Control-M Reviews

My main use case for Control-M is working as an administrator and scheduler, setting up AFT jobs with respect to their AFT and OS jobs. Apart from that, I also work on connection profiles and their respective connection setup between two servers, troubleshooting Control-M agents and their respective configurations.

For example, if I want to schedule a specific job for a specific day, Control-M is very useful, allowing me to schedule or set up a job with respect to either a monthly, weekly, or daily basis while considering specific holidays configured on that particular calendar. In addition, if I want to run some script, I can use OS jobs to run a specific script on that server. I can also transfer files between two servers using Managed File Transfer or AFT, transferring files by setting up their configuration on both ends. These are the major tasks I typically work with.

I use these scheduling and file transfer features daily as part of my workflow. I mostly set up jobs in production and non-prod environments, organizing the respective job setups in different categories. For AFT jobs, I typically transfer files from an S3 bucket to a Windows Server or a Unix server to a Windows Server or Unix to S3 bucket, using various platforms such as server to server, server to shared drive, or shared drive to server. In AFT file transfer, I set up connection profiles between two servers for host one and host two, ensuring both hosts communicate properly using Control-M Configuration Manager, also known as CCM. Once the connection is set up, I configure the job using the same Control-M connection profile. I provide details such as source and destination path using that configuration for proper communication.

Managing a Control-M agent is one key part; in case Control-M agent fails, I troubleshoot it using basic troubleshooting skills, such as selecting the troubleshooting option on the agent to reflect the initial level of error. Additionally, I check the library and error log for a specific agent. I also review the new day process (NDP) to ensure that all jobs load daily to avoid production failures. Calendar setup can also be beneficial for any job scheduling. I work on creating new Control-M jobs that operate under the planning and are created concerning the workspace. Furthermore, I track jobs that flashback from the regular cycle. If there are issues with different Control-M servers across my environments in the UK, US, and Asia Pacific, I troubleshoot any server outages or failures.

Regarding measurable improvements since using Control-M, when jobs fail due to specific errors, I am notified promptly, which is essential for handling issues in the production environment. Instead of manually checking all failed jobs, I configure notifications based on priority, enhancing my time-saving efforts across job management.

The biggest lesson learned from using Control-M is understanding how jobs get scheduled within minutes and can function independently without intervention. I have gained insights into configuring job properties such as command jobs, file transfers, file watchers, SAP jobs, and more. My extensive experience of over nine years with Control-M offers me great opportunities, and I look forward to improvements, particularly in AI features relevant to Control-M.

In my experience, the best feature Control-M offers is the File Transfer capability, especially useful for larger sizes. I am currently working on a project transferring files larger than 6 GB, which is easy to accomplish. Additionally, the File Watcher job type is valuable as it checks for files in a specific path and triggers actions based on file availability.

For the File Watcher feature, it helps me keep an eye on specific files, triggering transfers as soon as they become available. When setting up a File Watcher job, I ensure specific configurations, such as file availability time and run cycles. The job detects file availability on the platform; once the file is available, the File Watcher job triggers, triggering its successor job. This eliminates the need for constant monitoring of file availability, allowing me to focus on other tasks. Additionally, AFT file transfer for larger volumes is smooth and efficient; other tools take a lot longer for significant file transfers. Control-M lets me track the percentage completed during file transfers as well, enhancing my monitoring. CCM allows me to track all Control-M components effectively, including agents, servers, and add-ons.

Control-M is exceptionally useful for building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows. It allows me to set up jobs promptly and test them collaboratively with input from my operations and development teams without delays. Control-M enables my IT personnel to refocus on critical operations once jobs are set up for recurrent activities such as monthly or daily runs. For example, one of my teammates established a payroll job that now runs automatically, reducing manual effort and allowing for more focus on different project requirements.

For improvements, there is some slowness in terms of logging, as Control-M can be a heavy tool that could benefit from reducing file size. Overall, the tool is great, but it would be helpful if it were lighter and easier to use in my daily operations. In my non-prod environment, I notice significant lag, making it difficult to work effectively. Enhancing the tool's speed and perhaps integrating AI-related features could significantly benefit daily activities.

I choose nine because once the tool is available in a lighter version, it would be even more useful. The features are excellent, but the heaviness of the tool makes it take longer to open and close, causing frequent hangs during multiple activities. For instance, switching from monitoring to history can cause significant delays. This impacts productivity, especially in a production setting where speed is crucial.

I have been using Control-M for around eight to nine years.

Control-M is indeed stable.

Regarding scalability, Control-M scales well, allowing me to operate in four different environments across four regions without concerns.

Customer support from BMC is excellent; whenever I create a case, they respond promptly, ensuring there are no issues. I would rate customer support a perfect ten.

Previously, my organization used tools such as OPC and Tivoli before switching to Control-M, as my organization recommended it. The GUI in Control-M is significantly more user-friendly for managing daily activities and job setups.

The deployment of Control-M servers takes about one to two hours on the AWS platform.

For deployment and maintenance, I find that two to three people suffice for maintaining a single server. However, if I need to manage multiple servers across different environments, more staff will be necessary. The requirement really depends on the configuration size and deployment needs.

Although Control-M is costly, it does yield a return on investment for larger organizations, but it is not suitable for small teams or individuals. The pricing is quite high, which can be a disadvantage for smaller groups, although the efficiency gains do save time and money overall.

Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, I am not heavily involved in those areas, as that falls under my network team. However, the pricing for Control-M seems high compared to other tools, and licensing can be complex, with annual renewals required. The cost has been substantial compared to similar tools I have encountered.

Before selecting Control-M, I evaluated other scheduling tools such as Tivoli and Mainframe job track but decided to stick with Control-M for my long-term needs.

For those considering using Control-M, I would advise it is an excellent choice for managing workflows and orchestrating jobs as per project demands. I have been using Control-M in various roles over the past 10 plus years, and I recommend it, provided you understand processes and setups. I give this review a rating of 9.

My main use case for Control-M involves numerous automation workflows. For example, if I want to provision any services in Azure or run a job, I use Control-M to orchestrate. For provisioning, I have multiple workflows which come into the picture starting from the request to the approval to the auto-provisioning, where Control-M helps me automate. The second part involves jobs, where a lot of batch jobs we run is where we use Control-M.

In addition to my use cases, the new thing which we are working on as of now is adding an agentic layer with our Control-M workflow. When there is an event or incident triggered, the workflow works along with an agent for triaging the request, and the workflow helps me create a proper governance and escalation path. The triaging agent, which is an AI agent that is part of Control-M, helps me identify the resolution path for the identified incident or issue. For example, if anything has happened on the server, it gives me the steps to help my support engineer resolve it faster and helps me reduce the MTTR, Mean Time to Resolve.

In my organization, Control-M is deployed in a hybrid cloud configuration, and in my current role, I also sell Control-M to customers where I have to monitor and manage their hybrid cloud and multi-cloud environments.

I manage integration and sequencing of data processing across diverse data platforms and cloud environments by using Control-M, a workflow orchestrator.

While we are currently not using Control-M for AI or ML workloads, we are in discussions about using it in the near future.

Regarding integrating Kubernetes or cloud-native workflows with traditional batch processing, I design solutions using Control-M to orchestrate across different environments and heterogeneous applications, and I propose and design this for multiple organizations or customers as well.

To address compliance requirements like SOX, audit trails, or regulatory reporting, we have very stringent audit and security requirements as a company with 230,000 employees, using Control-M vigorously across all phases.

Control-M allows all the necessary data for ISO to SOX compliance to be available. During audits, we turn to Control-M to gather all data, and the information is readily available and is easy to customize as per our needs.

Control-M has positively impacted my organization in several ways. I am a solution architect where I solution the operations transformation for any deals with customers who want multi-cloud and hybrid cloud operations management, using Control-M as the core engine for my end-to-end operations management, starting from incident management to operations to knowledge management to SLA management, reporting, and workflow management.

This solution has helped me secure a lot of new wins, and currently, I am managing many customers using Control-M. Monitoring, management, and IT operations and support is a core part of our business and a major revenue earner for us. All customer environments I manage better lead to many benefits in terms of positive responses from customers. We are proactively able to resolve issues, which makes my customers happy, and in this way, I add much more revenue to my business.

My SLA has reduced, and my Mean Time to Resolve has reduced, allowing me to aggressively support customers by committing to a shorter resolution time for P1 incidents. I'm able to take one to two hours to resolve incidents based on the requirement, and the beautiful features that enable me to commit to smaller SLAs to my customers are possible because of Control-M.

The best features Control-M offers, which stand out for me, include the workflow, the orchestrator, and the inbuilt automation, plus the ability to schedule tasks. Some processes which run based on events and triggers are core features, and I can schedule it, orchestrate it, and integrate it with any of the workflows, whether it's SAP workload, cloud infrastructure, or processes running on a messaging queue or service bus.

If I want to do anything on the workflow, such as verification and validation, which is one of my cases for my banking customer where there was a fraud detection use case added, the workflow was able to initiate a process that checks on the validity of the content and the document before processing the loans. The new features which are adding a lot of agent-based, AI-based capabilities are really exciting.

Regarding Control-M's AI capabilities, the most important aspect is governance. We discuss governance with almost all customers, and this is where BMC stands out. Governance and reporting are crucial, and we have seen detailed audits and logs generated by Control-M, which allow me to assure my customers that all incidents, records, logs, and resolutions are thoroughly documented in a knowledge repository. This enhances security, helps secure access, and provides the audits and everything necessary for customers' requests.

Regarding features, one thing I have requested the team is that there is huge data lying with BMC based on learning from their past experiences on different platforms, such as data centers, cloud, SAP, application support or workflow management.

BMC has billions of records on incidents that have happened and the resolution paths taken. I have requested them to create an ML model, train it using this data, create a dummy part, and create a trained engine which will come as a default attachment or addition to the current BMC offering. For monitoring and managing an environment, I should get a lot of intelligence generated from BMC's own capability because there is a lot of data inside which BMC has.

BMC has been a leader for a long time, so they have immense learning that should come in a model and should prompt my engineer to help him resolve issues faster to improve the SLA, which is the core of my business as I have a stringent SLA signed with my customer. BMC can play a very big role by adding that intelligence layer, agent-based or model-based intelligence that runs continuously to proactively help my engineer and my support staff resolve issues faster.

Regarding improvements for Control-M, I want to request BMC to consider a lighter version, especially when some customers have cost constraints. I understand the SaaS model exists, but a lighter version with simplified features for small and medium enterprises would help penetrate a huge market base, especially with small infrastructure setups of 100 VMs or 200 VMs.

With respect to Control-M's AI capabilities, I have utilized some features in our demo environment, not all, and I am still exploring it. I see it as promising and recognize improvements in place based on the feedback I provided. There are a lot of new features we need to add, including new agents that need to be default features in Control-M.

I have been using Control-M for proposing it to a lot of my customers, and we have our own environment where we use Control-M for more than two or two and a half years. We have been using it consistently.

Control-M is quite stable, and my engineers are satisfied with using it.

I am very satisfied with Control-M's scalability. Our Azure environment is growing every month, and Control-M has been able to scale accordingly without any issues, automatically recognizing and monitoring any new VMs we provision.

Customer support is satisfactory.

Previously, we had a relationship with ServiceNow, utilizing their ITOM operations suite. However, based on the lucrative offer we received from BMC, we decided to switch to Control-M.

I have certainly seen a return on investment from using Control-M. It saves a lot of money in terms of effort, time to resolve incidents, triaging, workflow, and approvals. Within one and a half years, I have seen an ROI concerning the cost incurred to set up and start managing complex multi-cloud and hybrid environments, and that is why we have had significant success in selling BMC to our customers.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing includes providing feedback that I need a lighter version with more attractive pricing and setup. There's professional support we leverage a lot, and I look forward to automating and reducing costs going ahead because I have requested Control-M to create a standard SOP and a no-code, low-code integration model, which will expedite my processes and help reduce my costs.

We evaluated ServiceNow and ManageEngine among others before selecting Control-M.

The reason I choose nine out of ten for Control-M is that it stands out in terms of flexibility and support I receive from BMC when proposing it to any customer, along with the professional support during implementation, which I find to be the most beautiful part of it. The only point missing from a perfect 10 is on the cost front, where I would like BMC to help me reduce it further for medium to large customers with a VM base of 300 to 500. A lighter SaaS version would assist me a lot.

We have a strong partnership with Control-M. Our company and Control-M have been partners for years. We procure it directly from Control-M or BMC rather than through any other channel.

The advice I would give to others looking into using Control-M is that the beautiful part of Control-M is the orchestrator, the automation engine, and the ability to manage AI and other workloads as well.

Control-M is primarily used for process automation in our organization.

We have not utilized the policy, approval, or risk-gating capabilities within our automated workflows, and these features do not influence how our business operates.

Control-M does not contribute to our governance requirements, such as workflow audit trails or lineage tracking.

We have SAP working with Control-M, including SAP S/4HANA and BW.

We currently do not utilize specific functionalities within Control-M for compliance trail generation or regulatory reporting.

Integrating Control-M with our ITSM or change management tools like ServiceNow is in the pipeline but has not yet been completed.

Control-M definitely supports our DataOps and DevOps initiatives.

Control-M helps free up our IT staff to focus on essential operations, which is definitely the end goal eventually.

Control-M has freed up approximately 30 to 40% of our time.

Control-M definitely helps consolidate our job scheduler tools.

In my opinion, the best features in Control-M are the options it provides.

The workflow is the most valuable aspect.

With Control-M, I think it is mostly possible to integrate AI or machine learning workloads in the cloud version, the SaaS model. Currently, we have not utilized this capability in the on-premises version.

I think the integration with SAP is seamless and comfortable to use.

Overall, Control-M integrates seamlessly with our DataOps and DevOps stack, with no challenges.

I think Control-M is fine as it is and is one of the best tools from my perspective so far, and I do not have any specific suggestions for improvement.

We have struggled a bit using Control-M's Python client or APIs in terms of getting integrations completed with some systems, and that is where support could have been a bit better. We do tend to get that support eventually, but sometimes we have to wait for US hours to open up.

I have been working with Control-M for approximately three years.

I rate the stability of Control-M a perfect 10 out of 10.

Approximately 100 users use the solution.

I rate the scalability of Control-M a perfect 10 out of 10.

I think the technical support is mostly available in the US time zone, which is where we struggle a bit. If we had a contact for support in India or Asia, I think that would have been much better, and we feel it is an opportunity.

I rate the technical support an eight.

I have only used Control-M so far, so I cannot compare it with other solutions such as IBM, ActiveBatch, or Stonebranch.

The on-premises deployment for Control-M is easy.

It takes about a day in general, depending on how many systems you want to connect to, as our updates and other tasks are quite easy.

It is easy to maintain Control-M.

I do maintenance monthly.

Control-M has definitely saved us time, money, and resources by allowing a lot of automations that save the time and effort needed to do it manually, so there is definitely a lot of ROI on that.

We have seen approximately a 70% return on investment.

Regarding pricing, I rate it an eight for now, with one being cheap and ten being expensive.

I think a proof of concept is necessary for every tool that any organization wants to adopt. It is best to look at ROI or total cost of ownership, whether you want to go for an on-premises model or a SaaS model, and then make that rightful decision. I rate Control-M a 9 out of 10.

In my previous project, we were using Control-M, and we automated the data pipelines using SQL Server Agent jobs and created the Databricks workflow. We had some data available in SQL Server and some in Databricks, and because we had two systems, the orchestration process was completely different, and we were not able to manage or create a dependency because both tools were different. That is why we implemented Control-M in the past project and automated all the SQL Server jobs and the Databricks workflow using Control-M. By using a single platform, Control-M allowed us to create a dependency between the SQL Server and Databricks data. On the reporting side, we were using the Tableau dashboard as well, and for Tableau, we were using the extract to display the data. We were refreshing the Tableau extract using Control-M. In my last project, overall all the data pipelines including the Tableau extract refresh were done using Control-M.

We expanded a lot because previously we were using multiple tools for the same orchestration purpose, such as Databricks workflow and SQL Server Agent. Now, we are using the same product or a single tool for multiple tasks, which is very helpful for developers as well as business stakeholders.

I appreciate Control-M because of the dependency it offers. As I mentioned, we had some data available in SQL Server and some in Databricks, and it was hard to create a dependency when we were working on different tools. That is why we chose Control-M so that we could create a dependency, and we had some highly critical banking data in that project. The SLA was very minimum, and we had to get the dashboard refreshed every morning at 7:00 a.m. Due to the SLA features in Control-M, we chose it in the last project.

I find that Control-M provides a single UI platform where I can monitor all the jobs. Previously we had different jobs, so we had to monitor each job individually. With Control-M's single platform UI, we can monitor all jobs. The main benefit is that Control-M has a retry functionality, so if any job fails during execution or due to bad data quality, we can retry the job. Once we receive the data, the job can execute automatically. The alert mechanism also triggers emails to business stakeholders whenever any job fails. These are the main features I prefer about Control-M.

Previously, we set up alerts so that whenever there was a delay in the file, it automatically sent alerts to business stakeholders indicating the file's unavailability. Whenever there was a delay, it triggered an email to notify that we were expecting the file at a certain time. Additionally, we set up a file-based trigger. Since the time of file arrival is not consistent, we configured the job to execute automatically when the file arrives, ingesting the data into our final database. This file-based trigger was a key feature we explored.

I think the pricing is a factor, and it is high. I am currently working in a multinational company that has purchased the premium enterprise-level license for all developers, so it is not a big deal for our project. However, someone in a small company or startup might face pricing constraints while implementing Control-M, as the pricing seems a bit high compared to other tools such as Airflow.

One area for improvement in Control-M could be pricing, and another is the learning curve. I feel that when someone starts working with Control-M, they need at least one month to onboard and understand all the features. Although documentation is available, understanding all features takes time. Another recommendation would be for UI improvements, as I felt the UI seemed outdated.

I feel that it is a little bit difficult to integrate Control-M with technologies for DataOps and DevOps processes, especially initially, as I needed about one and a half months to understand the complete features and flexibility of this tool. From a developer standpoint, it is not very user-friendly. However, once I become skilled in this tool, it provides great flexibility.

I have been working with Control-M for six plus years.

I faced a performance issue once because we created a very large data pipeline with multiple dependencies in Control-M. So, we narrowed down one workflow into multiple sub-workflows, which improved performance. Processing a large amount of data can be complex and time-consuming.

I can raise a support ticket for BMC software whenever I have any technical issues, and they respond within a three-day SLA, providing full support.

I would rate the tech support of Control-M as 8.5.

I evaluated Airflow before choosing Control-M. In Airflow, we faced a similar situation because we had to create different cron jobs for each Python script. We had 100 plus Python scripts fetching data from multiple source systems, and in Airflow, creating dependency between each cron job was very hard. That is why we switched from Airflow to Control-M.

The initial setup process was done by our infrastructure team. I worked as a developer to create jobs, but the actual setup was quite good and well-supported by BMC software.

Our initial setup was completed with full support from the infrastructure team. After that, the workflow creation and job creation in Control-M were entirely managed by our developers.

The initial setup process was done by our infrastructure team. I worked as a developer to create jobs, but the actual setup was quite good and well-supported by BMC software.

Our initial setup was completed with full support from the infrastructure team. After that, the workflow creation and job creation in Control-M were entirely managed by our developers.

I think the benefit is very high. If a company does not have any budget constraints, they should definitely explore Control-M because it allows for end-to-end orchestration of the project without needing separate projects for the data pipeline and downstream applications such as reporting. All tasks can be accomplished using one product, providing significant value if budget constraints are not an issue.

I find it cost-effective, but I am not fully certain about the overall ROI.

The biggest lesson I learned from using Control-M is that it provides a single UI to monitor all jobs, making it much easier compared to my current project where I use Airflow, which involves managing multiple cron jobs across different tabs.

We do not have any direct contact with BMC software, so I would not describe the relationship as transformative.

I rate Control-M as nine because it simplifies complex data structures and pipelines.

My organization uses Control-M to automate database upgrades, operating system patching, and database refresh operations, and we have implemented many cases over the past 20 years.

Control-M enables us to automate our work and make our operations significantly easier. My company is currently working on using Control-M to support AI and ML workloads.

We envision using Control-M to connect everything together in our investment in AI and automation, which is a key objective for every employee in the IT department.

I definitely realize benefits from using the orchestration feature of Control-M, which saves a lot of time and eliminates human error.

Control-M makes it possible to set up the blueprint and strategy for the whole organization, and in my opinion, it is a great tool for achieving this.

Control-M helps in terms of regulation and compliance by allowing us to easily find out what happened on specific dates or which jobs were executed.

Control-M makes things easier and more efficient by connecting data from different departments and generating executive summaries for senior management.

The most valuable feature of Control-M for me is the orchestration capability, because in the past, without Control-M or automation tools, I had to manually perform these tasks.

In managing the integration and sequencing of data processing across diverse data platforms and cloud environments within Control-M, I find it to be quite robust software that serves as the backbone of infrastructure-level operations.

Control-M definitely facilitates the integration of Kubernetes or cloud-native workflows with traditional batch processing.

One of the most effective strategies within Control-M for integrating cloud-native workflows is monitoring jobs in real-time and easily identifying failures.

I utilize Control-M to address compliance requirements such as SOX, audit trails, or regulatory reporting through its robust and mature logging system.

From the perspective of return on investment, I see room for improvement.

There are definitely areas for improvement within Control-M, particularly in making it easier to use for individuals without IT expertise.

I am looking forward to Control-M making the entry level easier with fewer barriers for everyone, not just IT professionals.

I have been using Control-M for 20 years.

Control-M scales well with the growing needs of my organization, connecting to various databases without any issue.

I evaluate BMC support as great, as it feels like a family.

Before Control-M, I used CronTab on Linux and Unix systems for scheduling jobs, but I needed an orchestration tool such as Control-M to connect all the dots.

The main reasons for using Control-M over smaller company tools include security and compliance, which are paramount for Fortune 500 companies.

Beyond the benefits I have mentioned, I think one of the major advantages of using Control-M is saving the company cost by eliminating human mistakes.

For example, in terms of money cost savings with Control-M, a database refresh for a 100 terabyte database would cost around $200,000 to $300,000 a year without the automation tool.

In addition to time savings and minimizing human mistakes, Control-M can help consolidate data from different departments into a comprehensive workflow.

In terms of pricing and setup costs for Control-M, every enterprise software has its cost, and I evaluate it based on its criticality to the organization.

Before selecting Control-M, I considered other orchestration tools that needed to communicate well with backend systems such as Oracle or Postgres.

My organization is increasingly keen on cloud solutions and is looking for something that connects different cloud platforms with on-premises systems.

I believe Control-M has many of the features we need right now, although there is still room for improvement.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate Control-M between 8 to 9, with missing points mainly due to not being futuristic enough for the current AI and cloud trends. My overall rating for Control-M is 8.5.

My main use case for Control-M is primarily for workflow and job scheduling, automation, and monitoring recurring data processing tasks. Day-to-day, I use it to manage dependencies between jobs, monitor execution status, troubleshoot failed workflows, and ensure scheduled processes run reliably without manual intervention.

I use Control-M most often for scheduled data processing and reporting jobs. The reporting jobs I generate primarily involve scheduled processes that collect data from different systems, process and validate it, and then generate reports for operational teams. Control-M manages the sequence and dependencies, so the reports are produced automatically on schedule and alerts when a job fails or takes longer than expected.

For my main use case with Control-M, it provides not just scheduling from a central point of view but also workflow visibility and operational control. Having dependencies, alerts, and job status in one place makes it easier to identify issues quickly and reduces the amount of manual monitoring my team needs to do.

The best features I find most useful are workflow orchestration, job dependency management, centralized monitoring, and automated alerts. I especially appreciate being able to see the status of the entire workflow in one place and quickly identify where a failure occurred. The scheduling flexibility also makes recurring reporting and data processing tasks much easier to manage.

Control-M has positively impacted my organization by improving the reliability and visibility of our scheduled workflows. We have reduced manual monitoring, caught failing jobs faster with proactive alerts, and made recurring reporting and data processing tasks more consistent. It has also given my team better visibility into dependencies, which helps us troubleshoot issues before they affect downstream processes.

The user interface and configuration experience of Control-M could be more intuitive, especially for new users. Some advanced scheduling and dependency configuration can take time to understand. Better guided workflows, clearer documentation, and a simpler setup experience would make onboarding and day-to-day administration easier.

Another area where Control-M could be improved is in simplifying integration and administration. Setting up connections across different systems can sometimes require additional configuration and possibly more troubleshooting. More streamlined connectors, clearer configuration guidelines, and easier centralized administration would make the platform more efficient for teams managing a hybrid environment.

I have been working in my current field for about two years.

In my experience, Control-M has been stable and reliable for production workflows. Scheduled jobs generally run consistently, and when issues occur, the monitoring and alerting capabilities are effective.

Control-M has scaled well as our workflows and environment have grown. We have been able to add more jobs, workflows, and integrations without a major increase in manual administration. Its centralized scheduling and monitoring also make it easier to manage a larger number of workflows across different environments.

I have reached out to customer support a couple of times, and they have been generally responsive and helpful. We contacted them mainly for configuration and troubleshooting, and they were able to help us identify issues and provide guidance quickly. The response time was reasonable, although more complex issues sometimes required additional follow-up and investigation time.

Before using Control-M, we used Apache Airflow for workflow scheduling and orchestration. As our team grew and our environment became larger, we wanted stronger scheduling, centralized monitoring, dependency management, and broader integration capabilities, which led us to switch to Control-M.

Setup required some initial planning with vendor-specific technical teams and configuration, particularly around integration and workflows. Once established, the ongoing administration was fairly manageable.

We have seen a return on investment with Control-M primarily through time savings and reduced manual effort rather than direct headcount reduction. Alerts also contribute by helping reduce delays and the time spent troubleshooting failed jobs.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing feels reasonable for an enterprise workflow orchestration platform, although the overall cost depends on the deployment size and required capabilities.

Before choosing Control-M, we evaluated several alternatives, including IBM Workload Scheduler and Broadcom Automic Automation. We compared them mainly for workflow orchestration, dependency management, monitoring, integration, scalability, and ease of administration.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Control-M is that workflow orchestration reduces operational complexity. Taking the time to properly define dependencies, alerts, and failure handling rules upfront makes production workflows much more predictable and reduces the need for manual intervention later.

My advice for others looking into using Control-M is to clearly map your existing workflows and dependencies before implementation and make proper planning. Control-M provides the most value when you have complex systems and processes that need centralized orchestration. Investing time for initial configuration and training for teams will help them take full advantage of its monitoring and automation capabilities.

Control-M has been a useful tool for workflow automation and production visibility. Its scheduling, dependency management, monitoring, and alerting capabilities have helped reduce manual effort and make our recurring production processes more consistent. The main areas I would like to see improved are the user experience, configuration simplicity, and onboarding for new users. I would rate this product a 7.

Control-M is mostly used for centralized job management of different environments: Windows, Unix, Solaris, and Azure. If you are looking for a solution for centralized job management, especially if you have more than 100, 500, or 1,000 jobs you are maintaining, Control-M is the best solution.

Many sub-companies in my organization have more than 500 jobs, and if you are looking for a solution to make those jobs centralized, more alert-prospective, minimize outage, and minimize manual work, Control-M is the ideal choice.

Control-M has all kinds of job manager features. Azure is there, AWS is there, and SQL jobs are also there. The meaning of centralized is that it is completely used for centralization. All jobs can be managed in a single folder or a single way.

Control-M has improved considerably. It is very helpful because when I see the large amount of jobs coming in, it is very difficult to manage on a single server. It becomes high memory, high CPU; all the difficulties are there on servers. Control-M makes it very easy. We can centralize it, we can monitor it as well, and we can configure alerts for that as well.

The documentation for Control-M could be more clear. The documentation is clear, but in some areas it becomes difficult to manage. Another thing is for cloud-based things. If we could connect directly from Control-M, that would be better. For example, for SQL, we also need to put an agent on a server. For cloud access, we also need to put an agent on a server, and then we need to configure the connection profile and everything. If we could connect directly from Control-M, that would be better. For on-premises or these things, we have to put the agent, but for cloud-based services, we also have to put an agent on the server.

Integrating Control-M for my DevOps and DataOps processes is easy, but agent management is a little difficult. I have not used DevOps. I have configured it for Azure, but it was not completed. The project got lost. Everywhere we need to put the agent where we want to configure the agent server configuration. For Azure, we have to put an agent on some server, and from there, it connects to Azure. If we could directly connect to Azure or SQL from Control-M, that would be better.

My experience with Control-M is approximately two years at this company. At my last company, when I left, it was under the configuration process. I think it was there for approximately six months.

Control-M is very stable. I have not seen any outage.

Control-M is also very scalable. I have not seen any kind of outage or shortage.

The technical support for Control-M is very good. They respond very quickly. Whenever we raise a case, they respond to that case in approximately one hour. The technical response is very quick and fast.

The deployment of Control-M is very easy.

I have not worked with the pricing. It is a management-level thing. I am working as an admin of Control-M.

Control-M is utilized at a large scale. Control-M is very useful and is used by many businesses.

I am a customer. My company bought this project. They are getting the project to onboard it to Control-M. We are supporting that onboarding, agent installation, agent upgradation, and all the things we are managing on the back end.

Deployment of Control-M is both. We have both. Control-M in our environment is on-premises.

Control-M is utilized in an MNC, enterprise-level. My last company was Wipro. Control-M was also being used there. It is also being used at this company.

My relationship with Control-M is work-related, not transactional. My relationship with BMC is information-based.

With Control-M, we configure it when they come with what they are doing manually. What they are currently doing is manual, or they are doing manual things by putting a manual person on it. We are analyzing those. We are thinking that if that can be onboarded to Control-M to automate. If we find that this can be done by Control-M, we get those things onboarded on Control-M in their environment. If it is a vendor or partner, we get one server from them, we configure all the things on their environment, and we run from our side.

If they ask, I will be a reference for the vendor. Our company is a merger of five companies, including Guy Carpenter, Oliver Wyman, Mercer, and Marsh. These all companies are together. They all work on their business. If Mercer has the solution of Control-M and Guy Carpenter needs that, that business comes to us for onboarding their environment. It works this way. I would give Control-M an overall rating of eight out of ten.

Our main use cases for Control-M include batch scheduling, so all the change requests and job scheduling within SAP are managed through Control-M.

We have been developing our own AI within our organization by encouraging employees to be more creative and to solve general day-to-day problems, whether that involves seeking documentation, contract analysis, or automating processes. In terms of AI relating to Control-M itself, this is an area that we are looking to develop in the coming years.

I envision that predictive analysis with Control-M and AI would help us manage batch volume, identify peak and troughs, and determine if there are any issues if we were to exceed the batch limit that we have. Additionally, there may be a way to spread batches more evenly over the course of the period as opposed to scheduling all on a particular day, which could cause more pressure in terms of workload. Hopefully, predictive analysis will help us manage our batch process more efficiently.

Control-M already addresses compliance requirements.

The biggest turning point for management regarding Control-M is the 'what if' scenarios. Right now, everything is working smoothly. If we were to remove Control-M from the equation, the impact or business disruptions to our operations would be significant. Faced with that uncertainty, there is a cost of doing business, but there would be a greater cost of trying to save money. Management is not prepared to accept that risk, and hence we continue to use Control-M.

The biggest benefits I have seen from using Control-M as a company are around its seamless operation. Within IT, no one appreciates what we do until something happens. When nothing happens, we know it is working well and operating smoothly. We are a large organization with multi-million dollar operations. With these change requests, if there were to be a failure and if it goes undetected in a timely manner, it can cost and have serious implications with major business disruptions to our organization. As such, the use of Control-M is beneficial in that way.

One area for improvement in Control-M that I suggest is the dashboard, which could provide greater reporting capabilities and visibility in terms of the number of jobs or tasks and any potential disruptions or impacts that occur, whether it is daily, weekly, or monthly reports. It would also be helpful to see how our business case compares to other peers and what the benchmark is in terms of where we can improve.

I have been using Control-M for approximately ten years at my company.

There have not been any hiccups that I am aware of, which means the platform itself is extremely stable and very reliable.

The fact that we moved to a SaaS solution puts us in a good position for the coming years. As we grow as an organization, the capabilities in terms of being able to process more batches also increase.

BMC continues to engage us on a regular basis, and the dialogue remains open. They are always very supportive, and if an issue does occur, they are very responsive to our requests.

My relationship with BMC started many years ago when I first joined my organization. We were working with a different partner at that time, and my first experience was not overall positive. However, as we matured as an organization with a different partner, that relationship was able to turn around to a more favorable and positive one. It is about understanding and getting to know the client, and likewise, we also have to understand the perspective from BMC. There were instances in the early days where we exceeded what we were licensed to permit, and we worked through that together between BMC and our organization. Fast forward to 2026, and we are still together, which is a testament to the relationship we have developed over the years.

We have not really considered any other previous solutions. At one stage, we did contemplate whether to continue using Control-M, switch to an alternative, or not renew the product, particularly because we are part of a global business and typically prefer to be globally aligned. Fortunately for us, our parent company also uses Control-M, so that makes the business case much easier. More importantly, it is about the benefits we can see and derive from Control-M that have gained the support of senior management to continue using the product.

The ROI we have seen with Control-M is huge in terms of its usage, particularly the fact that when an error has been identified, it is addressed in a timely manner. Our business and how we operate involve processing a lot of change requests in SAP, including price updates and changes. In the event of a failure, it takes minutes to resolve rather than hours, and this can translate to serious financial savings for the business. Conversely, it could impact business disruptions if it was not resolved in a timely manner.

The benefits of Control-M are substantial in terms of time savings that could be hours when trying to identify, detect, and solve a problem when an issue occurs. From a business disruptions or cost avoidance perspective, that could be in the millions. Any change request that is unable to be processed due to an incorrect price change, whether that goes from a ten dollar to fifteen dollar perspective, creates a five dollar delta. If that fails to be resolved, goods or products would be sold at the old price instead of the new price. Depending on when we can resolve that particular problem, it means we have missed the opportunity of selling the product at the correct price due to changes in the supply chain and disruptions happening around the world.

As I look after commercials, I deal with a lot of different suppliers and partners. I appreciate that Control-M and BMC with the partners they selected to team up with our organization are very accommodating to our requests. We managed to move forward and create a win-win situation. More often than not, relationships are based on a two-way street. With the BMC partners, being VPM, they were great in terms of understanding our business requirements, but more importantly, they take the time to understand our business needs as well. They are not there just to sell and move on; it is about relationships, and we have developed and built that over the number of years we have interacted.

We have not really evaluated similar solutions, mainly because our parent company also uses Control-M, which helps us to be aligned.

I have worked in the business for close to seven years, and my relationship with Control-M involves looking after the procurement, vendor management, and commercial side of the business. I rate Control-M a nine out of ten because there is always room for improvement. For me, I always want the best in terms of the commercials and value proposition. Ideally, I would prefer it to be a lot cheaper than what it is today, and that is why I give it a nine. If it were a lot cheaper and more affordable, then it could have a ten. However, that is not currently the case, which is understandably so.

My main uses of Control-M are quite varied, ranging from operational and transactional reporting to automated jobs for many of our teams and systems. In terms of jobs, we manage approximately 600 jobs in our production environment. Some of them are business-critical with high SLAs, while others are smaller types of jobs. However, Control-M provides a core pillar to our daily operational needs and a core pillar for our efficiency gains through automation.

From a data processing point of view and understanding of the workflows, I manage the integration and sequencing by working with my team as well as all the participants in the process to collaborate on the end-to-end flow, understanding the requirements from every system. Control-M helps with that by providing the flexibility of different kinds of solutions that it can support so that we can ensure the data that's coming to Control-M can be sequenced and is adaptable for each individual and end user.

My company is currently not using Control-M to support AI or ML workloads. However, we do have an AI strategy to move towards it. One of the reasons we haven't onboarded yet is that Control-M has been such a reliable platform, and to combine it with AI is a no-brainer because AI is so creative. However, one of the concerns with AI is hallucinations, which would mean we lose the reliability that Control-M provides. We do have a plan moving forward, and it's great to see the Control-M team is adding more and embedding AI into their systems. Once we have confirmed that AI hallucination will not exist, we'll slowly embed more AI into our systems going forward.

I think this is more about using a risk-based approach by identifying low-risk jobs to firstly integrate AI into those and being able to record them, which is one of the great features of Control-M—the traceability and ability to trace and identify the occasions or occurrences of hallucinations. Once we have a reliable history of the AI running properly, then we'll integrate more or migrate more of our high-risk jobs.

In terms of Kubernetes or cloud-native workflows within my company, we currently do not have Kubernetes in our environment, and we also do not have cloud-native workflows.

I have realized benefits as a company since implementing Control-M. Comparing what we had previously, we migrated from a Windows-based scheduling system which was decentralized and did not have tracking or error logging. There were risks of silent failures and additional manual work for monitoring because we had to log into each of the servers each time. There were also scalability limitations where if we needed more jobs, we would have to get more servers. Control-M has been able to address all those issues using governance, access controls, reliable job executions, and its scalability functions.

The features of Control-M I value the most probably aren't sold as a feature, but one of the strong suits has been its reliability. Throughout the 14 years with Control-M, it's always been able to run on time and efficiently. This year, we're actually migrating to the SaaS platform, and the first thing I checked was the SLAs, which are actually 99.95, a very impressive score and one of the reasons why we are doing that migration. I think this is more of an attribute and a credit to the whole team rather than being a specific product feature, but it's the support and what the team at BMC provides for the product.

Control-M could be improved, but I think native out-of-the-box, it does its job very well. Being a centralized system that provides all those compliance and scalability features, it actually ticks all the boxes. All the must-haves from a business perspective to suit a system that runs business-critical systems mean there's not much more to ask. From a customer's perspective, we will always have our like-to-haves. At the moment with our system, we still have a lot of custom scripts, so we want to start looking at reducing that. To do this, we're hoping Control-M has more plugins to different third-party systems and more support. I know from the presentation just before, this is happening on a monthly basis, so it is something I'm looking forward to checking on so that we can slowly integrate a lot of our processes within Control-M and reduce the number of third-party or custom scripts that we use at the moment.

I've been currently working in my field for about 20 years and have been with UniSuper for almost 14 years, so I'm quite familiar with the IT sector. From a Control-M perspective, I've been working with the Control-M system for almost that 14 years, constantly on and off, but from a management perspective and being able to manage the capability, I've been doing this for over a year now.

We've touched upon stability and reliability, but not as much about scalability.

From a Control-M perspective, its scalability has been a core strength. We've actually moved from zero, which is what we had in our Windows solution 14 years ago, to almost 600 jobs right now. The ability to grow with our business requirements and be able to scale according to our business needs has been a core feature. We have never had issues where the demand has exceeded the capacity or capabilities of Control-M. It's actually been a really good experience from Control-M, both from a scalability as well as a reliability point of view.

I would rate the BMC team in terms of support a ten out of ten. My experience so far with Control-M's customer service and support has been excellent because I usually don't give a ten since I usually find room to improve, but I can give examples on my rating. Going back to our journey from a migration point of view, Tanya, our account manager, was deeply involved in providing and helping with the business case for the migration, including providing reporting and financial data, and assurance on how the benefits in the SaaS environment that we will be getting for the migration. That gave our business stakeholders assurance, both from an operational perspective as well as from an ROI perspective, that it is the right move. That level of customer service has been really over and above and beyond from my experience.

From a technical service point of view, I have to say the Control-M tech team is really well on top of the technology. I remember when we had a security scanning that had a potential vulnerability which our security team was investigating. We sent off a support ticket to Control-M and we actually got a reply right away to talk about the vulnerability in detail. We went through every single point and detail and they gave us a reason why the vulnerability doesn't apply to us. That was a great outcome. We were able to communicate this to our security team and lower the ratings and mitigate the risk of that finding. It's been a great experience so far, and I'm hoping to continue that relationship.

From a deployment perspective, while I wasn't involved with the actual broad introduction of Control-M 14 years ago, I am involved this year in terms of onboarding Control-M SaaS and doing that migration. That experience has been excellent from multiple perspectives. To start off, I want to call out my account manager, Tanya, who was supporting our process over six months, initially doing the planning for the migration and giving our business stakeholders comfort that we're migrating this critical system that's running business-critical jobs without impacting our production. Then we came up with a plan on the project execution, working with our implementation partners, BQPM, to work out what the best timeline for the project would be. I'm happy to say the project is going, we're in the implementation phase now, and we're on track for our delivery in the new year.

I have seen a return on my investment in Control-M. We don't actually use a monetary metric in terms of ROI, but I definitely would see benefits that are coming through that may be intangible by utilizing Control-M. The features, obviously the automation feature being able to allow us to automatically run 24/7, mean that had we not had this feature, we would need manual work to monitor and ensure each job is running correctly. Other things such as the reporting and all the functionalities we're doing and providing value to the business are enabled from what Control-M is providing. If we did not have those, we probably would have needed to have an alternative product, and that's actually providing great business value.

Before choosing Control-M, I haven't evaluated other solutions because I wasn't there during the original decision. I think we've had a very long partnership with Control-M, as I said, 14 years already. I wasn't actually there during the actual choice to move on to Control-M on-prem, but I did get involved as a part of the Control-M SaaS migration. I didn't actually go through any other products. The main reason is how reliable Control-M has been. Given the actual reliability and the mission-critical processes that are on the system, it was actually not much of a decision factor really, because it's kind of an automatic answer that the SaaS is actually a better fit for us rather than investigating other platforms and introducing risk to the migration.

We haven't evaluated other solutions because the system has been working so reliably. We get really good customer service from the company, both from an account management point of view as well as a technical perspective. When we actually made a decision to move to SaaS, Control-M SaaS was the obvious choice.

I would definitely give Control-M a rating of ten out of ten. I'm really happy with both the technology, service, and its growth potential. It's great to see that the team is working to their customers' demands, especially towards AI, which is something that all customers are looking forward to and moving towards. The fact that they're taking the front foot and making sure those demands are met even before their customers are ready actually provides a positive experience, and I also believe that this partnership is an everlasting one.

I would like to say that the BMC team has actually provided more than just a system; they're actually providing a great experience for their customers. Being able to listen to customer requirements and come up with a solution that meets the requirements, or even though there are instances where potentially the requirements can't be met right now, they've always given us a timeline or a potential alternative. It's not just that we're buying software off the shelf; it's actually a whole package: the solution, the reliability, and the whole customer support team has been a great experience. My overall rating for Control-M is ten out of ten.

I lead a team of Control-M schedulers and operators, and I also do some scheduling myself. A specific example of a task or workflow I manage with Control-M is that I have re-engineered a monolithic script. The process I re-engineered was designed for printing invoices, specifically the invoices of EDP clients, which amounts to about eight million invoices per month.

To handle that scale with Control-M, I made changes by decomposing the monolithic script, which was made in shell scripting, into Control-M jobs, getting the complete workflow, a PDF, and transforming it into a Control-M workload. I do a lot of transformation from monolithic scripts or jobs that can be transformed into workloads within Control-M.

The best features Control-M offers include cross-platform dependency management, which is interesting because a job on the mainframe depends on a file arriving from a Unix system that, in turn, depends on a Windows process completing, and Control-M handles that heterogeneous dependency chain natively.

A time when this feature really made a difference for my team was when we had several workloads that are dependent on each other, using different platforms, and that interconnection between those platforms is really relevant to the whole process. There are more features that add value to Control-M, such as the calendar and condition system, which is really powerful to schedule almost to perfection many workloads that are critical for the business, whether in energy, insurance, banking, etc., because it maintains the logic.

Using the conditions allows me to create the re-engineering process that I have mentioned, which depends not only on the conditions but allows everything to run smoothly and on time. Tasks that in the original monolithic script would take about two hours now take at least fifty percent less time because it is more efficiently designed. The time savings were enabled mostly by parallelization, but not only that; I can adjust several aspects.

Control-M has positively impacted my organization because if some condition fails or if a calendar is incorrectly defined, a simple error in a condition can stop a critical workload, stop invoicing, and stop files that should go to the banking system.

Control-M can be improved with better integration with modern DevOps toolchains, as while it has made strides with APIs and the automation API, integration with tools such as JIRA and ServiceNow could be more seamless out of the box.

There is also a knowledge barrier that BMC should be aware of; Control-M has a steep learning curve for deep operational mastery, where basic administration is fairly accessible, but truly understanding the platform takes months to years for a new person, and BMC could invest more in advanced training and certification paths beyond the basics.

I have been using Control-M for more than twenty years, since around 1996.

Control-M is stable in my experience. I have worked with Control-M environments processing tens of thousands of jobs, and currently, we have around six thousand jobs in the energy company.

Control-M is used quite extensively; we execute around six thousand jobs a day, serving around seventy to eighty applications, and it is always growing, also serving many DevOps teams.

BMC support is generally competent for standard issues.

Positive

Before choosing Control-M, I always worked with it and know alternatives such as TWS, Autosys, and other platforms similar to Control-M, but I have never worked with them.

The ROI of Control-M in critical infrastructure is less about percentage savings and more about what does not fail, such as when a national payment system opens every morning on time, or when millions of transactions are processed without a missed dependency.

Control-M has premium pricing, which is justified for enterprise-scale operations, as we are paying for a platform with decades of maturity, proven reliability, and the capacity to handle complex orchestration scenarios that simpler tools cannot manage.

I have always worked with Control-M, first on banking systems and then on energy systems, and though I worked with other systems, Control-M was always present. We have many users in many different roles; there are maybe four or five administration roles along with operation roles.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Control-M is that it makes your life easier in dealing with batch processing, whether on mainframe or distributed servers, allowing you to define everything the way you want. I advise others looking into using Control-M to invest in people, not just the tool, emphasizing that a well-configured Control-M environment with experienced operators is essential for reliability.

Integrating Control-M with technologies for our data ops and DevOps processes can be difficult as technologies change. I would rate this review nine out of ten overall.