Control-M Managed File Transfer

We are a system integrator specializing in document digitization and DMS applications, and we encounter various workflows within documents and data. I have been using Control-M  for less than one year, primarily on workflow process applications where we work with clients on digitizing backlog conversion projects. We use it when there are complex structured documents with AI-enabled workflows. We encountered this orchestration platform where we need to work across documents and applications to integrate whenever there is a critical business workflow.

The best features of Control-M  are the seamless and simple process that any business user can understand and adapt to. Control-M also provides low-code and no-code capabilities that allow business users to work on workflow orchestration in a straightforward manner.

I assess Control-M as having ease of use and being simple to deploy and configure at a business level. When workflows are structured, it appears simpler and easier to create and integrate data pipelines for on-premises and cloud environments. For complex workflows, we need to fine-tune and understand the system before deployment.

Control-M currently saves approximately 15 to 20% of time compared to our previous support system.

The areas that have room for improvement for Control-M include integration and different data structures. Additionally, whether the deployment is on-premises or hybrid requires careful consideration. Both applications we worked on were on-premises, and we did not work on any cloud applications. The challenge regarding latency and other connectivity integration will likely be a key challenge for Control-M, and understanding how this will impact ease of use and deployment will be important.

I have been using Control-M for less than one year, primarily on workflow process applications where we work with clients on digitizing backlog conversion projects. We use it when there are complex structured documents with AI-enabled workflows. We encountered this orchestration platform where we need to work across documents and applications to integrate whenever there is a critical business workflow.

I rate the stability of Control-M as seven. I rate it a seven because it is still in the initial phase. We need to deploy other workflows and observe how the application scales and how the stability of the whole application with an increased number of users deployed across different locations will perform.

I rate the scalability of Control-M as eight.

I rate the technical support of Control-M as a seven on a scale of one to ten.

I did not migrate from Broadcom, CA, or Redwood because this was a straightforward implementation of the application from the start.

I did not encounter any challenges with Control-M or with the deployment process because this was just an initial starter pack to begin with. It was a small project and was straightforward.

It is difficult to assess how easy or difficult it is to integrate Control-M for our DevOps and DataOps processes because we have not done any integration. It was a standalone use of the application. Our scope was limited and we have not encountered the integration part.

We had only one specialist working with Control-M, and we hired third-party resources to work on the project.

Resource-wise, we have realized approximately 20% value from Control-M, but financially, it is premature to assess regarding ROI.

Regarding the pricing of Control-M, I believe it looks competitive compared to other vendors. Whether it is a SaaS application or an on-premises application varies, and they have different structures such as a starter pack or a value pack. We went with the starter pack.

I cannot compare Control-M with other solutions or vendors because this request came from the end user, so I cannot provide live feedback.

Currently, we do not use Control-M to orchestrate workloads across multiple environments; all usage is on-premises.

I have not used the Control-M Python client or API because no API was within our scope, so I cannot comment with any correct feedback.

Control-M  is a scheduling software for scheduling jobs, and I have been using it for four to six years.

The best feature of Control-M  is that it is a SAP module we use to schedule jobs in SAP for the delivery of goods, and mainly it's time-oriented. Time-oriented features and whatever reports we can fetch are very easy in Control-M.

It is easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for DataOps and DevOps. Currently, our next project is underway regarding the integration.

Control-M supports DataOps and DevOps initiatives by enabling us to update batches we get from the BMC tool, and we are currently using both for development and testing purposes. I hope it will be beneficial for us moving forward. If we implement a DevOps project in our application, it will save significant time by reducing human intervention as jobs will be scheduled automatically.

Currently, the solution saves us around 15 to 20% time during the primary phase.

Regarding areas for improvement, there are some additional features that you must give concerning the available features. The job scheduling time is a little bit consuming, and it should be simplified into very straightforward steps, such as a web-based application for all the scheduling jobs, as this would be helpful.

There are a few bugs I found while implementing Control-M, which are minor issues. We can minimize those bugs, such as applications not running at scheduled times. If there's a time schedule, we might get a report with logs, and 98% of the time it runs on time, with only 2% being slightly problematic regarding job execution.

Regarding stability, Control-M application is stable, and there is no second thought on this. If any error arises from a job that hasn't run, we simply need to address that issue. I rate its stability as eight.

I rate scalability as eight.

I rate the support for the solution as a seven, around 7 to 8, specifically a 7.5.

I have not yet migrated from Broadcom or Redwood or any similar solutions, but we have conducted workshops and other preparations for that.

It is simple to integrate Control-M, particularly in the cloud. We need to have the host or an agent to run commands with the application name, and it is comparatively easy when compared to others.

It's not cheap; it's a little bit costlier compared to others due to database processing and finishing jobs, which have some dependencies, so I don't think it's cheaper.

Control-M, which is the BMC workload automation tool, is mainly used for scheduling. When we integrate Control-M into a SAP basis, we can automatically fetch records. We have to schedule and run jobs at a particular time, going through phases such as initial phase, build phase, and delivery phase. In that process, we handle job scheduling, workload management, creating OS and file transfer of database jobs, and reporting and configuration management involving automation capabilities.

Currently, our client is using BMC's Control-M software, so we must go as per the client's requirements. We are not in a position to decide whether we can proceed with it or not because the client uses Control-M for batch scheduling.

I definitely recommend BMC; Control-M is excellent for handling very large batch scheduling jobs. We have many jobs to complete in our daily activities, and this is one of the best tools. I would also recommend it to my partners for different clients who need batch scheduling; Control-M is a very good tool or application.

Primarily for email and SNMP, as well as monitoring tools, we use Control-M compared to other solutions or vendors. I would rate this product an overall eight out of ten.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The deployment of Control-M is very easy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My current use cases for Control-M  are mostly for workflow modernization, including internal workflows related to OS type executions, file transfer executions, Azure  pipeline, data ingestion, and BDNA workflows.

What I like most about Control-M  is the modernized API, which allows me to integrate with many other applications to create job flows using JSON. Application teams can own their own responsibility to create jobs instead of relying on a Control-M admin to create a job every time they need it.

Control-M should evolve into a more web-based SaaS level product, which they are looking into. They should improve the features that were available in Control-M localized installations. For example, if I have the server on-premises, more features are with the client, whereas with the web-based version they moved to now, many features have been missing that we expect should be coming as well. Configuration and CCM  are missing most of the features that are in the on-premises version. Those features should be coming very soon, and that would be the best improvement they could bring.

Additionally, auto deployments and patch management always require manual work, so those should be coming through auto deployment, which would help significantly. Software upgrades and similar processes should be more optimized.

I have been using Control-M since at least 2014, which is about 13 years now.

Regarding stability, I would say it is based on the environment. For my bank, I never had an issue with crashing or anything; the performance was good.

Scalability is easy for me. It is all based on the plan regarding how many jobs I am going to use. I do not see any complications with scalability.

I have contacted technical support and we raise cases with them before every single upgrade or migration. We have a method of procedure plan where we check with them about recommendations. Most of the time, BMC does not recommend against proceeding, and they say I am good to go with it.

When there is an issue, the quality of support for a P1 case is good, but the solution they provide can be complicated sometimes, which takes time for them to investigate. Then they have to engage their developer team. Sometimes I would have already known that this is not solvable and only the developer team can advise on it, but they do not take it immediately. They take their own time to provide the solution, meaning they take one or two additional hours. If I were to put support on a scale from one to ten, I would give Control-M support a score of seven.

I have used alternatives like Redwood and some other internal tool called Insights software. Comparing Control-M to Redwood, Control-M is better; however, Redwood has a simpler tier level architecture than Control-M.

I did not migrate from Redwood to BMC; I worked on that software at my previous company where both software were used. AutoSys has also been used there. I have seen developers compare AutoSys to Control-M.

Migrating from other software does not require much work from my side; it is easier even for the developers. Control-M requires a little understanding of how these things work. For example, when the application person reaches out to me, they need to understand first how job creation works and how their job executes on their agent, and it is not more transparent for them. I have to conduct a learning session to help them understand these things, and those aspects are complicated in Control-M. However, Control-M is more optimized in that part. When they understand the tool, they prefer Control-M to any other solution.

When I joined my current bank, Control-M was already deployed but with a very old version. I took care of upgrading it to the very latest version. We were ten years behind, and there was no support, but I managed to get it upgraded to the latest version.

The upgrade was challenging at first. The OS flavors were very old, which Control-M does not support with the latest version. We had to plan carefully, thinking about how we would move to which version, and then we did a parallel build in Red Hat to move it. It was a very comprehensive plan we had to develop. However, it went well. When I am more experienced with the tool, I know how to execute the migration properly.

When it comes to deployment and maintenance, maintenance stays with the administration team, which is my team. We currently work as a core of five people for the deployments. When it comes from the application team to create a job, workflows, or whatever they need planned, it involves four to five people.

Regarding pricing, BMC is a little costlier. They need to come down with execution-based pricing. For my understanding, BMC charges based on executions, whereas Redwood charges or AutoSys charges based on successful completion. BMC is a little higher on that.

Integrating with technologies for my DataOps and DevOps processes as things change is easy. We use DevOps and data pipelines related to Azure  data pipelines, and it has been easy for us because the latest version does have the support. We use our own application integrator developed by ourselves, so it was easier for us since we know the tool. My review rating for Control-M is ten out of ten.

My use case with Control-M  is to handle scheduling and automation processes.

Control-M 's best features are its reliability and user-friendly interface. Control-M has improved our organization by streamlining our workflow and increasing efficiency.

The areas that have room for improvement in Control-M are the user interface enhancements.

I have been using Control-M for more than 10 years in our organization.

I rate the stability of Control-M as an eight out of ten.

Regarding scalability, I rate it a nine out of ten.

I rate the technical support of Control-M as a seven out of ten.

I find it very difficult to quantify the return on investment I have seen with Control-M.

My thoughts on the pricing of Control-M lean towards it being expensive; I would rate it a ten out of ten as very expensive.

I compare Control-M favorably with other solutions and vendors in the market.

I find it easy to integrate Control-M with technologies for our DataOps and DevOps. Control-M is being used extensively across multiple departments in our organization. Approximately 100 users utilize Control-M in our organization. Control-M does require maintenance, and I would say it is complex in some aspects. My relationship with BMC is more transactional than transformative. My advice for others looking to implement Control-M would be to focus on improving their documentation and consider the challenges with add-on products like Workflow Insight, which does not have RBAC, making implementation difficult in organizations like ours.