Control-M Reviews

I manage the team responsible for the tool itself, the administration of the system. We have a separate team internally that does all the operations and scheduling facets of the tool.

Our primary use case includes supply chain, payroll, accounting, information technology, pricing validations, etc. Most of the areas of the business have some facet into Control-M.

We have automated critical processes with Control-M. It is critical in a lot of different processes. We use it for all of our server patchings every month, we schedule that so that it kicks off the job every month, then goes and updates all of our Linux servers, for example, or our Windows servers. It does deployments and things that are critical to IT business.

Automating this critical process has taken the human aspect out of that process. So, that user no longer has to be up in the middle of the night to do server patching. That's all hands-free, completely zero downtime, knowing back to the customers. It's been beneficial in that regard.

Control-M helped improve data transfers. Specifically things like processing sales information. So we have all the data from our various retail locations, our individual stores that get processed every day automatically using Control-M. And we have our daily pricing information that we send to the stores to update all the pricing for all the different locations. Those would be some of the bigger areas of business automation.

It has helped to improve data transfers. Specifically things like processing sales information. So, we have all the data from our various retail locations, our individual stores that get processed every day automatically using Control-M. And we have our daily pricing information that we send to the stores to update all the pricing for all the different locations.

The most valuable features are the scheduling aspects of the tool and to have everything scheduled and automated to be able to run on a set timeframe.

It's important to our work because we can set it and forget it. We don't have to worry about logging in and pulling that data every day or manipulating the data. It can be run on a schedule and then the proper timing after dependencies are run.

Control-M provides us with a unified view where we can easily define, orchestrate, and monitor all of our application workflows and data pipelines. It's not super important in my particular line, but it is important for the operations and scheduling team that use the tool.

We use mobile interfaces. They allow the development teams to be able to go in and set up the jobs that they need to schedule them accordingly. There's still quite a bit of a gap between the two tools. So, a lot of our users still prefer to use the desktop client.

We use Control-M to integrate our file transfers within our application workflows. But we do not use the BMC MFT program. We use a different third-party file transfer tool.

The ability to integrate file transfers has been instrumental in allowing us to accomplish the things we need with Control-M. In our industry, we take a lot of data and either push it down to the stores or retail grocery stores. We take files and push them down to the stores or pull files and information from the stores and bring it back to corporate. So, it's two-way communication with file transfers. One of the bigger things that we do with Control-M is scheduling data moves and moving data from one location to another.

We also use Control-M to streamline our data and analytics projects. It's not doing any automation now. That would be done with the tools that it feeds, like Cognos or other reporting tools. It just collects data for us.

The integrated guides and how-to videos in the solution's web interface are okay for some of the basic user questions that we get for how to use the tool and do some of the basics, but from an admin standpoint, which is what I'm responsible for with my team, they're not very helpful. We still go back to BMC Docs, open tickets when we need to, and things of that nature to get the information.

The MFT applications should have more functionality and flexibility within that tool. Having more flexibility with that tool for handling the one to many or many to one concept. Like being able to take data from one source and push it to many locations or pull data from many locations and bring it back into a single source. That's why we still use our TPS program for the file transfers just because we don't have some of those capabilities available to us within MFT.

It is still a little difficult to get support on Control-M. It seems to be its own very specific BMC product unlike Remedy and some of the other BMC tools we have. It's quite a bit more difficult to get support for Control-M.

I would rate their support a five out of ten. They're just average to adequate. 

You don't have the option to have a dedicated support resource and engineer. Someone that works with you individually to understand your environment, to help you grow and adapt to new things, and to roadmap your maturity within the tool as you do with some of the other BMC tools.

We use Premier Support for other BMC tools, just not this one.

I have been using Control-M for two and a half years. The company started using the product in 2014.

It's very stable. We have no complaints in this area. The application is very well built and it is reliable. We were also very focused on the idea of availability when we built our environment.  We are setup with both high availability and a fail-over environments. If we were to have problems with a particular server, we have the secondary to fail over to.  Or, worst case, another environment to use in our secondary datacenter.

Scalability is excellent. It's easy enough to spin up another server and add it to the server group.

Pretty much every application that we have in this company has some kind of Control-M piece to it. That's everything from accounting and payroll for our stores and customer interfaces. We're pushing and pulling data and doing different job-related things for almost all applications.

We'll continually use Control-M. Our IT business has 3,400 people. Control-M is mostly used by some of our development teams, traditional application development groups that develop our in-house applications. We have our system administrators, our infrastructure teams, IT security, operations, and those types of groups.

We require only one staff member for day-to-day administration. She was responsible for all the day-to-day administration of the tool like adding users, provisioning users, making sure hotfixes are applied to system upgrades.  

We recently did overall system health initiatives. It was also a point of contact for our operations scheduling group. If they have questions on the tool if there are any issues, or things of that nature.

Technical support through BMC Support can be challenging at times.  If any issues need to be escalated to R&D then you have to work with directly with the team in Israel.  This can cause problems coordinating between time zones.  

We previously used ESP. There were a few reasons the company decided to move from ESP to BMC Control-M.   

1. The need for a product that was distributed based vs. mainframe based.  The company was working to retire the mainframe so there wasn't as much of a need for a product that was heavily mainframe focused. 

2. We were told that BMC Remedy and BMC Control-M were integrated so job failure ticket automation would be simple.

3. There was a desire to have the same vendor for our automation, orchestration, monitoring, CMDB, and ITSM tools.  BMC was able to meet this requirement.

For the initial conversion, we used BMC. Through the last couple of upgrades, we used other BMC preferred partners.

We have used both CFS and Cetan Corporation to assist us with upgrading the application.  Both companies were knowledgeable and we were able to perform the upgrades without problems.

Recently, we have been able to upgrade the environments without assistance from a third party.

The licensing and pricing are bundled together with our other BMC products. I don't know the specific cost of Control-M by itself. For us, it is based on how many jobs we run annually.  We run roughly 9,000 jobs a year.

If I had to guess, I would say it's in the neighborhood of about $250,000.

Since it is based on a per-job run, if we increase the number of jobs that we run annually, the cost will increase accordingly.

There are also additional operational costs, hardware for servers, databases, BMC maintenance, etc.

Yes, other vendors were evaluated at that time.  Control-M was selected primarily because of the integration between it and other BMC tools.

Make sure that you spend enough time to design and build your environment, both high availability and failover are critical to overall success.  Because we rely on Control-M so heavily, it needs to always be available. Control-M is critical to the success of our business, we cannot accept downtime. We do everything we can to keep the system running 24/7, 365. For example, we have invested additional time and resources to fully automate our monthly server patching. Now we can patch our environment with zero impact to jobs. 

Another piece of advice, use BMC as a partner for professional services, especially when doing your initial implementation.  It is a big endeavor and BMC can help you be successful.  Lastly, spend time training your staff on how to use and administer the product.  Control-M is a powerful but complex application.  It requires skilled and knowledgeable operators and admins to keep the system working well.

Our use case was mainly about consolidating our data pipeline from different sources and doing some data transformations and changes. We needed to get data from different sources into a state where we could act on it into one consolidated data set.

It gave us the ability to consolidate a diverse set of solutions into one comprehensive solution that streamlined our development processes. It was straightforward to adopt and we could build on existing skills without having to have 10 solutions for 10 problems.

And when it came to creating actionable data, it gave us the ability to move faster and at scale. By adopting a solution like Control-M, we were able to scale and deliver faster data transformations and maneuvers, turning data into insights in a more efficient and scalable way.

The ability to deliver faster and at scale was important. Business and management always wanted us to deliver faster and bigger and we were able to do both with the solution that we implemented using Control-M. We were able to respond faster to changes and business needs, at scale. 

Having a feature-rich solution enabled us to aggregate all of our processes into it, and that made the overall execution, from a project and portfolio perspective, a lot more efficient.

We were also able to respond to audit requests, because it's centralized, in a much more efficient way.

There isn't a single feature that is most valuable, but if I had to choose one, it would be the rich ability it gave us for making customized scripts. That was probably the most unique feature set for our situation. We used Control-M's Python Client and cloud data service integrations with AWS and, as a feature, it was very customizable. It gave us a lot of flexibility for customizing whatever data maneuver we wanted to do within a pipeline.

The Python Client and cloud data service integrations have a rich set of features with flexibility. It did not require additional, crazy skills or experience to deal with it. It was a nice transition into enabling a data scientist to leverage existing skills to build those pipelines.

Creating, integrating, and automating data pipelines with Control-M was straightforward. It did require some knowledge and training, but compared to other solutions, it was a lot simpler. Working with data workflows, with the data-coding language integrated into Control-M, was straightforward. The level of difficulty was somewhere between "medium" and "easy." It was not that hard to leverage existing skills and knowledge within this specific feature.

The user interface for creating, monitoring, and ensuring delivery of files as part of the data pipeline was very actionable. It was almost self-explanatory. Somebody with basic user-interface experience could navigate the calls to action and the configuration that is required. It was well-designed.

I would like to see them adopt more cloud. Most companies don't have a single cloud, meaning we have data sources that come from different cloud providers. That may have been solved already, but supporting Azure would be an improvement because companies tend not to have only AWS and GCP.

I used it for a couple of years.

It's fairly stable. I don't recall any specific issues. 

It's fairly scalable. For our needs, it scaled very nicely.

We have a shared model where we have a centralized, shared service organization when it comes to data. Different people will use it, but it's centralized.

We used other solutions from BMC as well, and their customer support was always great. I give them a 10 out of 10.

Training or a Knowledge Base were available or you could ask a question by submitting a ticket.

Positive

We had DataStage from IBM and SSIS.

The switch was really about streamlining the process. We had other tools that only did partial processes or were not doing it with the speed and efficiency that we were looking for. We were looking for a solution that could streamline things and solve 90 percent of our data challenges.

The analysis that I saw validated that the ROI was within a couple of years.

The pricing was competitive, from what I understand.

We looked at continuing to use the same solutions we had been using, and there were a couple of other cloud-based solutions that we evaluated. One of them was Matillion. The ease of use was one component of our decision, as was the flexibility of scripting with Python. Those were the key differentiators.

For the on-prem solution, we had to do the patching and whatever was required by the vendor, but the cloud implementation was a model that was usable. The upgrades, changes, and patching are done directly by the vendor.

Control-M was a critical piece of the puzzle, to help us with all the data transformation and projects that we had to do. It was part of either one specific project or even a larger project that required that middle data transformation so that we could get to analytics or any other consumption of that data.

A lot of the things we've done are just based on our needs, not so much because the product allows you to do it. Basically, I can do everything in Control-M. I mean, we've got plugins for Oracle, SQL, and Informatica, and I can go on and on and on. However, we don't use any of them as our developers prefer not to. A lot of what they do is they do the necessary connections through the batch files themselves.

It's used for our daily batch. It handles all the batch processes and a lot of our maintenance processes. I would say most of it is file movement of some sort. A lot of it is daily processing, to get it in. Our data warehouse runs through Control-M. The big impetus behind it, when we purchased it, was due to the fact that the auditors wanted a more robust system and something that they could audit. Control-M gives you everything you need for that.

It allows us to automate a lot of the jobs that used to run manually. Everything is automated. We can automate a lot of different processes using Control-M. You can know where it's at, and you can follow it, follow the job flow, from one job to the next, and whatnot, very easily. 

We used to run a lot of stuff in AT scheduler and Cron which really didn't meet the needs, especially for the auditors. We've taken that, and we've made the system where you know immediately if you got a problem with a job string. Our operations department will page it out overnight if we have a problem, and we take care of it. It's like any other system. If it allows you to do what you need to get done, it's the same every day, you know that you're going to get the same process. It drives the process.

Like most schedulers, you can bring jobs in many different ways. There are different ways to execute things. One of the things we had was when we were taken over. They were using a combination of the CA scheduler that they had, and they were also using SQL scheduler to do a lot of it. Prior to us converting our data warehouse system to Control-M, they were using the Informatica scheduler. None of this met any of the auditors. The auditors didn't like it as everything was spread out on different systems. They couldn't keep track of jobs. Everything's consolidated now. Everything's running off Control-M. You can follow everything through the entire process. We kick off all SQL jobs using Control-M. They were using SQL to launch just batch files, which had nothing to do with SQL - they were just scheduling it through SQL.

The capabilities of auditing have been great. 

The ease of use is one of its great aspects. It's very easy to use and very easy to pick up. 

It's got an excellent graphical interface. I haven't seen that in anything else that I've looked at, however, that said, I haven't looked at many lately. 

I know that in 20 years, I have had probably two problems where I've had to call the company to get immediate assistance from them, where we had a system down or something. Its performance is very reliable.

It integrates with other applications. You can use PowerShell, you can use Perl, you can use whatever. It doesn't really care. It's just running a process.

The product scales quite well.

Technical support is very helpful and available 24/7.

The stability is excellent.

I will say that at one time we used to run on Solaris and not Windows, however, we were taken over by a company that decided that everything had to be on Windows. We put this in when we were the previous company, and then we were more or less given to the current bank by the FDAC, during the 2009 banking crisis. At that point, they wanted us to implement their solution, which was rudimentary at best. It was a CA product that did not meet the needs. I could not convert what we had in Control-M, to run in that system at that time.

While they have a very good reporting facility, the reports that I'm asked to produce, a lot of times aren't necessarily what we need. They need to be better customized. I haven't been able to produce the right reports through their reportings facility. I was a Perl programmer and a C programmer at one time. Perl just worked right in there. A lot of our reports were written in Perl, which right now they don't like at all as Perl's not ideal for our company. 

I can't get to the database tables I want to get to. The database tables they allow me to get to aren't the ones I'm looking for, as, usually, I'm going right into the database, into the raw database, and pulling things out for the reporting I need. I can't do that through their reporting facility, Crystal Reports.

We've been using the solution for two decades or so. It's been about 20 years. We've used it for a long time. We started using it around 2000 or 2001.

We've had issues only twice in 20 years. It is very stable. I will say that they have improved it. Originally, when we put in a Windows version of it, we had problems with the database that they were using at the time, which was a Postgres database. Then, at one point, we decided to go to Solaris and run it on Solaris. We had it on Solaris for six years. In six years, I don't think we ever rebooted the server. It ran for six years without any hiccups, any problems. The Solaris system was rock solid. 

Now, the problems we run into, if we run into any problems, are Windows-based problems. Those Windows-based problems are, for example, if you don't reboot a server once a month, which, thank God we do, you can have issues. We reboot as we have to patch monthly now and we have to reboot it every month. However, we would see if we went two, three months on Windows, that we would start seeing some problems. Rebooting it took care of it.

That said, that's a Windows problem, not so much a Control-M issue, as we see problems on Windows servers that run for two or three months in any application.

Right now, we are running on their small database model. We, at one time, had about 2,500 jobs, and we were on a medium model then. Now, we're down to about 800 jobs a day. It's just a matter of the requirements we have. In terms of scalability, it scales up very nicely. It works very well. You can have multiple servers if you need multiple servers. Currently, we have one Control-M server and one EM server. We used to have two Control-M servers and one EM - EM being the enterprise manager, which is really what's running the system. The Control-M servers basically take care of the current runs, what's currently running on a system. Adding more jobs and adding more resources to it is not a problem.

It does high availability. We don't use the high availability due to the fact that we have another solution. We run everything in a virtual environment, and take regular snapshots if the system goes down. Should that happen, the snapshots are replicated from our production site to our DR site. We bring up the latest snapshot in the DR site if we lose the production site. It's up and running within minutes, literally. It's just a matter of going in and saying, "Bring these servers up." And they come up.

Currently, we've got three schedulers using the solution. They have more or less God rights, although they can't change user permissions. Those three schedulers can do anything with the jobs - delete, add, create, whatever. We have about 10 operators that have access to it as well. The operators have a somewhat reduced role from the schedulers. They can do a lot of it. They can bring in jobs, they can rerun jobs, they can kill jobs, however, there's a lot that they can't do. Then we have probably about 60 users that are developers, and they're basically read-only. They can see the jobs, they can see what happens. A lot of it has to do with corporate decisions on control. They didn't want the developers to be able to define jobs and items of that nature. They wanted the developers to define the job through a worksheet, and then the schedulers would actually implement the job. That's just a matter of policy, basically. They monitor their jobs that way. I'm trying to allow them to be able to at least bring in their jobs, for test - not for production - so that they can make it policy change here. If they could do that, it would greatly enhance their ability to get testing done. The downside to that is that you might have a developer that just keeps running the job over and over, and over, and over again, which I've seen happen too. Personally, I can do everything in test. I can't do anything in production at all, except view jobs. I have read-only on everything in production, except for the configuration part of it, to which I have full rights. I used to almost be a fourth scheduler at one time. At this point, there's no need. The limits of my job have been redefined several times.

Overall, the usage of the product in the company is very extensive. There's not a part of our daily businesses that's not reliant upon Control-M. If Control-M was done, the company would be at a standstill, literally.

That said, likely we won't increase usage. The company we just merged with, another organization and it's debatable as to how these things go. They have about 5,500 jobs. We used to have a lot of jobs like that, however, the business drives what we do. 

The technical support is probably the best I've ever worked with.

If I need support help from them, if we are down, they get back to me, if not immediately, within an hour. 24/7. And usually, we're up within an hour, after the first contact. They help greatly with planning for upgrades. I need to contact them here in the near future. They have a group called the AMIGO group, that does nothing but migrations and upgrades. I need to get with them to go over my plans for transitioning from the old servers to new servers. They will verify that what I'm doing is the right way to do it. If it's not, they will tell me how to do it, which is an excellent resource. 

They have a very large knowledge base. It's integrated with everything I've ever had to have it integrate with. Their support's been very good.

When I call BMC, I get an immediate response. I've had products that I've supported, that I've called companies and been on hold overnight. I've literally gone home for the night and left my phone on my desk, off the hook, on hold, and come in the next morning, and I'm still on hold, listening to the hold message due to the fact that the support hasn't answered yet.

We have recently merged with a company that uses Tidal, and of course, they want to hang on to theirs. We use Control-M. I've actually used several other scheduling products in the past, however, we've been on Control-M now for over 20 years.

I'm actually in the process of doing an implementation right now. I'm replacing our current production system. We're replacing EOS, actually, therefore, I'm doing a straight install of everything on the new servers. It is very straightforward. The install is not really difficult. It's fairly simple if you understand how databases work and whatnot. There's really no problem doing it.

In my case, I can bring up a Control-M server within hours. I only say that as I've done that, as we were not DR prepared back during Hurricane Sandy. I had to bring up a production version of it in Cleveland, in our DR site in Cleveland. Within 24 hours, we were up and running. Therefore, if you need it done fast, it can be done. It's just a matter of, are you willing to put in what you need to put in to do it.

It's a fairly easy install, really. I personally have never had any training on Control-M. Other people in my organization have had training. That said, I'm the one that put it in and I'm the one that read the manual. That's where I got all my information from, was from reading manuals and whatnot, and directly working with it.

I can't speak to what our support costs are. That's out of my realm at this point. At one point, I had an idea, however, I couldn't even tell you what that is anymore. I know that our licensing is based on jobs. We buy licenses based on the number of jobs. Currently, we have about 2,500 licenses. We used to run more jobs than we do right now. We did not get rid of those licenses. 

It's basically $100 a job, give or take.

They also don't charge us for items such as the plugins for MFTP, which we don't use, although we could. They wouldn't charge us for Oracle, SQL, or Informatica. It's a reporting product. 

There's no licensing for the server, there's no licensing for the EM server. All that stuff comes as part of the product. It's all-inclusive.

From what I've seen and heard from the other company about Tidal, that's where they're making their money from - the plugins. Whereas Control-M doesn't charge us. The plugins are basically free for us. I'm sure there is a charge for support every year. I have no idea what that is. I don't get down into that level.

I just tell them, "Yes, we need this" and then the purchasing staff takes care of the actual details.

At the time we were looking for a product, I looked at five or six different scheduling packages. By far, at that time, Control-M was leaps and bounds above all the rest of them.

We're customers and end-users.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

By far, BMC, from what I have seen, is the industry leader and they are the Cadillac of scheduling. I've worked with a lot of different scheduling systems over the years. When I first got into IT, years and years and years ago, as a JCL programmer, basically you had access to the scheduling system and you took care of the jobs. When jobs failed, you would do the restarts on them, do whatever fix needed to be done, and get them restarted, and get them to rerun. That was on a mainframe. 

I've used Cron, and I've worked with a number of different schedulers. In the Windows world, other than AT scheduler and Control-M, that's about all I've ever used. I did review five different products back when we put this in.

Having worked with so many products, and with this one for so long, I can advise that new uses should follow the installation instructions and notes. They're very simple, very straightforward. I would advise others to not get scared off by the price as, initially, the pricing seems rather steep, compared to some of the others. However, they all have their pricing quirks, and they're all making money in one way or another. The way they make their money is based on the way they license it. The per-job style actually works out very well.

I'd rate the product at a perfect ten out of ten. It has been one of the most stable products that I have supported, and I have supported a lot of different products. I've had fewer problems with it than I have with just about anything else I've supported. 

I am using Control-M for cloud infrastructure and automation-related tasks. As a cloud engineer, my work involves scheduling, deploying, managing, and monitoring processes for infrastructure and workflows. It is integrated with a CI/CD toolchain as part of our DevOps culture.

I am using the cloud version. I am using Helix Control-M.

Control-M has good integration capability. It integrates well with all the solutions. It also has good reporting capabilities.

Control-M has improved our organization's functions by supporting high availability and integrating with CI/CD workflows. It helps maintain high availability and manage workflows across the production environment, increasing our productivity.

Additionally, Control-M has offered broad-level exposure that has increased our efficiency. Our workflows run smoothly. Everything is easy. We have had very positive feedback.

Control-M is fine to integrate with our DevOps toolchain. It is neither difficult nor easy.

Control-M made it more simple to create, integrate, and automate data pipelines across on-premises and cloud technologies. It is very comprehensive.

Control-M provides workflow orchestration, including scheduling, deploying, managing, and monitoring workflows. It helps us meet our service-level agreements. It is integrated into our CI/CD pipeline. It enhances our operational productivity.

The UI can be challenging for new users due to its learning curve. Additionally, there are some errors during automation. More detailed logs would be helpful.

We would also like enhanced API support. The APIs should be more comprehensive.

I have been using Control-M for almost two and a half years.

Control-M is stable so far, with no issues regarding crashing or lagging.

Control-M is very scalable. It can absorb more workload wherever needed.

We have had occasional response issues with their customer service. They do not always provide timely support.

Neutral

We have used Redwood RunMyJobs and Apache Airflow. Control-M offers more features under one umbrella. It has cloud-native support, real-time analytics, and other features.

The initial setup was challenging due to network setup issues and a lack of timely support from the service team. Its implementation took about a month. We did not have any downtime.

We did the deployment in-house without using an integrator or consultant.

Pricing is generally affordable, though some features cost a bit more.

New users should familiarize themselves with the tools and undergo training. It is essential to understand the necessity of using Control-M in your organization. I would recommend starting with your workflows and gradually integrating it with all the tools.

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

Our organization is a bank, and all batch processes are in Control-M. 

We have installed it on a mainframe. It is an on-premise distributed system.

For the bank, Control-M is one of the jewels of the queen. It is the heart of the bank. For batch processes, Control-M is most important. We have Control-M working seven days a week and 24 hours a day. 

All file transfers are managed from Control-M MFT. Some of our clients who are small companies send the data to the bank about their employees' salaries. The bank takes that data and prepares payments for different people in the company. Control-M MFT is used for the information transfer between the bank and Visa, American Express, or Mastercard. All of the information is sent by using file transfer in Control-M.

It has improved our data transfers. It gave us the security and the vision of what is happening with our file transfers.

All of its features are very valuable. We have been working with Control-M for many years. For people who have been working with it, there is no other way. This product is a part of us.

It is very easy to use. Our operators are new people, and they start to work with Control-M from the first day in the bank.

In our bank, all new applications need to be implemented with Control-M. We try to look for the best way to establish communication between both products. One of the new features for us is Application Integrator. It is a very interesting feature because it lets us integrate with those applications that are not included in Control-M. By using Application Integrator, we can easily integrate new technologies. With the help of Application Integrator, we recently integrated with Blue Prism, which is a robotic product. We could integrate such processes into Control-M. Now, we are working with Ansible, and we are putting Ansible automated processes into Control-M.

In general, it is a very good product, and we are very happy with it. It meets all of our expectations.

Although we have used the Smart Tables facility for a long time, today we have had a need to process services that include processes that combine Mainframe and non-mainframe jobs (Windows, SAP, Informatica). An improvement for Control-M EM would be the possibility of creating combined Smart Tables, that is, they include mainframe and non-mainframe jobs so that the work order can be generated with the Unique option. Today, to achieve this we must manage global Conditions with Variables and generating a unique code to pass to the MF tables and not MF. Let me name this feature “Global Smart Tables”.

Another need we have is that Control-M MFT also supports commercial file transfer protocols such as CA-XCOM.

I have been working with this product for more than 30 years. Personally, I have been working with Control-M since 1988. Here, in the bank where I am working, when we started in 1995, the product was on a mainframe.

It is the most stable solution that we have had. It has been working on the mainframe for two years without any problem. It is a very stable product.

We have not had any problem with scalability. The bank has been growing for the last 15 years, and we had no problem with Control-M. Control-M has adapted to our growing architecture. All new applications that we have, such as SAP, Informatica, or databases, are covered by Control-M.

We have about 40,000 processes per day. We also have 100,000 execution per day. All batch processes are integrated into Control-M from different systems, such as Windows, SAP, Informatica, etc. All file transfers between the headquarter and the branches and the external providers are managed from Control-M.

The bank has 6,000 employees. The system and IT teams have about 600 people. We have about 30 people for operations, monitoring, and implementation. In the technology area or system programmer area, we have six people. All of them are using Control-M.

We work around the clock, and we have three teams that work per day. Each team has about 10 people. We have people for Operation Console who are looking at batch processing in terms of whether it is working fine. Four people are there to implement new jobs in Control-M. They are working with the calendars and resources. We have three people to administer the product, and there are other people to administer the jobs on Control-M. 

BMC has very good people. Their support has been excellent. We had very quick replies. Their technicians have always been very friendly, and they have a lot of knowledge of the product.

They always provided a very good solution. When we had a Severity One problem, they call us immediately and solved the problem even on the weekend.

Its initial setup was a long ago. It was very simple. The bank had about 6,000 offices, and it took about eight months to automate the whole batch processing.

At that time, people were not ready to use automated processes. The most difficult thing was to change the mind of the people. When we started with automation, people thought that they will lose their jobs with this kind of tool, and it was very hard to change the mind of the people. Using Control-M was very simple, and it was easy to use Control-M to automate manual jobs. From that stage till now, all new systems are syncing with Control-M, and all new developments are integrated into Control-M.

Initially, we used a partner. At that time, it was New Dimension Software. It became BMC in early 2000. Now, we have a lot of people in the bank with Control-M profiles. When we use any new feature of Control-M, we don't need any partner.

I am the Control-M specialist for technical support in the bank. My job in the bank is to set up all new products.

I have been working with Control-M for 30 years. So, I have seen other products. It is very easy to automate our daily manual jobs. It is not at all complex to set up the product. It is also very easy to teach to another person. It is not complex like other schedulers. It is a very easy tool.

So far, we have only been using its Windows client. We have now started to use its web interface. We are also starting to use the DevOps technology with Control-M.

We have migrated from Control-M 9.18 a month ago. We will start using centralized profiles. We will also start to work with Manage File Transfers (MFT) B2B. It is a new feature that we will start using to improve our customer delivery processes.

I would rate Control-M a 10 out of 10.

It provides enterprise scheduling for a lot of things, e.g., supply chain, payroll, reporting, sales and marketing, and web services, which is our online store and ordering.

We are currently running jobs on Control-M for databases, web apps, proprietary applications, Workday, Oracle, WebSphere, Kafka, and Informatica stuff on Unix and Linux. It is flexible. I haven't had any problems with compatibility.

It used to be on-prem, but now it is in a different data center in a different city. So, it is a VM.

We use the GUI, but there is a web interface that some users are using on the business side. Those users can easily check on their job flows on the web interface, so they can see whether their job has completed or it is waiting for something. It can check the status and  history of what happened, for example, the previous day.

The scheduling is quite easy to use and pretty robust.

Control-M provides us with a unified view, where we can easily define, orchestrate, and monitor all our application workflows and data pipelines. It also provides the ability to filter. So, if I don't want to see everything, I can also narrow it down or open ViewPoint. This is very important since we have thousands of jobs to monitor. If we did not have this ability, it would be very difficult to see what is going on.

It is easy to use, and you can set things up very quickly. We can copy jobs, making copies of the existing configurations and setup. 

Control-M reporting is a bit of a pain point right now. Control-M doesn't have robust reporting. I would like to see better reporting options. I would like to be able to pull charts or statistics that look nicer. Right now, we can pull some data, but it is kind of choppy. It would be nicer to have enterprise-level reporting that you can present to managers.

I have been using Control-M for at least 12 years.

I haven't seen any significant issues with Control-M in several years, e.g., we haven't had to call support. So, it has been very stable.

It runs all the time. We are running thousands of jobs with little issue, especially when I compare it to some of the other systems that we use for other things. It has been very stable.

One to two people are needed for day-to-day administration. I usually do it myself.

I haven't seen any problems with scalability in terms of performance or stability. 

There are at least 50 people using Control-M. Some of them would be architects, senior programmer analysts, database administrators, Unix administrators, software engineers, and team leads.

I had an issue one time at my previous company. There was some issue with the database. We worked with Level 2 support to fix it. Other than that, there is not too much to talk about really in terms of problems. 

The integrated guides and how-to videos are very good in the solution’s web interface for reducing the time to full productivity with Control-M. BMC puts out a lot of webinars and videos on their YouTube channel. Sometimes I do use those. I go in and watch the video or webinar to see what is new or how to do things, which is very valuable.

We migrated from CA Unicenter, which was out of service and quite clunky. That system didn't have a graphical user interface; it was command line-based. It had a console, so it was very difficult to see what was going on. It was also difficult to troubleshoot. It took a long time to find information or set things up. Therefore, management decided to move to Control-M, especially since I had experience with it. It has been much easier to use and work with than CA Unicenter.

CA didn't have File Watchers. It had another way of achieving that outcome, but it was very cumbersome and not always reliable. It was also difficult to troubleshoot. 

There is a lot of logic in Control-M that you can do. For example, after a job completes, there are actions you can do. There are actions before the job completes or before it starts. There are actions you can do afterwards. There was some logic that you can add to the job, and we just didn't have it with CA.

The calendars are also a lot easier to work with using Control-M. The CA calendars were just terrible. In Control-M, we have a lot less calendars, about 20 calendars, compared to 80 or 100 in CA.

It is faster to implement things like new jobs or projects with Control-M. Whereas, in the past, certain things would be executed manually, like scripts and workflows. It is very easy to use. I can set up jobs and workflows quickly, which helps developers to test.

It is very easy to set up a PoC. If someone just wants to do a quick test, it is very easy to do. Assuming that everything is in place, it is quite easy to test or set up cyclic jobs.

We did the setup twice. The first time was a migration from another system, which was not BMC. That took three months, which was still pretty fast, and it was very successful. The second time was an upgrade to version 19, and that took about two months, and it was also quite successful. From my perspective, the solution was very good as far as upgrades go. We didn't have any major issues, before or after the upgrade.

We had a vendor help us out, but overall it was very smooth and a success. We used Control-M’s Conversion Tool when migrating from CA Unicenter to Control-M and the vendor helped us. Using the Conversion Tool was very important because it speeded up the process. It took all the information from one system and transferred it over, which saved us a lot of time. So, we spent more time on the verification. We spent less time on the setup and spent more time just verifying the setup to make sure everything was correct. It was a time saver for us.

My experience with BMC during our initial deployments and upgrades was very good. I got quick responses with good information. The people that I dealt with were knowledgeable and helped to resolve the problems. So, my experience was very positive. I would rate them as 10 out of 10. I never had any issues.

Control-M has helped us achieve three times faster issue resolution. We have it integrated with ServiceNow, so it tickets automatically. Whereas, in the past, we used to do it manually. We had operators opening tickets, so it speeds up ticket resolution for opening and assigning a ticket. Also, Control-M captures some errors. Sometimes, this helps to troubleshoot any problems. You can set up alerts for jobs that run too long, etc. So, it has a lot of features that we use.

Control-M helped us double or triple our Service Level Operations performance.

CA sent us a proposal and IBM also sent one for Tivoli Workload Scheduler. We saw their presentations and packages, then did some research. We thought Control-M was the best solution based on experience and feedback from others. I had experience on Control-M already. I had been working on it for several years and had a positive experience. The other thing was just ease of use. Tivoli and Unicenter just do not seem as polished. They didn't look as easy to use, especially Tivoli. I think we heard that Tivoli was very clunky and not easy to use.

It was mostly my experience with it. Control-M was easy to use, very stable with no issues, and easy to configure and maintain. Whereas, CA was not as easy to use nor polished. CA also always keeps on buying other companies and incorporating things, so the experience is not as smooth. With Tivoli, we just heard that it was terrible to use and lacked a good interface. We had another Tivoli product from IBM for backups, and it was just terrible.

Give Control-M a chance. If somebody is considering the solution, they should install a demo on their system and use it. It is very easy to use. It has a lot of options and features. BMC is pretty good when it comes to upgrades and implementing new features, so there is always stuff coming in. There are a lot of new options that we haven't even tried.

Of course, you should compare all your options, but Control-M is a good choice. It is probably the best.

In the future, we will probably use Control-M as part of our DevOps automation toolchains and leverage its “as-code” interfaces for developers.

I would rate it as nine out of 10. The reporting is something I would like to see improved. Other than that, there is not much I dislike about it. I work with it every day. I have been working with it for the last dozen years or so. It is an excellent product. It just needs more reporting.

We are using Control-M mainly to schedule our jobs and also for file transfers. We are now in the process of using Control-M to take some workload off our mainframe. 

We use it mainly for job automation and handling large chunks of data automatically.

We have Informatica workflows, which make up about 50% of all our jobs. Then, we have all kinds of software on Windows and Linux servers. The file transfers are another big thing on Control-M. However, we are mainly using it to automate our in-house scripts, like monitoring and whatever needs to be done.

We mainly use desktop clients. Some users are also on the web. Currently, we don't use the mobile interface at all.

We have some batch jobs or Informatica workflows that create the files for file transfers. We have those on Control-M, so it is all automated and happens through the conditions.

Our daily customers' accounts and credit card actions files are processed by Control-M automations every day. That is pretty much part of the core of our business. Other critical components are some monitoring scripts and health checks on our servers, which are run from Control-M. This has made things easier because we have the Batch Impact Manager on Control-M. So, we can use that to send emails, like, "We haven't received the daily-files yet. Or, the daily files are going to be late." Therefore, we have proactive monitoring if things aren't running on schedule.

I don't think it transfers data any faster than before. However, we now have better control and can also send emails to the correct people directly from Control-M, like, "Hey, this transfer is now complete." In terms of data transfers, and if something goes wrong, it is easy to just rerun the file transfer.

If we are using the Batch Impact Manager, it has caught a few times where the job has been running for a while and may not meet the deadline. There may be a loop somewhere, where one job has been stuck for a few hours. So, in this case, the Batch Impact Manager notifies us that it is taking quite long. There are days that this is useful to locate issues.

Multiple scheduling options allow you to do anything you want, whenever you want, and however you want. You can easily be in control when things happen.

Control-M provides us with a unified view where we can easily define, orchestrate, and monitor all our application workflows and data pipelines. This is quite important because I am our Control-M administrator. So, it is pretty important to me personally, but also for the company. It may not yet be quite in the center of our business, but we are clearly using Control-M as our main scheduling program.

Since we are using version 9.0.18, the web interface is a bit outdated and doesn't really support all our needs. However, we are migrating to 9.0.20, which should give us a lot more options, even in the web interface.

The unifying features between Control-M for different platforms needs improvement. The scheduling options on the Control-M mainframe jobs are different than they are on our Linux server. There are a few differences here and there.

There are capability-related issues between versions, but I think the latest fix pack has that covered. BMC has been doing a pretty good job about this.

I have been Control-M for two and a half years.

The stability is pretty good. We haven't had any issues with Control-M being unstable in the last two years. They are up and running 24/7.

One person is the minimum needed for day-to-day administration of Control-M. We have three admins, who are also our SFTP and file transfer team. Someone just decided that they should be the Control-M admins, so they made all three of us go through the admin classes. Now, we have three admins. 

Scaling has been pretty simple and a straightforward process. We just recently got the Control-M Workload Change Manager, which is an additional plugin to the main software. That installation was also quite easy. We got it up and running pretty quickly.

We have about 10 people using Control-M actively, who are system specialists and business intelligence specialists. We have three admins, then we have some batch job designers from the mainframe team using Control-M. We have also trained some of our Informatica people so they can monitor their own workflows and create new jobs. They can basically do whatever they need to do by themselves. 

I would rate their technical support as five out of five. They have been really helpful and knowledgeable. Even though there have been some cases where support has originally said, "Well, we don't know for now," they have asked for data and provided us with a solution pretty much every time we have had any issues. 

If they don't have a solution on hand, they take it to the lab. We communicate with them and the lab, then everything works out pretty well. Even if there is a big issue, which isn't very common, they have just taken it, and said, "We will see. We will go to the lab where we will test".

The interface guide and YouTube videos have been somewhat useful. However, there is too much data in there. When you try to search something, you get too many search results that weren't exactly what you were looking for.

I don't think anything has changed that much. We used to have CA-7 before Control-M. Now, Control-M is just kind of taking over. So, not much change happened. It is just a new software to do the old job. 

We have benefited from Control-M. It is much easier to use and a bit more versatile than CA-7. 

I personally don't use CA-7 because it is located on the mainframe, and I'm not a mainframe guy.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup of Control-M.

We are currently in the process of upgrading Control-M into a new version. We have been working closely with BMC's technical people. 

So far, I think it has been good. No one has been talking about getting rid of Control-M. It is more like we are increasing our Control-M usage, if anything.

Control-M has improved our service levels on pretty much any aspect. Now, we can see the Control-M estimates of when a certain job will be completed. They become pretty accurate once a job has been running for a week or two. It can predict quite well when a certain job will be ready. So, if a customer asks us, "When are we going to receive our file?" I can check on Control-M, then say, "Well, I would say around...," whatever time it shows and let them know.

We have the CA-7 on the mainframe, and I have seen it being used along with Control-M. Control-M seems to offer a much better user interface, mainly because it is graphic and not on the black screen of a mainframe session.

I don't think our data analysts are currently using Control-M. We do have Informatica software in use, which is some sort of data analyst software.

Always make sure that you have at least double checked everything, because Control-M does everything you tell it to do and exactly as you tell it. Therefore, make sure you are giving the right orders.

Working with Control-M has been pretty complex, but that has been mainly due to our corporate policies since we are located in Finland and in the banking sector. So, there are hundreds of things that we had to consider. While it has been a complex process, it has been more because of our corporate policies rather than Control-M. Once we decided everything, and everything was approved, just taking Control-M into use has been a pretty straightforward process.

Definitely take the scheduler course provided by BMC. That was hugely helpful for all of us. Trying to learn Control-M on your own will be a tough path to walk.

We have Control-M on the mainframe. As the mainframe will be taken down in a few years time, we have to replace the mainframe scheduling agent with something else. That will be Control-M.

Our dev teams are running their own fields. Once they are ready, they go through systems to store into production, then we can automate it. However, during DevOps and other testing phases, we may not use Control-M at all.

I would rate Control-M as a nine out of 10.

Most of my work goes through Control-M, e.g., all my development work. When it goes to production, it moves to batches. This will be either daily or monthly batches.

There are many applications running in Control-M, e.g., a quantitative risk management ALM application.

Most of our production jobs at the organization level are fixed through Control-M, running as either mainframe jobs, Informatica jobs, or QRM software-related jobs. Also, file sharing through FTP jobs and dependency setups between different software patches all run through Control-M.

We use file transfer jobs in our workflows. For example, if I want to share reports to end users in the production shared area, where specific users have access, Control-M makes this very easy as soon as a job is complete. The FTP job copies the report to a defined shared area, triggering an email to the user with a link. As soon as users are notified through email, they can open the email and click on the shared link to view the reports.

We have automated critical processes with Control-M. Our report deliveries are now automated. We automated our batch jobs and can check our dependencies through Control-M with minimal manual intervention. This has saved a lot of time and manual mistakes. For example, we used to copy old reports and send them via email, then users would come back to us, saying, "These are not this month's reports. These are old reports." After automating these reports with Control-M, there were no errors at all.

Multiple software can be collaborated through Control-M, then we can seamlessly monitor when it goes into production after a scheduled daily or monthly deployment. Even though we don't have any privileges to change these jobs, we can monitor them with read access and see how they are being executed. We can also verify their dependencies and see the logs. If there are any failures, we can get the logs from Control-M and fix them in the development environment, in the cases that are required to be done as soon as possible. It provides a complete picture about how the batches are running in production.

We have a lot of things that need to be considered. Everything needs to be done one after another in Control-M, where it provides us a pictorial representation of job dependencies, and even a person without technical knowledge can understand it by looking at the pictorial representation of jobs. So, we can provide the exact time when it can start. Then, we can update the users about the expected time for the job's completion. In case of any delays, we can understand them, then provide a new ETA to the users. Without Control-M, it would be difficult to provide these estimates.

We are using the web interface. We are not going through the mobile because we are a bank. Everything we do is through our laptops, not through a mobile. The web interface supports our business initiatives well. Whenever we want to see the updates, we need to connect to Control-M. We know what needs to be monitored and verify them depending on what their dependencies are. If the batch is still running, we can understand the historical information, then calculate and provide an ETA to users.

After we complete FTP jobs, those FTP jobs will be cleared from the Control-M schedule after the noon refresh. So, I struggle to find out where those jobs are saved. Then, we need to request execution of the FTP jobs again. If there could be an option to show the logs, which have been previously completed, that would help us. I can find all other job logs from the server side, but FTP job logs. Maybe I am missing the feature, or if it is not there, it could be added.

When integrating different projects through Control-M, sometimes dependencies cannot be identified. 

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

I have never faced any issues with stability. It is very good.

10 to 20 people are administering it.

I have never faced any issues with its scalability.

500 to 600 people are actively using Control-M. These are business analysts, team leads, managers, developers, and senior developers. Anyone who is touching the development and production would have access. 

Whenever we have issues, they are resolved through our organization's admin.

With the integrated file transfer feature, most things are automated. Previously:

• We used to copy the report, then send manual emails. However, with this feature, we are able to complete tasks with minimal monitoring because they are automated. Users are automatically notified as soon as the reports are complete. 
• We used to work during the daytime and after business hours. We were forced to open and view that the reports were there. Or, we waited until the next day to copy the reports, sharing and sending them by email. With this feature, we are less bothered. We can wait until the morning of the next day. We just go into the office and see if the reports have been shared already, seeing that everything is okay. So, during the night, some reports are generated and emailed to the users. 

The integrated file transfer feature has saved us a lot of time and manual effort, approximately two to three hours a day. Also, users are notified as soon as the reports are complete, where they used to wait until the next morning. They can just verify their email using the office provider mobile. Then, they connect to their laptops and get the reports. So, if they need the reports and are waiting for them, then they are not required to wait until the next morning to receive them, saving about 10 hours of their time.

I was not involved with the initial setup. That was before my time.

Our data transfers have improved using Control-M processes, e.g., our monthly batches. When we used to do things manually, like copying files and reports, we used to take three to four days to complete a batch. However, with the automated file transfers and report sharing, we have been able to complete a batch within two and a half days and our reports are on time to users. So, 30% to 40% of the execution time has been saved.

Control-M has helped us achieve faster issue resolution. Whenever we come across any data-related errors, instead of going into the process, we just get the Control-M log. Nearly 50% of our issues are resolved by looking at the Control-M logs. 

Control-M has helped us to improve Service Level Operations performance by 30%, because we no longer need to manually copy reports and receive email notifications. So, the process has improved a lot.

Organizations looking for seamless integration with different applications can move forward with Control-M. In my experience, Control-M provides a good solution. It also integrates with different applications and software.

At this point, we are not using the solution's streamlining for data and analytics projects.

I would rate it as eight out of 10.