech support a middleman.

I did not previously use a different solution.

I have seen initial setups that are both straightforward and complex.

Licensing is little complex.

I have used Control-M for batch recovery and job processing providing automation solutions for in-house IT teams and dependent businesses.

The flexibility to schedule the jobs on various OS level platforms. It works on agent-level architecture, hence the usability is enhanced. 

Control-M has been there on back of all automated work lists by providing consistency, timely execution, and removing chances of human errors. 

Currently, I am not using this tool due to change of my role duties. Hence, it is difficult for me to comment over this. Though the tool is very resource intensive and has a few levels of performance issues when compared with VM and physical servers. 

No.

No.

Technical support was not required much as we had total in-house solution consultants. Though, in times of need, BMC had their regular support SLAs to support us. 

Yes, considering our then and there needs setup was bit complex and time consuming. As it was quite obvious due to the huge organizational size.  

It was an all in-house IT setup.

This product has an excellent GUI that is user friendly and provides job management.

The BMC Control-M provides automated management by our various applications teams of PROD environments under one central GUI.

This product needs improvisation in regards to agility for job execution function.

I have used it for about 12 years.

Need to align with DevOps.

I have not encountered any issues with stability.

I have not encountered any issues with scalability.

4/10

BMC provides good technical support and I would give it an 8 out of 10 rating.

The installation for this product was not so easy. I found it quite complicated.

Implement through vendor team as special skills.

My suggestion would be to select more job-based pricing options as the BMC Control-M solution has less jobs to offer.

Before choosing this product, I evaluated a lot of options.

I would recommend to make use of outsourced software solutions such as Atgen for ensuring a stable setup process.