Control-M Reviews

From an administrative standpoint, we are mostly engaged in upgrading, downgrading, and fixing the issues on a day-to-day basis, such as integration with the cloud functionalities. 

My only objective is that the application is up and running 99% of the time. I will make sure that it is not down, and it does not impact my application teams. If it goes down, it has a major impact on SLA, financial, and everything, so I make sure this is up and running 99%.

Control-M improved our organization significantly. We integrated it with our DevOps model, which saved us around 32 FTEs in resource costs. We also integrated with AWS Glue jobs or other clouds, such as Informatica. It's compatible.

Control-M supports our daily IT automation tasks. It is the blood for my entire organization, integrating with every app team, including HR.

Control-M offers pretty good REST API connectivity with other solutions.

The most effective feature of Control-M is the API integration. BMC is focusing on API integration. It's also very easy to deploy and identify issues. 

I don't see any areas where Control-M could be improved because they are doing well. The support is awesome. We have a weekly connection with our BMC tech focal, so I don't see any improvement needed. Things are going well. They are already working on GenAI integration with Control-M. The only thing that comes to mind is the cost. If it could be more competitive, it would be great.

I have been using Control-M for almost 15 years.

The stability of Control-M has been good so far. However, the testing and development phases need to be more rigorous before releasing patches. I would rate it an eight out of ten for stability.

It's scalable. I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.

It's used across multiple departments. There are more than 3,000 users.

Control-M's technical support is very helpful. The immediate acknowledgment and solutions provided by BMC's support team make it stand out compared to other tools. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

My current organization has been using Control-M for 20-25 years, but I have used Autosys and IBM Workload Scheduler previously.

The initial deployment of Control-M was straightforward. We started with version 6.4 and are now at 9.0.21.304.

When I started, it used to take about eight hours. We are now able to do it within 30 minutes, including the downtime.

We are using it on-premise because their SaaS solution is not capable of handling our workload. Its maintenance mostly involves upgrades.

I handle the deployment. We have about five members involved in the deployment of Control-M from our side, including an administrator.

After implementing Control-M, there should be cost savings or efficiency gains.

Its cost can be more competitive. One of the main things customers look at is the cost. It's not affordable. The cost is very high, according to my customers. The licensing cost is very high, and they often consider switching to IBM Workload Scheduler or other options.

There aren't any extra expenses after purchasing Control-M. We have never paid any extra cost unless we needed additional packages, and the team was able to help us with that.

Nothing comes to mind regarding alternatives to Control-M, but I see all the features available in it since it is a leader. However, other solutions might be more cost-effective.

If you want to implement Control-M in your business, the first thing is to look at your budget. Checking affordability is key. Control-M has a lot of features, more than just scheduling batch jobs. 

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Control-M is that you need to have patience. Errors or issues cannot be resolved without developer assistance, but once you get their help, you learn a lot.

I would rate Control-M a nine out of ten.

On-premises

Control-M is our primary workload scheduling software, and we aim to utilize it for linking applications, hardware, and data transfers. Ideally, it should be the core component of our architecture. While we have started to expand its use over the past couple of years, we are not fully there yet.

A significant portion of our incoming files is handled through Managed File Transfer (MFT) Enterprise, which is an extension of Control-M. We have been utilizing this solution increasingly for both external and internal file transfers. Additionally, we rely on Control-M to schedule SAP jobs, which is one of its key functionalities. We also schedule a substantial portion of our data warehouse production using Control-M. 

As a health insurance company, we have a main internal application that heavily depends on Control-M. For instance, many incoming files need to be decoded and processed for our internal application, followed by a job that transfers the data into our databases. We have recently begun to use Control-M for the maintenance of various databases, such as SAP HANA, Oracle, and Postgres. This aspect of our usage is constantly growing.

Another significant aspect of our workflow involves creating customized job types for our clients. For example, some files we receive are encoded and zipped, for which there is no default Control-M job. To address this, we frequently use the Application Integrator to provide additional functionalities not currently available in Control-M. This allows us to automate tasks that would otherwise require manual intervention, such as extracting contents from ZIP files.

We are also standardizing processes with Control-M, providing standard job types for all our customers. This includes file renaming, combining files, or separating them based on specific application types. For instance, we receive files that contain multiple text files, which we may need to split or combine into a certain format when sending them out.

In summary, we are dedicated to making Control-M our primary workload automation and orchestration software. Recently, we've begun integrating Control-M with Ansible to manage patch routines for our Linux and Windows servers. The challenge has been linking these patch routines with our application jobs. We've started this integration so that whenever there is a patch, our applications automatically halt until we receive confirmation from Ansible. We frequently use the Control-M API for this purpose, enabling seamless coordination between Ansible and Control-M. Overall, these are the main use cases we are currently implementing with Control-M, and we continually seek to expand its applications across our operations.

The application integrator provides a toolbox that makes integration easy. We use it to mask Python scripts that handle various routines, such as ZIP solutions, while the application integrator manages drop-down menus. Sometimes the integrations that Control-M provides are not suitable for our specific use cases. For instance, with S3 storage from Amazon, Control-M's integration only uses a small percentage of available S3 functionalities, so we had to create our own solution. When using BMC tools such as the application integrator, Control-M provides an easy path to integrate many features.

One thing we have criticized is the MFTE capabilities, particularly regarding high availability. BMC hasn't provided a setup with multiple fallbacks for error situations. We've experienced main problems with MFTE where having one setup means when an error occurs, the entire service goes down. We have requested BMC to provide a high availability solution for MFTE. While there are other minor issues, this remains our main concern.

I started using the z/OS parts in 2007-2008 for one to two years. After switching companies, I have been using it in its current form since 2013, totaling twelve years of experience.

It is usually very stable, except for the MFT solution where an error leads to an outage. This has occurred several times in the last two to three years. We are in direct contact with their lab development regarding these issues. While the system is stable 99% of the time, when issues occur, they are significant.

The scalability is very good with numerous configuration options available. Though we sometimes use load balancers in front of Control-M, the available functions offer good options for configuration. Our license doesn't limit our ability to configure Control-M as needed, allowing us to easily create new agents or environments.

I don’t contact the BMC support every day, but we are in constant communication with them. They are currently migrating many features to their web interface, which means some functionalities that were available on their desktop solution are now missing. As a result, we are creating a lot of tickets regarding this issue. At least once a week, one of my colleagues reaches out to BMC support.

Regarding the quality and speed of their responses, it really depends on the representative and the topic at hand. There are certain areas where they have more experienced experts, while in other cases, the support staff tends to rely on standard procedures. Generally, their answers are acceptable; I would rate them around a seven out of ten. Many times, their assistance is more like a nine or ten, but there are occasions when a representative provides standard responses without understanding the specific issue. In these situations, I often have to clarify the problem multiple times because they start with standard solutions that don’t apply to my case. Overall, I would rate their support around a solid seven out of ten.

Neutral

I previously used OPC (now TWS) from IBM for z/OS software. We regularly evaluate the market, comparing different vendors with BMC, including Redwood, Stone Branch, and HLC. While we conduct proof of concepts and demonstrations from various vendors, we maintain only one product installation.

Control-M was previously used for both z/OS (mainframe) and distributed environments. However, we have since migrated from the mainframe to a distributed system two years ago, and now Control-M is only implemented on the distributed side. I was responsible for this migration due to my knowledge of mainframe systems. While Control-M was already in place, certain functionalities, like data transfer, were not integrated into Control-M. This integration has been accomplished in the last five years.

The learning curve for me was easy due to my background. It took about a year maximum to transition into an administration role. My experience with both mainframe and distributed systems was beneficial. For new colleagues without z/OS background, the learning curve was steeper. While becoming a scheduler is relatively easy in Control-M, mastering specific features requires more time and learning.

In terms of maintenance, we usually have one or two major releases each year, which is quite a significant process. If there’s one area where BMC could improve, it would be optimizing the maintenance process. The type of maintenance required depends on the range of components included. If we talk specifically about the core Control-M product or its basic components, then currently, there isn’t much maintenance involved. However, when we include the agents, the maintenance requirements increase. Overall, I would classify the maintenance needs as moderate. It could be less demanding, particularly during situations like a major version change, where we would prefer to minimize outages. We are in discussions with BMC about how to enhance this process. To summarize, I would say that the maintenance requirements are not low, but they don’t necessitate weekly attention either. So, I would characterize it as being in the middle range.

Control-M is among the highest-priced solutions in the market. When comparing with other vendors, BMC consistently maintains premium pricing. We hope for more creative pricing solutions from BMC in the future, as currently, the price often remains constant regardless of package customization or feature selection. We would appreciate more pricing flexibility from BMC.

Our relationship with BMC is more in the direction of transformative. We’ve built a solid relationship with BMC over the years. It was a process, but I would classify it as transformative. They support us well. While there are certain functions we wish were available, overall, I think our relationship is transformative.

We have a good relationship with BMC, and that required effort on both sides. Sometimes, there’s a gap between what we need as customers and the direction BMC is heading. However, overall, we’re satisfied with how BMC provides us with solutions. Of course, there are things we feel are missing at times, but I also must say that the experience can vary depending on who you’re speaking with at BMC. The experience with sales representatives can differ from discussions with technical staff. In general, though, I would say the relationship is positive.

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

Control-M is similar to Stonebranch and Redwood. It is a workload automation system that automates steps typically defined by humans. Previously, if humans performed 100 steps to complete a task, they can now input these steps into Control-M and let the system run them automatically. 

The most common use case is in banking. In banking operations, there are daily transactions between customers that need to be processed, closed, summarized, compiled, and sent to the core banking system for execution. Manually, this process could take more than eight hours per day. With Control-M automation, this time can be reduced to one hour or even 30 minutes. Before the cutoff time at 12:00 a.m., Control-M performs the batch job or end-of-day process, executes it, passes it to the core system, and marks it as a finished job for the day.

Control-M makes it simple to create, integrate, and automate data pipelines. Essentially, you have a single dashboard where you can manage everything. You can create the job, perform quality checks before promoting it to development, and then execute it in production. You can also monitor the jobs to see if they fail or trigger any alerts that require attention. Overall, the process is very straightforward and simple.

It is pretty easy to integrate with technologies for data operations and DevOps processes as things change. Control-M is API ready, so as long as the other side also has an API, it’s a done deal.

Stability is crucial in the banking or financial sector, where operational downtime must be minimized. Control-M provides exceptional stability compared to competitors such as Redwood, Stonebranch, or Perpetuity. The second valuable feature is the user-friendliness of the tools, making it easy to learn and use.

Control-M can execute batch jobs and monitor the jobs it executes, though it does not monitor servers or other systems.

Since the system is stable, clients don't typically request rapid improvements. However, one area that could be improved is the AI capability and AI generative features, as these are becoming increasingly important in modern systems.

I have been working with it since late 2010, approximately 15 years.

After migration to Control-M, there is an initial stabilization period. Once properly implemented, the system becomes very stable, which is one of its strongest attributes.

It is a scalable solution. Our clients are enterprises. About 85% of banks in my country use Control-M.

I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

There was a previous solution from either Redwood or Stonebranch, and another tool called Perpetuity. Customers were successfully persuaded to migrate from these solutions to Control-M. The success rate of migrations is usually more than 97%, and it may even be almost 100%.

Implementing it is not straightforward. It requires careful installation, customization, and configuration. Unlike simply installing Microsoft Windows or Office, this solution demands significant effort and time. It is not as simple as it may seem.

Technical migration can be completed in a few months, but full implementation including user adoption and socialization typically takes about a year. This is because the tool has various users beyond IT, including business users, trade finance users, and branch users who need time to learn and become comfortable with the system.

We have previously attempted to work with the services team from BMC and found their design to be good. However, we prefer not to proceed with the actual on-site implementation. Their prices are quite high, and their approach is too rigid for our needs. Therefore, we believe it is better for us to handle the implementation ourselves.

Automation can benefit customers in many ways, particularly when it comes to saving money. For example, if we rely on human workers, we may face long Recovery Point Objective (RPO) times, which could extend up to 88 hours a day. Additionally, humans are prone to making mistakes. Let's consider a scenario where an operator is manually summarizing transactions from a single branch. If that branch has 10,000 transactions in one day, it can be quite challenging for the operator to keep track. This may lead to issues like double data entry, where the operator mistakenly inputs the same data twice. Such errors can be disastrous for a bank, potentially resulting in financial losses. By implementing automation tools, you can minimize human errors and improve efficiency.

The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for Control-M is more economical compared to other solutions. While competitors might offer lower initial prices, they often include hidden costs that emerge after the first year. Control-M maintains a straightforward pricing model based on license count, implementation, and training, without unexpected future costs.

Control-M uses a simple pricing model based on the number of jobs per license, where one job equals one license. After assessing customer needs, proposals typically include the required number of job licenses plus implementation fees. The implementation fee covers installation, customization, configuration, job building, testing, and execution until the solution is running perfectly.

When you purchase a license, it's typically through a subscription model. Some people refer to this as a subscription type or ops type. If a customer opts for a subscription, it's similar to renting a car; you must renew it each year. It's important to note that there may be an annual price increase determined by BMC, and the specifics will be decided by the principal.

BMC is an important strategic partner for our company. Around 70% to 80% of our business comes from working with BMC, or more specifically, from selling BMC products.

The biggest lesson learned is the importance of providing perspective to customers rather than simply following their requests. It's crucial to understand and discuss their requirements thoroughly, such as questioning why they need a specific number of jobs.

I would rate Control-M a nine out of ten.

On-premises

Control-M is used to run Oracle scripts with scheduled jobs including monthly, weekly, and yearly schedules. Around 50 or more jobs are run every week. Control-M connects to the database, triggers all procedures, performs the operation, and generates the final report. The log is sent to mailboxes detailing how the process went, any issues, or any errors. If there are issues, the mailbox is checked; otherwise, a message indicating successful completion is received along with statistics such as how much time the process took and which processes were run. Jobs are scheduled once, Control-M jobs are created, timing is set up, and the jobs fire automatically at the particular time.

Control-M is used to connect to Oracle products, and through Control-M, a Tableau dashboard is maintained. Most of the scheduling jobs use Control-M to schedule. Control-M helps all products, making it a utility that can be used wherever scheduling features are needed. It is not just for DevOps, databases, or front-end applications; it can be used anywhere without manual intervention to perform particular activities. Wherever there is an opportunity for scheduling jobs, Control-M is the first option.

For migration, Control-M is considered very good. Once all the source and target details are configured in Control-M, it can automatically migrate data. It requires proper configuration and specifying the necessary changes for target technology along with the source system scripts. If properly configured, the complete migration can be triggered end to end. Data migrations and reporting, along with all scheduling activities, can be efficiently managed.

The best features in Control-M include sending emails to mailboxes after the process is completed and providing proper acknowledgement reports. The timing is impressive; it connects very fast and performs activities efficiently. The UI is very friendly, making it easy to configure jobs in Control-M. If core technology scripts are available, creating Control-M jobs is a five-minute task. The GUI is very friendly, which simplifies task assignment, scheduling, canceling, and all these operations, making it easily navigable.

Every week, 50 jobs are run using Control-M. If those 50 jobs were being run manually, it would take more than a week. Through Control-M, the jobs are able to be scheduled within two days, saving around five days of effort.

Before Control-M, jobs would be run on Friday evening so that the process would end by Sunday night, allowing the business to start on Monday. Without Control-M, everything would have to be run manually throughout the week. Thanks to Control-M, around five days are being saved. Otherwise, old data would be received for the current week's business, but now the latest data is received.

Control-M has room for improvement in displaying dashboard-like graphical reports once processes are completed. For example, after scheduling 50 jobs, if a dashboard showing the completed scripts, status, and time taken is displayed within Control-M itself, it would be very helpful. Currently, mailboxes are checked for reports; if it were in Control-M, anyone could check it. Only those configured with specific mail IDs receive emails, so if a few members are not set up, they will not see the reports. If it were available in Control-M, those users could directly check the dashboard.

Control-M has been used for the last two years from the beginning of the project level. Earlier, it was already there in Control-M that the client was using.

The same score for stability is a nine out of ten.

Control-M is capable of handling a large volume of processing if the necessary memory space is provided to the server.

Great support is received, with a rating of nine out of ten.

Positive

Control-M would definitely be recommended because it saves a lot of time. If everything were being done manually, it would take a lot of time to run and validate scripts. If everything is configured in Control-M, even non-experts like front-end staff can trigger jobs, making it simple. It is a one-time configuration, and anyone can trigger it. That is the best part; significant time is saved, and there is no waiting time; the next process starts immediately once the current one is completed. If dependencies are set in Control-M, it starts the next task automatically. That is why Control-M is highly recommended for scheduling.

The client is a big enterprise client.

Control-M requires occasional maintenance, maybe yearly or once every six months for upgrades. A Control-M team manages activities such as maintenance every six months or once a year, including cleaning up scripts or memory.

Around 15 members are using Control-M.

The overall review rating for Control-M is ten out of ten.

On-premises

Control-M is used as a job scheduler. Initially, when started, it was more or less used as a batch scheduler. It has evolved over time so much that even the name has been changed to Control-M Workload Automation, which completely justifies its name. It is not just a scheduler anymore; it does many more things than just a scheduler.

Control-M, especially, is quick to the market with all the new products that are coming up, be it the integrations or the capabilities that are emerging. Any new technology that comes up in any stream such as AWS or Azure or GCP is addressed quickly. Control-M is very fast to the market when compared to other schedulers or other vendors where they develop these integrations and the rapid release of these integrations. The target is around three to five integration releases within a month, which is best in the market. The support that is received when a case is raised is really quick and very helpful when compared to others.

The best features of Control-M are highlighted by its GUI, which is a game-changer because it is so user-friendly. Any person who is logging into Control-M for the first time will know what each option or the parameter is. It is so self-explained, eye-catching, and very easy to use. Currently, Control-M is moving away from the thick client to the web client, which also maintains the same user-friendliness. Another key feature is that it keeps up to the market standards with respect to security, compliance, and everything. All the capabilities are available, and it is just a drag and drop of each to create jobs. In this DevOps world, integration with the DevOps pipelines is possible where job creation can be automated as well.

It is very easy to integrate technologies for DataOps and DevOps processes as things change, not only for DevOps processes but for any other tools in the market. There are more than 100 plus integrations that are already built within Control-M where you can just drag and drop to create and have a centralized view of all these jobs, be it ETL jobs, data lake jobs, or ADF jobs. Adding these dependencies and having a centralized view is something that Control-M thrives on. If any issues are faced during this process, the support model and documentation around it are very clear and abstract.

Control-M has helped businesses positively, especially when started as a scheduler without exploring most of the modules that were available. Over the last eight years, the first benefit was that when integrating with a DevOps process to maintain version control, a client had an in-built macro or PowerShell script which was incompatible when the version was upgraded. Standardizing it using the Workflow Change Manager, which promotes jobs between environments, was suggested. Control-M's Application Integrator helps to create custom job types rather than using in-built job types, which helped develop around 150 or 200 jobs with that approach. Control-M also offers a conversion tool that allows conversion of jobs from other tools to Control-M without requiring costly professional services.

There are areas for improvement, especially with the transition from the thick client to the web GUI. While Control-M's main game-changer is its GUI, the current web interface is less user-friendly than the thick client. A Windows client option should be maintained for flexibility, as it caters to users who prefer different interfaces.

Control-M has been used for 15 years.

Control-M as a tool is very stable. However, stability can be affected by how the environment is set up, including network stability, storage, and database factors. Control-M itself is robust, and it would receive a rating of 10.

Control-M is a scalable solution, and its scalability would receive a rating of 10.

When a case is raised, the response that is received is really quick and very helpful when compared to others.

Positive

Conversion of jobs from other scheduling tools to Control-M has been done. Jobs have been converted from Dollar Universe and TWS, IWS Maestro as they call it, to Control-M. There is working experience on Maestro and Dollar Universe as well.

Deploying Control-M is straightforward; as long as you know how to deploy it, the first attempt may be more difficult compared to subsequent ones. Documentation and support are readily available, making the overall process easy.

Compared to other vendors, Control-M is quite costly. However, all good things come with a good cost. The features, speed to the market, and quality justify the higher expense. Control-M may need to rethink how to make it more cost-effective because while many clients appreciate the tool and its features, the current economic climate and desire for cost optimization lead some clients to consider other options that may solely meet their scheduling requirements at a lower cost.

Control-M does require maintenance, especially for the VMs in both on-prem and Azure environments, which need to be patched regularly. A separate team handles automated patching, and there is a move away from on-prem to have everything on a single cloud instance.

Maintenance is easy overall; applying patches does not take much time. The technical aspect of upgrading or patching is minimal, but the process around it can take longer. Gathering concurrence from job owners for downtime and executing the patching process usually takes time, even though the actual installation is quick.

Control-M would be recommended if you are looking for a scheduling or workload automation solution and are not overly concerned with cost but want to utilize features to enhance your estate and maintain a centralized view. This review has been given an overall rating of 9.

Other

Microsoft Azure

My main business use case supported by Control-M is performance data generation, which includes all orchestration jobs and workflow processes.

The feature I appreciate most about Control-M is the capability of scheduling jobs automatically, as the dependency and control runs all tasks automatically by themselves.

I value this feature because it frees up a significant amount of time from my daily work, allowing me to concentrate on other more manual tasks.

Control-M supports my DataOps and DevOps initiatives by automating the entire process through the dependency and successor logic.

The biggest return on investment for me when using Control-M is that it helps me automate the manual tasks of my daily work.

My company has achieved measurable benefits with Control-M through automation, which has improved delivery and reduced the possible manual errors that a human can make.

I think Control-M can be improved because we recently moved to Helix, the cloud control, and the latency of the application is substantial; the job is running in the background, but the UI side is very slow on the front end.

Control-M integrates with new or changing technologies within my DataOps or DevOps stack well; the cloud improvement is positive, but now that AI is a significant topic, it could incorporate more AI features. Although they do have some AI functionality in the cloud applications, it is not particularly useful and intuitive.

If I were to estimate the improvement percentage, I would say around seventy percent.

I have been using Control-M for six years.

After moving to the cloud solution, I believe Control-M is much more stable; we have been using it for around two years, and I do not see any downtime. On the cloud solution, I do not observe any downtime; however, on-premises, sometimes the server is not up and the agent is not running.

In terms of scalability, I believe Control-M works well for the work I am performing, around eight or ten because we are heavily using it for morning tasks, data preparation, and preparations early in the morning for the day.

BMC customer service and technical support typically assist us; we usually speak to the relationship manager to raise any concerns or issues that we find, and so far, we still receive the answers we need, although the response may not be as immediate as we expect.

I would rate the customer service and technical support a seven out of ten.

Positive

My company considered switching to other solutions once and attempted to source alternatives, but we ultimately decided to stick with BMC.

The overall experience with the deployment process of Control-M depends on whether we are discussing the application itself or the creation of the job.

I would describe Control-M's performance in building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring workflows as quite good; I have previously used other orchestration tools, and I believe Control-M has much better visualization of workflows in terms of scheduling jobs.

I use Control-M to orchestrate workloads across multiple environments; we have a stream of workflows that connects to AWS, then SQL Server, and our in-house applications and so on, creating a large web of workflows across different kinds of applications.

Control-M handles complex data pipelines and analytics processes mostly through the designer that designs the workflow; we put the complex logic there, and it serves more as a tooling for us to use than Control-M handling all of this.

The creation and automation of data pipelines across on-premises and cloud technologies with Control-M is quite good; so far, I have no complaints with that. Between the on-premises and cloud, we have one less concern about how the application processes on the cloud, but on-premises, we have more freedom in accessing the database and some backend functionality.

My advice for someone or other companies considering Control-M is to check their business requirements and see what Control-M can actually offer because they do have many plugins for different kinds of usage, so it totally depends on what the company wants.

I would rate this review eight out of ten overall.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is extensively used by our clients mainly in the BFSI sector, where we see around 5,000 to 10,000 file transfers for a few critical customers. We use it for data from their vendors who provide inputs for their end clients, including insurance agents who provide data in these files, facilitating both B2B and B2C processes.

Regarding the usability of BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer, I have been using it since 2009, and I have encountered no issues. I appreciate that no code is required, it is centrally managed through account management, validations are in place, and file transfers are tracked in an audit through which account they occur. It is one of my favorite solutions, existing since 1980, and I have written a lot of papers on Control-M, including one on my LinkedIn called 'A Leader's Journey' before BMC published the journey of Control-M.

My impressions of application workflow orchestration with BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer are that it is a fantastic tool I have been using for 16 years. I have even received appreciation from the development team in Israel, stating that no one has used the solution to the extent that my team and I have for one of our customers. The orchestration process allows easy accessibility to different applications, and it facilitates configuring with drag-and-drop functionality to set dependencies.

If you can share an email, I can provide pointers on potential improvements for BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer, focusing on customer-centric enhancements. For example, providing checksums for file metadata in reports could significantly help with file transfers.

I have been working with BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer for more than three to four years.

Regarding stability, there were some issues reported during implementation and usage by our customers, but I would rate it an eight out of ten.

The scalability of BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is impressive due to its ability to handle large quantities of data and files, but there are certain features that could be added to make it a game changer.

From a support perspective, BMC technical support needs improvements. There are novice users needing help, but for customers such as us, who have been using the solution for over a decade, the response needs to be more timely and efficient, utilizing L2 and L3 support effectively.

Neutral

The initial setup process for BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is very simple for us, as it requires a component to be deployed in the DMZ, from where the file gets transferred centrally to the server.

We are the premium partners for BMC products implementations, recognized as Bihom partner of the year multiple times. I have deployed BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer since 2011 for our customers, and it has been working flawlessly, with people speaking highly about the solution as the heart of their organization.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer has indeed helped our clients reduce IT operation costs. For instance, I implemented it for one of the largest banks in 2012, which reduced their loan process sanction from four days to just two hours, and now it completes in 30 minutes. Additionally, the timeline for the policy dispatch to insurance end clients, which initially took up to ten days, now happens in two hours.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer has some competitors in the market, but according to the Forrester and Gartner reports, nobody is even close to this solution, and I prefer not to use open source options.

BMC Control-M Managed File Transfer is my favorite product, so while I would typically rate it around 9.7 or 9.8, I would ultimately assign it a rating of 10.

On-premises

My use case for Control-M is orchestration.

The best features of Control-M are that it is easy to use; even a non-technical person can learn it in a couple of days with normal documentation and a few videos. Just two days should be sufficient to pick it up. Users do not need to be technical to use the tool, and it is easy to implement and deploy.

Integrating Control-M with other technologies for DataOps and DevOps is easy; we export the jobs we create in a non-prod environment and, on the runtime, we know what variables need to be replaced, and we replace those variables to deploy to prod since Control-M is just an XML file, which is very easy to search and replace.

Control-M is extensively used in our projects. When we start a project and it becomes an enterprise tool, we are required to use it. If there are any failures, we can tag them with an incident, making it easy for maintenance, monitoring, tracking, and deployment since everything is in one place.

The area that has room for improvement in Control-M is a better dashboard. For example, sometimes we have up to 100 Control-M jobs, and there is no dashboard to know how many jobs are in progress, completed, or waiting for files. That requires us to create an additional dashboard on top of the Control-M metadata.

I've been using Control-M since I started my career in data warehousing in 2011 or 2012 since there are more jobs, more tables, and more data loads in data warehousing.

When it comes to stability, I would rate it as good, an eight out of ten.

The scalability of Control-M is good; we create different servers for different projects instead of putting all jobs on one server, and I would rate scalability as an eight out of ten.

The technical support from Control-M is good; I normally never ask the Control-M team for help as it hasn't gotten stuck for me, however, they are supportive, and I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Positive

We have used different orchestration tools, however, I am not aware of the specific tools you mentioned.

The deployment of the solution is easy.

Regarding the duration of deployment, if everything is proper, I don't see a big challenge. Normally, it takes a day if you have the code ready and follow the process and checklist.

The return on investment seen with Control-M is significant; in my experience, we run more than 100 to 150 jobs a day, and to monitor those jobs, one or two people should be enough since it triggers emails for failures and allows us to view logs within Control-M itself.

I'm not sure about the pricing of Control-M. I didn't get involved at the pricing level.

When comparing Control-M with other solutions, I see that everywhere, orchestration tools are simple, and while they come with basic monitoring and alerting functionalities, the decision to use Control-M often comes down to cost, licensing, and maintenance.

My relationship with BMC is good. 

I recommend Control-M if there are no other tools available as it is easy to use, with easy maintenance and a centralized monitoring system, alerting system, and incident creation. 

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

On-premises

Microsoft Azure