Control-M Reviews

The features most valuable differ from client to client. One of our clients used Control-M to execute multiple scripts in distributed systems and mainframe environments, which in turn ensured proper functioning of equipment, updating data, BI report, etc. over their multiple stores and distribution centre. Another client I worked with required mainly files to be transferred to third parties/vendors/internal businesses.

In all cases, Control-M was able to deliver it flawlessly, and also with add-on security features such as SSH connections and PGP encryption.

Control-M helped automate workloads, which would have taken hours and hours of effort and resources. The tool increased the quality and efficiency of work performed with as minimum manual effort as possible. It also reduced cost to the company by ensuring timely/effective/error-free delivery of tasks.

Control-M as a tool has provided a really stable and effective platform to automate workloads. However, sometimes we do have to use different job types to achieve one task. For this scenario a welcome addition would be an application integrator tool that is part of the Control-M product and can be used to combine multiple/variety of job types into one, allowing us to achieve the same result in one job.

Now, since this tool is something the users would have to define on their own, the pre-packaged or existing functionalities wouldn’t recognise the new template we would have designed, if you work on mass-updating a folder. So we end up having to individually pick out the AI jobs and update it. Understandably, as multiple users will have multiples ways of working with the tool, it would be difficult to pre-code something into the Control-M tool without knowing what will be developed by, say, a random coder in a different part of the world with a different business requirement.

Another aspect that always bothered me, as an administrator, was the Old bug out-New bug in conundrum regarding compatibility of the tool when a new version/FixPack was installed. We would have to then install patches to ensure compatibility. Some of the Control-M modules would need their own patches on EM side/server side, etc.

I have used it for over eight years now.

I have not encountered any stability issues. Control-M, as a tool, has been pretty stable. We did come across some compatibility or connectivity issues at times, which usually were resolved really quickly, as BMC’s wonderful tech team would have released a patch beforehand.

We did initially face some confusion with the GUI servers. What happens is, when you log in to the tool, it automatically picks up the last used GUI server and most of the users, who aren't schedulers or administrators, wouldn't have bothered to check that field or change it. So with more users logging in at the same time, we would have a huge load on the servers and the tool would hang or disconnect or wouldn't connect. We were able to fix it when we created multiple GUI servers to share the load, and some education for the users. :)

I remember another instance during my initial experience with Control-M. There used to be a delay with the NDP (New Day Procedure) as the number of jobs were really high, and it took around 45 minutes to 1.5 hours some days. I haven't seen this issue again, though, and since I didn't get to work in-depth with Control-M back then, I am not sure if that was in fact the tool or our servers having hung processes.

Another instance was when we accidentally had more jobs running at the same time (around 200K Control-M jobs) than what our servers could handle; it all came crashing down. I think it could have been something our servers weren't built to handle, as I did hear of some stories where the company ran 500K jobs at the same time (can't vouch for that story, or how it went for them though).

But these were mostly situational issues, and we were able to learn from it and quickly resolve it, find workarounds/solutions or better server management. So, when we built any new environment, we took all of these into account.

Technical support is excellent. They have a great support team. Also their AMIGO program is great, where you can engage BMC support for migration of your Control-M versions, if you need BMC expertise handy, and they do go through the complete process from start to finish, which is great.

I hadn't had a chance to work with any other solutions.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward, with all the necessary details mentioned in their well-written guides. They have guides for utilities, parameters, installation, administration, etc., which makes it easier to adapt for anyone who is new to the tool (of course, prior understanding of OS/DBs/networks/etc. is expected for you to understand it. ;) )

Control-M does come with a lot of features, but with those features comes the hefty price tag. :) It is reasonable comparatively to some tools that may only do, say, one type of the multiple tasks available in Control-M.

Most of the places I worked already had the solution in place, hence I cannot comment on this.

It is a great product and it will be worth it, if you plan to utilize it to its full potential and on a larger scale.

We use it for scheduling nightly processing of data.

It has improved our organization a lot. It has helped us control any problems that we have with jobs. We have critical jobs that run and we can tell ahead of time if there's a problem. There are alerts that we can send out. And if a certain job goes down, we can tell what the impact is and which jobs are impacted that are waiting for that job to complete.

We're better able to meet our service level agreements because we do a lot with the Fed. There are certain things we have to have done at a certain time. The automation the product provides means we either meet our or are ahead of our deadlines. In addition, we can tell if a job is running long and if it's going to meet the SLA. And if it's running long we can see why it's running long. That's a benefit for us.

Before, we used to schedule jobs on the servers and we'd have issues with the servers. With Control-M, we can tell if there are any issues coming up because we can run the critical path and see if there are problems before they actually happen. On the server, we couldn't necessarily tell if something wasn't running.

When it comes to creating actionable data, it gives the auditors a very accurate and timely report. Our audit preparation process is much easier. We don't have to do as many manual reports anymore. Previously, it was painful. We had to do everything manually with multiple spreadsheets and it was just ugly. With Control-M, it's all in the database and we just extract the information from the database.

Also, our management team is happy with the orchestration of our data pipelines and workflows. They're happy because they get to see the information through the reports that we create. We're also meeting our service level agreements with the end-users, in terms of getting them their data. And customers are happy because their information is being put into their accounts on time and correctly. 

And for projects, the orchestration of data pipelines is helping because we can go through the testing before we move something into production. That means that when we have a major project or an upgrade coming up, they can run it all through the test, try different scenarios, sign off on it, and then move it into production. It's a very streamlined process. If we didn't have Control-M, our projects would be slower because we'd probably have to be doing a lot of stuff manually.

It's very critical for our business. If we have an outage coming up, for example, if we have to shut down power, we can tell what's going to run and if anything is critical during that time frame. We can manage the data much more easily.

• The reporting facility is very helpful in creating reports for auditing. 
• The FTP function is very easy to use.
• It is simple to create, integrate, and automate data pipelines and to ingest data from different platforms. It integrates well between platforms.
• The Control-M interface is also very easy and very comprehensive. It's pretty simple to navigate through all the different functions.

It's very important for us that Control-M orchestrates all our workflows. And the plugins have enhanced what we already have.

I would like to see more auditing capabilities. Right now, it has the basics and I've been trying to set those up to work with what our auditors are looking for.

I've been using Control-M for 12 years.

It's very stable. We've had no downtime with it. The only time that ever happens is if we have lost the server but that's been very rare.

It's scalable. We use it across multiple states, geographically. We have about 1,600 end-users. 

The technical support is wonderful. I've had no issues with them. Contacting them is very simple, you can do it online. And I usually get a response back within an hour.

Positive

We did not really have a previous solution. We just scheduled tasks on the servers. There was no uniformity.

Our return on investment is that we don't have a lot of downtime anymore. The information that we receive and post to our customers' accounts is quick and there are fewer errors. As a result, we don't get as much feedback from the customers compared to what we used to get.

The pricing is reasonable. It's not an exorbitant amount. The licensing is pretty reasonable for the number of jobs that we run.

The plugins will be an additional cost.

The only maintenance required is due to the updates that come out from BMC. Three people manage that part of it.

If someone said to me they're looking for a process automation solution, but they're concerned that Control-M isn't modern enough to work with multiple cloud-based data sources and tools, I would tell them they can test it. They can physically set up a test function and see the product work for themselves. It wouldn't be a full-on PoC, just a snippet, but they could see the functionality and how things interact. It depends on what they're trying to accomplish too.

My advice is "use it." It's very end-user-friendly. It works, depending on what you're trying to do. All the platforms work very well and it doesn't take a lot to get it up and running. And the help is out there if you need help.

Overall, it's very well done. We go through the AMIGO (Assisted Migration Operation) process, and there's a lot of help out there for Control-M. There's a community as well if we have questions. We really have no complaints. The solution has sped up our process execution.

We mainly use Control-M for integration in cloud environments like GCP and AWS. I'm an electrical engineer who mainly uses Control-M to access the files, documents, and data I need.

Control-M ensures that our files are secure and the data pipeline is accessible. It helps. It also allows us to create and monitor data while keeping it secure.

Control-M is critical to our business because we couldn't remotely access our files on the cloud without it. It makes our work easy when there's an issue in our admission sector. I would say it has been a significant help.

The web interface is handy. It's easy to use, and Control-M provides you with the necessary materials to understand the features and perform various tasks.

The interface is user-friendly. I had no prior experience, but I found it easy to work with. I had to review lots of documentation, but it's not difficult to navigate the different applications on it.

Creating and automating data pipelines is a bit difficult for a new user because some of the documentation isn't available. The documentation could be improved, and I'd also like to see automatic upgrades.

I was recently hired at this company, so I've been using Control-M for over a month now.

Control-M is stable. That's one reason the company chose them.

Control-M is scalable.

I rate Control-M eight out of ten. I have contacted them to help me understand how different things work in Control-M.

Positive

I rate Control-M eight out of ten. It's a solid application, and the graphical user interface is intuitive. Control-M can be used for different applications with various parameters.

In my organization, Control-M supports large services and data management. We are mostly using it to schedule jobs in applications, like Informatica PowerCenter, PeopleSoft, and SAP.

We are using the desktop interface.

We utilize Control-M’s streamlining of our data and analytics projects. We are in the retail industry. We are also into other industries, like gas stations, baby stores, and online stores. When it comes to data, we have a lot coming daily. It can be product, purchase, or business information. Only 70% of the data is being used with Control-M. It can be a data transfer from one location to another location. Or, it can be putting the data into a database, then storing it for the future. Every day, the purchase history and product details are uploaded to the database using a Control-M job. Because of that, our business is able to identify our customer's needs. Using its analytics, we are tracking reports that help us provide more services to our customers. Control-M is definitely playing a vital role, in terms of handling a lot of data.

There are very critical processes that we have automated in Control-M, e.g., order confirmation. This is a service when a customer tries to purchase something from our online stores. Normally, when a customer places an order, it makes updates in the background, puts some things in a database, and performs some actions, then it gives an order confirmation. That has to be done within a short span of seconds. For us, that is a critical service because a customer should receive an order confirmation as soon as they make a purchase. This is one thing that we have automated. Because a lot of things are done in the background when a customer tries to order something, the process is automated. Automation of these processes improved the quality of our service. It has also reduced manual efforts and the time to deliver services has decreased, giving us a time advantage.

The scheduling feature and scheduling tool are the most valuable features. I like the scheduling services that we have in Control-M, which are very beneficial to our organization because they are automating things. There is also less manual work. We can schedule a task without any manual interruptions.

We use the File Transfer feature from BMC. Before File Transfer, we used to have to develop the script, which was always a problem for us. After using File Transfer from BMC, a lot of our issues were resolved. Also, it is ready to use. There are many extra, additional features, which help our day-to-day work requirements. File Transfer is a fantastic feature of BMC.

The web version is quite new. When compared to the client version, the web version has made a lot of improvements that needed to be done.

Because of the Role-Based Administration feature, we have been able to give autonomy to our users to develop their cycles how they want. Using this Role-Based Administration feature, we are able to give restricted access based on their job roles. 

The user interface is not that good. While we know that BMC is working on it, the user interface is how we work in the client. Also, the web version is quite slow when compared to the client version. 

Currently, per our requirements, we are planning to use Control-M Web more. However, because the UI is not good and still not up to the standard, we are not using it fully. This is one area where BMC needs to really focus further development.

For installing or upgrading the PeopleSoft and SAP plugins, currently there is no way to do it via Control-M Configuration Manager. So, we are installing or upgrading the plugins, like PeopleSoft and SAP, manually. If BMC could provide an option via Control-M Configuration Manager to upgrade these plugins, it probably would reduce a lot of manual work as well as ease our work. This is one improvement that I personally want to see, because it would help our way of working.

I have been using Control-M for four years and 10 months. It has been close to five years.

Control-M is 100% stable.

For day-to-day administration of Control-M, normally less than five people are required in our organization.

As per our requirements, it is okay most of the time. We do not need to search for another solution. It is very scalable.

There are currently 700-plus people using Control-M services. Their job roles are software developers and system engineers. 

In 80% to 90% of situations, BMC has provided better solutions. In rare cases, the support was not an asset.

BMC Control-M videos and webinars are being uploaded on YouTube or the BMC website. These are really helping us a lot to solve issues or understanding some things. One thing that BMC needs to continue is giving more webinars and uploading videos.

My company used a couple of applications before using Control-M.

When we migrated Control-M, we tried to use Control-M's Conversation Tool. However, it did not fully satisfy us per our requirements.

Normally, we do upgrades ourselves. However, if we need assistance, then we normally contact BMC by opening a case in Case Management.

Control-M has improved quality levels as well as standards. When it comes to cost and time, we have seen an improvement of approximately 70%.

The use of Role-Based Administration has eliminated the need to submit tickets or requests to the Control-M administrator.

BMC's price is based on the number of jobs.

If it is for scheduling, we only use Control-M in our organization. For non-scheduling solutions, then we probably will look at other solutions that are feasible for us.

DevOps automation toolchains are in our roadmap for next year.

We want to use Centralized Connection Profiles in the future.

I would rate it as nine out of 10.

Most of my customer's jobs now run on Control-M, mainly on the finance side and for data management. Those are the core applications that we are running. We are using it as a scheduling tool. 

We have a few other applications that we are migrating to Control-M. Until about two weeks ago we were running on an older version of Control-M, so not many people were interested in migrating to it. But now we are running on an updated, supported version. So more applications should move to it.

Control-M is deployed on-prem.

Let's say the business wants to run some reports. We give them a console or the Self Service where they can run jobs. That way, they don't have to depend on the IT team: “Hey, can you run this job?" And then they have to open a ticket and the IT personnel have to keep to the SLAs. Instead of that, we give them Self Service where they can run their own jobs and they can see the data instantly.

For each job we have SLAs and, based on the SLA we define which ones are critical. The most important processes for us include the SFTP process. We have a few files that are very important and are generated every day. They have to be delivered to the business before they come into the office. That is a very critical process. We tried various options but after implementing Control-M we had better results. Another of our critical jobs is what we call our master data management, where we have near real-time data. We have a few SLAs where a job has to be completed within 20 or 30 seconds. That means the data has to be delivered within that amount of time. Using Control-M helps us to monitor and deliver critical data to the business.

We used to use a native scheduler, like a cron or MDM scheduler. Those kinds of schedulers were very effective, but there were no cross-platform capabilities. With Control-M, we have both types on a single page, and we can see when a file is available and when it's picked up. If I have two different data centers and Job A is running data center 1 and Job B is running in data center 2, when we used the native schedulers for moving files and getting alerts, there was always a delay of a couple of seconds. We have tight SLAs. With Control-M, we're able to deliver on time. While our earlier and our current schedulers are automated, we have a better solution now.

Control-M has also helped to improve our Service Level Operations performance. If I had to take a wild guess, I would say it has improved SLO performance by 20 percent.

The main reason we came to Control-M was to integrate everything together and have it all in a single platform. We use different applications, and integrating them was not possible previously. With Control-M it is. Apart from integration, the main features are for long-running jobs and SLA alerts. But there is definitely a lot to explore and to work on within Control-M.

The solution provides us with a unified view where we can easily define, orchestrate, and monitor all application workflows and data pipelines. We have a team called pro-mon and they monitor all the jobs for us. A single view makes it easy for them to monitor things. Control-M comes with a documentation section for each job. As an SME, I put in the high-level steps in the job documentation; what to do if a job fails. They can read it and do level-one support. Some jobs are very critical and require an immediate call, but with other jobs they can wait, re-run, or read the documentation to give them some guidance. That really helps all our teams. That single view for the monitoring team, where they can see things in a single application, is important because the business needs all jobs completed within their SLAs. Indirectly, it's helping the business to get its data on time.

Another reason we use Control-M is to integrate file transfers within our application workflows. We have cross-business functionalities, where one business generates something and another business wants to use those files. We use a lot of MFT and AFT functionalities. As a result, Control-M has definitely improved our timelines and SLAs. We have an easy-to-monitor solution now. Before Control-M, each application team had to monitor its own jobs. Sometimes they would miss something and they wouldn't know that there is a mistake in a job. But once Control-M came into the picture and we had a dedicated team to monitor everything, we were able to provide timely files to the business. The business is very appreciative of the improvements after implementing Control-M. It has improved things a lot when it comes to providing files to the business on time.

With my current customer we have been using Control-M since 2017. I started using it over the last four or five years.

Now that we are using the supported version, we can leverage a lot of the features. Going forward, it's going to be very actively used by all our business teams, including all the applications teams. We don't have many jobs at the moment, around 200 or 300 jobs, but down the line, in the next six months or year, we are going to double that count.

It's a good tool, and they're coming up with a lot of new features and a lot of improvements on the scalability side. Version 20 might have come up with more features and more performance-related things.

Control-M is running multiple applications for us, including SFTP, MFT, Arkin, Informatica, and Java. There are also a lot of BA jobs and a few OS jobs. We have also integrated some of our reports with Control-M and I'm running them on my local machines. We are planning on expanding Control-M to other applications in the future. That's one of our next steps, to go to applications at the organization level. We are working on it.

We are not heavily dependent on Control-M as of now, but we are slowly migrating to it. Our users of Control-M are developers and application owners, which puts our number of users in the double digits. There are some business users as well. But it's more the application side and the team leads who are using it. Previously, I worked with a very big financial company where we had thousands of jobs. Everyone was using it there.

Jesse, my account manager, is very prompt and he answers all my questions in a timely manner.

We have hardly reached out to the support team. Whenever we would reach out to them when we were running on the older version, they would always say, “Hey, you have to upgrade in order to troubleshoot.” In my experience, the support has not been excellent but it has met expectations. Since upgrading our version, we haven't reached out to the support team.

With earlier versions, the support was not accurate or delivered in a timely manner. What would happen is that I would be in production mode and I would have an issue and would want to get someone on a call to see what was happening. But they would always say, “Hey, provide the log first and then we'll review and we'll get back to you." I feel that when a customer asks about a production issue, they should jump onto the call to see what is going on, and then collect the logs. At least that would give me hope that the support is there and that they are on top of it. I did not get that kind of support from Control-M.

It could be this was just my experience from a very limited number of tickets. Once or twice we had a production issue and I was expecting that someone would join the call immediately. I know they need a log to see what is going on, but before that they could jump on and see if they can fix it. Sometimes an expert will know what the problem is before seeing the log.

I do work with support from other vendors' applications as well, and I get a different response from those vendors, so this is something BMC might have to improve.

We moved from native schedulers to Control-M.

We have in-house people who are expert enough to implement Control-M, but due to other engagements, they were not able to do so.

The initial setup was straightforward. The vendor implemented it for us. We reached out to our account manager from BMC, and BMC sent a certified vendor, Cetan Corp., to our environment and they implemented it for us. Overall, it was a simple installation, a simple environment. Our initial deployment took about three months, end-to-end.

We recently upgraded and we also used a partner for that, VPMA Global Services. The process took about six months but that was not six months of work every day. The actual working time on it was about one month. The other five months were due to securing hardware, testing things, et cetera.

When we went with VPMA for the upgrade, we gave them our requirements, how we wanted our implementation to be. They came up with an architecture diagram and we had an internal discussion about it. The VPMA team came up with their recommendations, multiple approaches, and we choose the best of them.

Both partners were recommended by our account manager at BMC.

I also definitely check the integrated guides and how-to videos. They are very helpful. Products like this might be using different approaches, but they have the same types of features, so we had an idea of how to implement this. We know there are best practices so we went ahead and searched the integrated guides and YouTube support. We got a lot out of them. They're very helpful for our new people. They can search and go through the how-to videos.

We don't require many people for day-to-day administration of Control-M. We spend around one to two hours on Control-M most days. The monitoring team is always monitoring all the jobs on the screen. But the application owners, who are the admins, hardly spend two to three hours on it per day, unless there is an alert.

Whatever we have spent has definitely been worth it. At every renewal we evaluate it internally. As a Control-M SME, I have to provide some stats in terms of man-hours, the amount that we spent on it, the stability, and SLAs. Based on these, we have always had a good impression. We have to justify it that it's worth the cost, and it is.

Initially, our licensing model was based on the number of jobs per day. That caused some issues because we were restricted to a number. So at our renewal time we said, “We want to convert from number of jobs to number of endpoints.” That cost us extra money but it gave us additional capabilities, without worrying about the number of jobs.

At first we had the standard edition and later on needed some additional features and we paid extra for those.

Control-M helps us to proactively monitor things and see what is coming up and what is happening. Based on that, we can take steps for resolution. But I don't think Control-M itself has the ability to proactively fix issues.

Overall, it's a good automation tool. And it gives us a single view of the customer. I would advise going with something like it. I'm not going to advise about any particular solution. All these tools are very powerful and give you a single view.

Control-M is used to schedule jobs and run them regularly. It helps to automate processes and reduce manual effort, minimizing the risk of errors and enhancing efficiency. Our clients use Control-M for various use cases, especially when there is a need for regular, automated job executions.

Control-M significantly reduces manual errors and enhances automation. It provides better scalability and more efficient data processing, making it a highly reliable solution for daily job operations.

Control-M can cross all platforms and offers integration for container and cloud solutions. This versatility is very helpful for my customers. The job scheduling capabilities are extremely convenient and easy to use, making Control-M a superior solution compared to others in the market.

I have no immediate ideas for improvements. I do not have any specific suggestions for additional features that should be included in the next release.

I have been using Control-M for about a year.

We do not encounter significant stability issues with Control-M. It runs jobs daily with stable performance.

Control-M is highly scalable. It offers complete functionality, making it an excellent choice for handling extensive operations.

Customer support is very responsive and efficient. If you open a case, it can usually be handled within one to two hours, especially for urgent issues. Their support is available in real-time and resolves issues promptly.

Positive

The initial setup of Control-M is easy and not difficult.

I always implement Control-M on-premises.

The pricing for Control-M is very expensive. It would be beneficial if the price could be reduced.

If your organization aims to reduce manual errors and enhance automation, Control-M is a suitable choice. It minimizes the risk of operational errors and missing processes, offering better scalability and automation.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We mostly use Control-M for the data flow and reporting. We also have the monitoring in place to make sure that the business meets the requirements, and there is on-time delivery of reporting and so on.

It helps to meet the SLA related to the information and notification to the required stores. In case there are any failures, we promptly rectify them. It has helped a lot with the business continuity processes without any delays.

We have improved a lot in terms of rectifying on time and based on the SLAs. It is, overall, pretty good. With the network overview, we can see the job flows. We also tell customers how useful the application is so that they avoid using any other job scheduling tool and have their job flows integrated with the Control-M application. We do a monthly talk with different technical teams to make them understand the features and benefits of the Control-M application so that they integrate or migrate to the standalone Control-M application and not use other job scheduling tools.

We have a complete view of the jobs, and the customers also know about the job flow. With the help of the reporting team, we provide them with reports of the job flow. There are detailed diagrams, which are very helpful to know about the job flow. It has been pretty helpful and good.

It allows us to easily ingest and process data from different platforms. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of ease of use.

It is good for creating, monitoring, and ensuring the delivery of files as part of our data pipeline. I would rate it a nine out of ten from this aspect.

It is pretty straightforward to create actionable data. It is simple and precise to know what information needs to be in and how it has to run based on the job.

The File Watcher utility, cyclic jobs, and email alert notification are valuable.

Some of the features are not available. We were about to deploy the REST API, but we had some challenges. We had to use a third-party application. So, it should be improved in terms of integrating REST API jobs. That was something that was lacking. The customer was not that happy in terms of getting the desired output. So, we had to use a third-party application called Hangfire. We would like to have more videos on REST API integration, and we would like to have easy integration with the Control-M application through the REST API.

We've been using it since 2018 or 2019.

Currently, there is not a heavy load of Control-M jobs. There are around 500 jobs, and we have around 30 controlling agents. We are now moving from the Window jobs and getting into using it for other jobs. We are also planning to upgrade to a newer version. So, there would be much more dependency on the Control-M application. 

The client installation does not have that much usage. People are moving to the web-based interface. On average, 10 people use the client, and 20 to 25 people use the web application.

Their support is pretty good. I would rate them a nine out of ten. Sometimes, they take time. I had a couple of issues, which prolonged for more than a month. It was something that I wasn't expecting, but they were not show-stoppers. They should expedite their support. The time delay from the support team and the development team should be worked on.

Positive

I was not involved with its deployment. In terms of maintenance, it is not maintenance heavy. We just happen to follow the best practice of doing a reboot every month and applying the patches.

We have a license till 2024. We are good and satisfied with it.

I would advise others to go for it. It has all the features, and it can meet the requirements of any business. Control-M has matured over the years. It is more feature-rich. It has a better graphical user interface. It is catching up with the latest technology and is going to be cloud-based. YouTube videos and webcasts are helpful for new customers in adopting the application.

We have not used Control-M Python Client and cloud data service integrations with AWS and GCP. We have not yet reached that level in this organization. It is just for basic Windows. In a previous company, we used Python and AWS but not in this organization.

We generally move to a new fix pack or release after almost a year. We just wait until there are some bugs rectified in an existing new fix pack. We are looking forward to upgrading to version 9.0.20 to be able to use other features. I am hoping that the API has been enhanced in that version. Upgrading to this version will also help our users. They can use their web application and deploy the jobs rather than having a dependency on the scheduling team.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. They just need to focus on and provide more videos on the API side.

We primarily use the solution for scheduling, including compiling for scheduling and financial scheduling across our countries.

We use the schedule for 19 African countries and also in the UK, on the Isle of Man, where our corporate business is done.

What Control-M offers at TWS that IBM Workload Scheduler doesn't offer becomes available with the next rollout of the software.

It's one of the top options on the market today. It's one of the better enterprise solutions.

The initial setup is largely straightforward.

The solution is stable and reliable.

There are lots of features you can add to the solution if you would like to.

I can't think of any features that are missing at this time. It's a pretty complete solution.

The licensing needs to be improved. It's a bit difficult right now.

You need to pay for extra features if you need them. Other options have them for free as part of their offering.

The product could be more affordable. Right now, we consider it to be expensive.

I've used Control-M on the mainframe for about four years. I never certified under Control-M, so my experience on Control-M is far less than TWM, however, I am using Control-M currently.

The stability of the solution is very good. It's very reliable and the performance is good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

I'm not sure how the scalability works. I'm a bit confused by the process. I can't say for certain how easy or difficult it is to scale.

Likely 400 to 500 people are using the solution at this time.

I only really deal with bank clients. Control-M handles the technical support. I don't deal with them directly and have no idea how technical support works or how helpful they are overall when it comes to troubleshooting issues.

I also have experience with IBM Workload and TWS. IBM Workload and Control-M products are extremely advanced. What is better between IBM Workload and Control-M, is that Control-M charges you for all your different features. When we go to IBM Workload Scheduler, you have plugins. Those plugins are free unless they were created by a third party. If the third party created them, there's a license fee that goes to the third party for the plugins. With IBM, as far as the product, everything is supplied. There are no additional options that you have to pay for. So you pay a single licensing fee and you get forecasting, simulation, your impact analysis.

While the difficulty of the initial setup can vary, the implementation itself is pretty straightforward.

I'm not sure exactly how long the deployment takes.

The solution is quite expensive.

The solution does charge for extra features. If you want an impact manager you pay for that. If you want forecasting you pay for it. If want any of the functions of scheduling, you pay for each component separately. You also pay for agents. They do not give that as part of the product, so they're add-ons, which costs money.

We are a customer and end-user.

We use the latest version of the solution. We try to stay on the most advanced option. It is deployed both on-premises and on the cloud. We also use various clouds, including public and private.

IBM Workload Scheduler and Control-M are far superior to any of the other products on the market. 

In general, I'd recommend TWS or IBM Workload Scheduler to other organizations.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. It's a top-of-the-line product.