95 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9.8 out of 100
Based on 95 reviews and ratings
155 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.6 out of 100
Based on 155 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
Workload Automation

8.7
Control-M
87%

Ansible
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
Control-M ranks higher in 6/6 features
Control-M ranks higher in 6/6 features
Multi-platform scheduling

8.5
85%
50 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Central monitoring

10.0
100%
48 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Logging

6.8
68%
49 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Alerts and notifications

8.5
85%
50 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Analysis and visualization

8.5
85%
47 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Application integration

10.0
100%
47 Ratings

N/A
0 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Control-M is rated higher in 2 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Support Rating
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated higher in 1 area: Performance
Likelihood to Recommend

10.0
Control-M
100%
50 Ratings

9.6
Ansible
96%
29 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew

8.2
Control-M
82%
6 Ratings

Ansible
N/A
0 Ratings
Usability

9.1
Control-M
91%
6 Ratings

Ansible
N/A
0 Ratings
Availability

6.4
Control-M
64%
1 Rating

Ansible
N/A
0 Ratings
Performance

7.3
Control-M
73%
1 Rating

8.7
Ansible
87%
10 Ratings
Support Rating

9.1
Control-M
91%
15 Ratings

7.8
Ansible
78%
4 Ratings
Implementation Rating

8.2
Control-M
82%
8 Ratings

Ansible
N/A
0 Ratings
Product Scalability

7.3
Control-M
73%
1 Rating

Ansible
N/A
0 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Control-M
The use of Control-M is recommended for the following circumstances:
- Workload and batch processing automation.
- Backend automation based processes
- Silent execution of processes and no human intervention
- Execution of workflows that are too complex for a human to handle
- Massive operations on massive amounts of data
- Invasive, with access to the data layer and business logic
- Processes with focus on security, efficiency and reliability
- When you want to predict the duration of each job and of the complete flow
- In critical path management
- For proactive alerting of deviations and possible job failures.
- For workload simulation
- Capability for resource automation
Senior Workload Automation Consultant
Axity S.AInformation Technology & Services, 5001-10,000 employees
Ansible
That is a big task for all the functionality now in Ansible Collections - Ethernet Networking, Fibre Channel Networking, Wireless networking, LB/ADC configuration & changes. Storage config and changes, VMware provisioning and changes, Windows Desktop provision when paired w/ a tool like Zuul, Workflow integration w/ ServiceNow (SNOW), Testing framework such as Molecule really all you to ensure what you have in your playbooks is solid...prior to deployment not when released to your consumers; Critical. Consistent runbooks instead of managing tons of scripts allows for cross-team training and functionality in a true disaster scenario. Additionally, conversion tools from other IT automation offerings Puppet and Chef, integration into Cloud environments. The list grows daily so jump in the water is just right!

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Information Technology and Services Company, 501-1000 employeesPros
Control-M
- Control-M provides an easy-to-use and easy-to-interpret interface for users, with most of the screen options and field names being self-explanatory. The on-screen options provide for a full range of functionality for automating batch production requirements, with multiple options and flexibility.
- The vendor provides Control-M a wide range of utilities for extracting information from the dataset and providing with a minimal amount of training required for use.
- As the systems programmer for Control-M on the mainframe, the ease of installation is one of the nicest features. The installation is panel driven and can be used by a relatively inexperienced technician to install successfully in a matter of several hours.
- Again, as the systems programmer, I appreciate the level of expertise of the technical support personnel. Over the past 20+ years, I have come to know them well and find them to be knowledgeable and willing to provide assistance for any and all queries.
- The developers have always been willing to listen to requests for new functionality and enhancements to existing functionality and are working to have the same type of functionality across all platforms.
- We are a large mainframe shop, still heavily dependent on mainframes to support and develop new software for the mainframe.
- We have worked closely with BMC to participate in the beta testing program and have had the opportunity to have an impact on software development.

Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 10,001+ employeesAnsible
- Agentless. For our implementation, this is the single biggest factor. If we have to touch the machine and install an agent before we can start managing it, that's already too much effort and slows us down.
- Re-entrant. This is not unique to Ansible, but certainly a huge improvement over custom scripts and such. Because it's such a huge effort to make scripts re-entrant, most of our scripts did not allow an elegant way to recover on failure. Manually cleaning up the half-attempt and re-trying is still too cumbersome, and being able to just re-run Ansible is a great improvement!
- Infrastructure as code. This is new to Ansible, and there are still a few minor bugs with their AWS modules, but it's been a huge help being able to define our infrastructure in an Ansible playbook, commit it to source control, and use one tool for all our DevOps tasks.
DevOps Engineer
AviziaHospital & Health Care, 51-200 employees
Cons
Control-M
- The reporting provided with Control-M could have more functionality, Many users end up creating their own reporting based on the Control-M DB. I believe BMC are addressing this.
- Within the Advanced File Transfer (AFT) it would be useful to have an integrated FT server and not rely on the underlying SSH.
- All batch schedulers have issues with fully automating tasks in a Windows environment and Control-M is no exception. Userids and profiles are harder concepts to deal with in the Windows world but BMC are doing their best to address this and Control-M would be better at handling these scenarios than the alternative products.
Senior Systems Analyst
The Stamford Group (Stamford Consultants and Talentis)Banking, 201-500 employees
Ansible
- Ansible Tower is a paid service, which can be annoying at times. But that is understandable, as it requires an additional level of support from the Ansible team to develop.
- There is a decently large learning curve for someone not familiar with setting up Unix environments. However, there is a very large support community with tons of documentation, so it's not a dealbreaker.
DevOps Engineer
CBREReal Estate, 10,001+ employees
Pricing Details
Control-M
General
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Entry-level set up fee?
Optional
Starting Price
—Control-M Editions & Modules
—
Additional Pricing Details
—Ansible
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$5,000 per year
Ansible Editions & Modules
Edition
Basic Tower | $5,0001 |
---|---|
Enterprise Tower | $10,0001 |
Premium Tower | $14,0001 |
- per year
Additional Pricing Details
—Likelihood to Renew
Control-M
Control-M 8.2
Based on 6 answers
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.
Infrastructure Engineer II / Control-M
UnumInsurance, 10,001+ employees
Ansible
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Usability
Control-M
Control-M 9.1
Based on 6 answers
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.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Packaging and Containers Company, 10,001+ employeesAnsible
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Control-M
Control-M 6.4
Based on 1 answer
We've had issues with a server crashing.The latest issue has the option for high availability which should help with that.
z/OS system Programmer
MalamInformation Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees
Ansible
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Performance
Control-M
Control-M 7.3
Based on 1 answer
I've never seen a performance issue with Control-M.
z/OS system Programmer
MalamInformation Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees
Ansible
Ansible 8.7
Based on 10 answers
Ansible is very friendly to start with. With just a few configurations, you have full management to your servers. You can configure it and implement it in seconds. You can also set up a cron job to make sure it gets implemented. It suits our need perfectly. Support can be a bit hard.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Insurance Company, 10,001+ employeesSupport Rating
Control-M
Control-M 9.1
Based on 15 answers
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.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Packaging and Containers Company, 10,001+ employeesAnsible
Ansible 7.8
Based on 4 answers
There is a lot of good documentation that Ansible and Red Hat provide which should help get someone started with making Ansible useful. But once you get to more complicated scenarios, you will benefit from learning from others. I have not used Red Hat support for work with Ansible, but many of the online resources are helpful.
Lead System Engineer
Azusa Pacific UniversityHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees
Implementation Rating
Control-M
Control-M 8.2
Based on 8 answers
It is a good approach to define a distributed architecture when you have multiple control-m servers.
Analytics and Automation Tools Manager - Perú & Chile
EntelTelecommunications, 5001-10,000 employees
Ansible
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Control-M
I have been using this product for so long and it works so well we have not had the need to evaluate other job schedulers. I have occasionally looked to see what was out there but I have seen anything so far that would require me to go so far as to evaluate the products.
Senior System Administrator
Teranet Inc.Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees
Ansible
Ansible is a great product, which we really love as it is compatible running along side and with other DevOps tool. The integration features allows other teams to participate in our shared objective. Ansible is easy to use as many programmers are familiar with Python and RHEL. We selected Ansible because its easy barrier to entry and pricing model for new users with not many nodes to manage. We will continue to develop and on-board teams and monitor the scaling abilities of Ansible.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Hospital & Health Care Company, 10,001+ employeesScalability
Control-M
Control-M 7.3
Based on 1 answer
Control-M doesn't really use that many resources
z/OS system Programmer
MalamInformation Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees
Ansible
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Control-M
- While I cannot share specific numbers I can say that Control-M has provided a level of scheduling and integration over the system it replaced that has increased productivity and increased reliably in our system. It has reduced the number of hours spent on monitoring and troubleshooting jobs, on a per job basis.
.NET Team Lead
Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance GroupInsurance, 201-500 employees
Ansible
- We have been able to deploy solutions to client issues without impacting uptime.
- Most system administration tasks have been automated so I am now free to work on architectural improvements or customer support.
- Our customer support has improved thanks to Ansible as it has allowed me more time away from repetitive system activities so I may assist with customer questions and application testing.
Devops Engineer
SolidifyHRInsurance, 11-50 employees