Control-M Managed File Transfer

My main use case for Control-M is to schedule and automate workflows.

A specific workflow that I automated using Control-M was the weekend maintenance where we bring down certain applications and conduct certain verifications, then perform maintenance and OS patching work, bring up those applications, and automate the workflows. Control-M has been very successful for this purpose and has eliminated unnecessary human hours from the workflow, providing significant convenience and automation.

The main use case for Control-M in our organization's context is to schedule the bringing up and bringing down of the market because we work for a stock exchange. We have many applications running through the pre-open, open, during, and closing periods, as well as market close, end of day, and batching. All of these involve many applications that must run one after another along with dependencies and successors. Creating workflows in Control-M has greatly improved our workflow management.

The best features Control-M offers are the convenience and the reporting aspect, along with the ability to monitor current workflows and see where things are at, where they are stalling, and where abnormalities are occurring.

For reporting and monitoring features, it is very important that we understand how long certain applications take to run and which applications are draining the memory and hard disks of our servers. Reporting helps us understand execution times, average execution times, points of improvement, and provides information for our higher management. Monitoring has been an essential part of our mission-critical applications, with a separate team utilizing the monitoring and alerting features of Control-M.

Control-M has positively impacted our organization very much because it gives all our external teams a single platform to use as a single pane of glass to view different workflows, different points of improvement, and monitor how certain processes are performing.

Automating the maintenance workflow changed things for our team and organization by reducing the potential risk of human errors and saving considerable time for team members who previously had to be available over weekends to work on these tasks. Overall, it has been a step towards advancement in our company to automate workflows.

Control-M can definitely be improved in terms of the user interface. The user interface they have been using is the same thing they have been using for the last 10 years. Control-M Web UI has not done justice to the fat client because we are forced to switch from the fat client to the Web UI. The Web UI has drawbacks, including the jobs on the monitoring page taking several seconds, from 5 to 10 to even 15 seconds, for the status to update from executing to completed stage. This is something we have to refresh the monitoring domain to see. There are a couple of inconsistencies when switching from the fat client, though I think we might get used to it over time.

Control-M's learning platforms need significant improvement. The Control-M courses are really bad, and the exams are really bad. Nobody has really spent any time improving them or putting thought into them. It appears someone made them without much consideration. I would like those things to be eventually improved.

I chose a rating of 8 out of 10 because Control-M has many things to improve.

I have been using Control-M for close to three years.

Control-M is stable.

Control-M's scalability is very good.

Customer support for Control-M is not too bad, but we wish that some of the bugs would be prioritized by the development teams so that we do not have to wait until the next year for certain issues to be resolved.

I am not involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing conversations as that is usually handled by my higher management.

I have seen a return on investment with Control-M, and while I do not have specific numbers, it has led to fewer employees being hands-on with the applications because of Control-M's automation.

We are yet to utilize the artificial intelligence capabilities of Control-M and would not know about the accuracy and reliability of its output.

Control-M is deployed in our organization on-premise. It is not very difficult to integrate other processors with Control-M, which is a reason why we continue using it.

Control-M is currently used extensively in my organization, but the decision to increase usage is entirely with management. Approximately 100 people use Control-M with different roles, though I am not very aware of those specific roles.

Our main business use cases supported by Control-M involve finance-related applications, though I am not very aware of the functional or application usage details.

My advice to others looking into using Control-M is to learn all Control-M related features before starting the integration because there are many things you can do. If you understand everything in your initial analysis, I think you will be able to utilize 100 percent of Control-M's features.

I rated this product 8 out of 10.

My main use case for Control-M is data management and control. I use Control-M in data center management, server management, and all compliance-related functions. My use case for Control-M involves day-to-day data center management specifically, focusing on compliance, handling daily operations, server monitoring, hardware monitoring, and the compliance measures we are following.

Control-M offers excellent end-to-end integration capabilities. The end-to-end integration connects multiple environments seamlessly, including cloud environments like AWS and GCP, which helps us significantly.

Control-M has intelligent data pipelines, manages file transfers, and MFTs, which are the best features we are using.

Control-M has positively impacted my organization with cost savings. We are mostly following compliance measures as per the RBI guidelines, making most of the compliance processes quicker by accessing them through Control-M.

Control-M helps me meet RBI compliance by generating automated reports, adding security features, and addressing fines we might incur due to compliance shortfalls.

I would like to point out that the bank needs to explore how we can better utilize Control-M according to our specific requirements.

I have been using Control-M for more than a year.

Control-M is correctly aligned with our banking environment, so everything is good and set.

Regarding Control-M's AI capabilities, I believe we do not currently have any AI inputs, but as far as security is concerned, it may be a good combination if we integrate that in our data center.

My use cases for Control-M involve it being a job scheduler that can accomplish many things for our organization. It includes a large number of dependencies and many different types of jobs. We run jobs on Windows and Linux, and we have ARO pods, so it is a significant part of our environment.

What I appreciate most about Control-M is that once you become familiar with it, it is very easy to use. When jobs run, the application displays pretty colors so you can quickly determine whether a job is successful, running, or unsuccessful. It is very easy to follow what is happening on the screen. The ease of use is what I value most about the product.

What I dislike about Control-M is that sometimes things can become very complicated with certain job setups. I am not certain if that is really Control-M's fault, but setting up complicated dependencies with difficult scheduling and the Control-M New Day time can become very complicated, especially with the New Day feature.

Regarding scalability, I do have a concern with it. When we change OS versions and want to do an upgrade, that is the one time I have an issue with the product. Control-M does not allow us to build a new server to scale up our environment to a different OS or anything of that nature. We have to build the new server, migrate our configuration over with the same application version, and then upgrade. This is a major issue for me, and there should be an option to build a new server and upgrade by simply putting the new version on it.

I have been working with Control-M since approximately 2002, which makes it 24 years.

From a stability perspective, I have been using Control-M for 24 years, and we have only experienced one major issue with it during that entire time. I would give it a 10 out of 10 for stability. The server never crashes because of Control-M, and we never have any CPU or memory issues since the product is very stable.

Regarding scalability, I do have a concern with it. I have never needed to scale it out much due to not having a large environment. However, when we change OS versions and want to do an upgrade, that is the one time I have an issue with the product. Control-M does not allow us to build a new server to scale up our environment to a different OS or anything of that nature. We have to build the new server, migrate our configuration over with the same application version, and then upgrade. This is a major issue for me, and there should be an option to build a new server and upgrade by simply putting the new version on it.

Anytime I have needed help from BMC, they are very responsive. I have been working with Control-M for almost 25 years, so I do not follow up with them frequently, and I do not use their services often. However, anytime I have had questions, they are right on the ball. Their support for the product is very good.

I do not have to wait very long for them to answer me, and they usually provide a resolution very quickly. I handle several products, and in comparison to all of them, the quality and speed of Control-M's support seem to be the best. They always reply back as soon as I open a case, usually the same day within hours, regardless of the case's priority. They work on it quickly, getting me an answer within two or three days at most. There is very rarely a time I go longer than a couple of days without a response. Their support is among the best available.

I find that the actual installation of Control-M is fairly straightforward. There are two components, so I can basically install each separately. It is not overly complicated to install. The setup can become complicated depending on how much I have to configure. Basically, my company tries to leave it out of the box for most of the configuration, so we do not do much customization after it has been installed, as Control-M does a very good job of setting proper default standards for us.

Control-M is on the expensive side because I know we have looked into other pricing for other products in the past, and it is on the expensive side of things.

The only alternate solutions I really use for comparison are Windows Task Scheduler or Cron. Those are just the basic default schedulers that come with the operating system.

We definitely use DevOps and DataOps with Control-M. The DataOps we have integrated basically uses scripting methods to accomplish this. We do not use many of the available plugins. On the DevOps side, we have ARO pods, so we set up a pod environment, which was somewhat tricky at first because we were one of the first to start using this type of setup. Now it is much better. I have checked the documentation they have now, and it is significantly better than it used to be. In the beginning, it was quite complicated, as they pointed you to GitHub and said to look there for all the details. Now they have much better documentation, making it much easier for us.

I believe my relationship with BMC is transformative. They always keep us up-to-date on things. They have seminars and user groups, which is another significant benefit. I attend a Toronto user group basically once a year, and we get all kinds of valuable information from that. I believe it is a good relationship in that regard.

Overall, I give Control-M a rating of nine out of ten for everything, including the price.