Axway headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona offers Managed File Transfer (formerly SecureTransport), a managed file transfer system providing mft gateway, mft controller, and governance.
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Control-M
Score 7.2 out of 10
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Control-M from BMC is a platform for integrating, automating, and orchestrating application and data workflows in production across complex hybrid technology ecosystems. It provides deep operational capabilities, delivering speed, scale, security, and governance.
Control-M is a reliable and well-developed product with excellent vendor support that updates and expands the software often and offers a cloud-based deployment choice. When there are many Batch processes in IT operations that need to be monitored and controlled to ensure IT services, Control-M is ideally suited for centralized workload automation and task management.
If you use Axway SecureTransport with their edge server. The system separates your user accounts from the first point of entry into the system. This is done by creating an edge device in your DMZ that acts only as a proxy to the backend ST server.
Their support has been really good when you have a questions or issues with the version you are on. They respond pretty quickly to your open cases.
I also like the fact that their system can be really customizable. This does take a little bit of knowledge of how the system works. I did go to a 4 day class that Axway provided back in version 4.
They support a wide range of security and automation when it comes to sending/receiving files.
They have low CVE vulnerabilities and they keep up with the latest security holes that may arise.
SecureTransport is a pretty solid platform and it's pretty hands off once it's up and running. We did have to tweak a few things regarding the memory allocated to the running services and there are a still few open bugs that are supposed to be released in the next SecureTransport. Those are not causing any issue on our side.
You can create different templates for your HTTPS sites. This is useful if you have different needs for your customers.
Control-M provides a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes in the organization. Nothing is hidden or left unattended in a timely manner.
The proper use of the BIM component has allowed the change of paradigm in the operation, adopting a proactive management instead of the typical reactive management in the event of production failures.
The use of Forecast and production simulations allows you to identify bottlenecks and focus first on managing those failures that have the greatest impact on production SLAs.
Control-M/Change Manager has arrived to shorten development cycles from requirements gathering to production testing. It has been a utility that monetizes the development of Jobs meshes.
The GUI is capable of efficiently handling more than 80,000 jobs per day. This is certainly a challenge in designing a good user experience. I don't know if there is a reasonable limit to this. One of my clients runs more than 80,000 Jobs daily and the GUI remains smooth all the time.
Job-As-Code is a DevOps accelerator that has just begun to be adopted. Its implementation will make workload management even more cost-effective.
I have come a cross several bugs that came up in their new releases, but this is kind of expected given they support a wide range of technologies in terms of B2B transfers or ad-hoc transfers.
Support is sometimes difficult to communicate with just because of them being out of India. They are responsive and know their stuff when it comes to SecureTransport.
As with most of the mainframe software products, documentation seems to be the weak link for the products - written by people and for people who already know what they need to do, not for people who are trying to figure how to use the product.
We are a large JES3 mainframe shop. As with all vendors who still provide software for mainframe systems, software is generally designed and developed for JES2 and is frequently not fully tested in a JES3 environment before being shipped out.
It is a great product plain and simple. We've had Control-M for 20+ years and the support that BMC Software provides is really second to none. There is always a situation that someone can think of where I have to say, "No we can't do that", however I'm confident that we've been able to meet and most of the time exceed our end user expectations with what the product can offer them.
Control-M's overall usability is very good because it is simple to use. Control-M SelfService is an easy tool to give to some of the users who want to use a web interface. The training curve for most users is very short and most of the functions are very simple to figure out.
Although the product is very stable there have been a few incidents when I needed support. I have worked with technicians from all around the globe because of the rolling support. This gives me the quickest support when I need it most in those early hours of the morning. The technicians I have worked with have been very knowledgeable and if necessary got help when needed.
I have not used another product other than SecureTransport. I have only researched to see if there are any alternatives better. Frankly we just don't have the time to invest in switching either. SecureTransport does what it needs to do in our environment.
We last reviewed the market in 2001 (schedulers are long-term commitments!) and Control-M edged (by a very narrow margin) the Tivoli alternative, with Dollar Universe (now part of Automic) back in third place. We also tested the Tidal Software scheduler (now part of Cisco) but I cannot see that listed here. Control-M won out through reliability and cross-platform support. Since we made our choice it has become clear that Control-M has moved ahead of the alternatives.
Once the system is set up and operational, the only internal support would be to configure new accounts or research failed transmissions. It's really hands off once you have it up and running. It doesn't require a bunch of support or baby sitting.
We are able to offer new services to our business customers which benefits both sides.
I would expect this product to give a positive return on investment. Running jobs in cron for example would require a lot more scripting effort to ensure that the proper notifications are done on failures. With the built in functionality in Control-M the effort would be greatly reduced
