Overall Satisfaction with Control-M
We utilize Control-M across the entire organization to manage batch on multiple environments including Windows, Linux, and Mainframe. We are able to support the complex business and IT requirements through various features and plug-ins within Control-M.
- Centralized view of workflows across the organization.
- Ability to expose workflows to the business in a user friendly interface called Control-M Self Service.
- Powerful administration tools, intuitive administration utilities, and fantastic customer support.
- I would have some areas of discussion here, but with version 9 out now, BMC has really focused on addressing many of the administration issues and has really produced an outstanding product with version 9.
- Increased efficiency of the Production Control staff
- Empowerment of end users via Control-M Self Service
- Buy in from various development and infrastructure teams that Control-M can solve their particular issues, and/or more fully automate their processes.
- TWS and Tidal
BMC Control-M has always been a leader in batch scheduling. I did support Tivoli Workload Automation for several years and I found it to be a good product as well. However I feel that BMC listens to the client community and betters the product based on their feedback. BMC's customer support is by far better than what IBM provided for TWS and what Tidal provided for their enterprise scheduler.
BMC's Control-M is expensive compared to other competitors, but the ease in which you can deliver results to the business and provide value to the developers makes it an easy decision.
Control-M Feature Ratings
Using Control-M
650 - The user community spans almost all functions of the organization. We have developers, application owners, business users, and upper management that use Control-M or Control-M Self Service regularly. The business, management and application owners primarily use Control-M Self Service. The developers primarily use the Control-M WLA GUI interface.
3 - We are a one stop shop in that our team is responsible for the batch scheduling as well as administration of the tool (upgrades, patches, and automation). In my opinion, to support Control-M a person must have strong problem solving / analytical skills and solid background or understanding in other IT technologies. Good communication skills across functional areas is key as well. Systems level knowledge in DOS and UNIX is required and a good understanding of databases and SQL.
- Centralize the management of all batch into a single console and stop using cron / Windows scheduled tasks.
- Workflow automation which involves complex multi platform batch dependencies.
- Exposing batch workflows to the end user and empowering those users to improve, automate, and reduce downtime of their applications.
- Allowed the business to run their batch processes when convenient to them, via Control-M Self Service.
- Automation. Everything from SQL Server refreshes to embedding complex shell scripts into a Control-M job. We automated hundreds of manual tasks.
- Reduction of 'wrapper scripts' used to communicate to other applications. We have implemented control modules for IBM Datastage, Informatica, and IBM Cognos all of which save the end user from learning and maintaining external programs.
- We are looking to automate more and more business and IT processes. We regularly attend meetings across the company to showcase and promote what the product can achieve.
- We may look to Control-M to perform file moves in the future.
Evaluating Control-M and Competitors
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
Unfortunately Control-M was purchased prior to me joining the company.
Control-M Support
Pros | Cons |
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Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Yes - Yes I have reported many bugs to BMC. Once reviewed and approved by the development team it will be assigned a tracking number and will most likely be fixed in a future fixpack. Any bug or issue that is more serious in nature with no workaround (which is rare) is promptly handled by the BMC support and development staff and typically a special fix for your situation is released.
A feature on Control-M for z/OS is called "notes" which allows a user to add a custom note to a job is not available on Distributed jobs and also not viewable in the Control-M WLA GUI. BMC Support assisted in opening up an enhancement request which was in turn approved. Within a few more fixpack releases, we should see this new feature in the product. This just demonstrates that end users have a say in the product itself, which I thought was really fantastic.
Using Control-M
Pros | Cons |
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Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | Requires technical support |
- Creation of simple and complex workflows. You can easily copy/paste jobs or folders to create new workflows. The drag and drop dependency creation is also very powerful and allows the user to specify dependency site standards
- Monitoring the batch cycles. There is an array of filters and viewpoints to create customized views of the batch environment which work harmoniously with integrated alerts and service monitors.
- Forecasting batch schedules in the future. We can easily get estimated run times based on different scenarios we can define.
- Reporting has never been that good. The reporting function is based on Crystal Reports and is very rigid and cumbersome to use. We do all of our reporting outside of this built in tool.
- Maintaining 'services' for Control-M Self Service. Certain types of services have to be manually updated and managed. I've always seen an opportunity there for improvement as updating large numbers of services can be very time consuming.
- Agent upgrades on a large scale are very cumbersome, but on a positive note Control-M v9 has a built in Agent upgrade deployment which works very nicely.
Yes, but I don't use it