Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Our data being the primary operational product has been managed effectively by this software. It is best suited in storing data in our cloud servers and transferring files across our company. It is easy and flexible to work with this product. It provides end to end encryption of data promoting data safety and transfer. Compatibility with our operating system is effective and all services have been great.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Transferring of files is quick and simple. The interface is easy to use and understand. The setting up of new ftp sites is straight forward. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review It could be a lot easier to grab a download link. Currently you have to right-click, scroll to "Copy URL," and then pick your desired version of the download URL. There are WAY too many options, and it makes it difficult. I have never needed any option other than the HTTPS version of the URL. So it's overly complicated when it doesn't need to be. There are at times completely unnecessary alert messages that pop up. Usually when connecting to a server to upload a file it will pop up a message that says the connection has been verified and it's safe to continue uploading. It's really unnecessary and annoying to have to dismiss it every time. I think the UI could be a little less cramped. Everything is so close together--really feels like a dated UI. If items were just a bit more spaced out, it would improve the UI significantly. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review I really like the basic interface and folder like structure. It makes me feel like I'm in a regular folder window on my Mac. Navigation is simple. The toolbar is customizable to be able to add or remove icons to improve the simplicity and ease of use of the application. The app is very simply designed, which I appreciate.
Read full review Reliability and Availability We've had issues with a server crashing. The latest issue has the option for high availability which should help with that.
Read full review Performance I've never seen a performance issue with Control-M.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review I've never needed to use their support service. The few issues I've had were user-error and quickly resolved with a little googling
Read full review Implementation Rating It is a good approach to define a distributed architecture when you have multiple control-m servers.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review FileZilla and WinSCP are the two main alternatives to Cyberduck within my organization, and really the two main freeware competitors that I know of. Cyberduck is suited for those without a high level of technical background, and as one might guess, is also the easiest to use and navigate.
FileZilla and WinSCP are both easier to use when it comes to key storage and SSH configuration, but these are tasks that our IT department does on Cyberduck for users with less technical knowledge. By us doing these tasks, the end business user is able to utilize a simple tool for their needs.
Read full review Scalability Control-M doesn't really use that many resources
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Read full review Trustworthy FTP management, no bloat. Fast login and server history makes it easy to jump in and make changes or fix problems Read full review ScreenShots