Control-M Reviews

Control-M has a huge number of features and utilities that assist users in monitoring their schedules and developers to build schedules which interface with many technologies. Here are some that stand out:

• Cross-platform support: A Linux job can be dependent on a Windows job, which can be dependent on many other flavours of hardware/software. Your batch is therefore managed by a single tool, allowing you to monitor your entire flow.
• Great GUI: Easy to navigate. Customisable. Status at a glance.
• Automated error handling: Depending on the exit status of a process, automated actions can be defined that might circumvent the need to callout.
• Forecast utility: Particularly useful after making changes to a batch flow, to see what impact those changes will have.
• Reporting utility: Generate reports for the business to track batch performance, usage, and so on.
• Mobile App: Business users can track the progress of their own batch flow, on the go.
• Control Modules: These allow you to define jobs that interface with databases, SFTP, SAP, and so on, directly, via secure connection profiles.
• Too many great features to list; excellent product..

Increased batch performance.

Reporting in Control-M could use improvement.

Used Control-M for 10 years and version 9 for six months.

Not that I'm aware of.

Not that I'm aware of.

None.

BMC service was excellent.

Excellent.

Excellent product.

The GUI is very user friendly and also plugins (Control Modules) are available for almost all of the widely used applications.

It helped to automates batches in the best possible way.

They could improve the reporting.

I have been using it for 10 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is very good.

I previously used another solution, but switched due to its limited functionality.

Initial setup was easy to understand.

Before choosing this product, we also evaluated Autosys.

The tool has many features; make sure you make use of most of them.

Linking of jobs (visual, which other products don't have): It will give you a whole picture as to how other jobs are linked to each other (or if there's no link to other jobs).

The product was already in use when I was started working in the company.

There was an upgrade to the project, before it was moved to BMC. It could have been better if there was a demo on how / on the changes.

I used it for around six months. I was using it around the middle of 2015.

There were no stability issues as such. There were only issues in the appearance, after the upgrade.

I did not experience any scalability issues.

I didn't really call for help on the production with the technical support.

I've used other products but BMC Control-M is far better than the others.

Other teams are in charge of the installation process.

Nothing to worry, as the product works well.

It is a good product compared to the other products in the market.

• 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 most valuable features are the: 

• GUI console
• Stability
• Workflow

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

I have been using Control-M for ten years. 

Their technical support is awesome. They're helpful when you're in a complicated situation. 

I would recommend it. Control-M is the complete package to manage a work environment. 

I would rate Control-M an eight out of ten. 

We implemented Control-M to replace our mainframe only scheduler and the other disparate group of schedulers that we had used in lieu of a cross platform solution. That was nearly five years ago, and it has had a huge impact on the speed in which we can implement new solutions. 

Cross platform scheduling has transformed how we run our estate workload. It is just so much more efficient now as we can tie together all the workloads across the estate and make the whole process reactive to events. 

• Cross platform scheduling
• Built-in file transfer
• Batch impact management
• Self-service 

They are all such valuable tools. Though, the ability to dynamically predict batch run time is so valuable. 

It is a very strong product, but the reporting could be better. I know BMC is working on this feature and hope to see some improvements in future releases.

Integration with different modules such as:
Web Service -WS
Advanced File Transfer - AFT

We use the Control-M modules to reduce the development time of the automations, using the modules.

Web Service -WS (We use to integrate with ODI e SOA)

Advansed File Transfer - AFT (We did an integration between several servers with a safe delivery)

I would like to see improvement in the integration of modules. As I worked with the modules, I saw the need for better integration several times.

In the case of a Web Service (WS) module, it could have more facilities with the integration of SOA services when an asynchronous service is invoked. When used for this purpose, it generates a number of unnecessary alerts to the operator dashboard.

We have been using this solution for five years.

I did not find it.

Most stability problems are network connected, i.e., communication goes down with servers where you have a client.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

Very good.

Technical support is very good.

I thought of using a different solution, but this solution is as simple as other alternatives.

Yes, I did. We change because of the integration facilities other market tools and to ensure a safe delivery of the company's files.

It was done through a vendor team with the support of the internal team.

Confidential.

This is quite specific. It will depend on the number of processes that you need to automate.

Yes we evaluated.

CA Workload Automation AE(AutoSys)

IBM Tivoli System Automation

Improve the disclosure of the modules for the clients and show the cases of success.

Main use: Control of batch processing for many subprocesses on the servers in our datacenters for many of our customers.

Speeds up processes and automated tasks. BMC has taken the control of batch processing very far.

Unlike the batch controls of other solutions, BMC includes a graphical user interface (GUI). It is comprehensive and a little daunting, but there are many options you can pick.

Consider adding a mobile application for remote management or expand the integration with My IT.