Item: Control-M
Rating: 10
Author: Jorge Lozano

Overall Satisfaction with Control-M

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Control-m is the main WLA within the organization, integrating different platforms and services to ensure business continuity. It detects the arrival of files from other clients, processing them promptly to meet SLAs and thus avoid fines for late delivery and file processing. Control-M helps automate processes in the central environments of the different services and efficiently executes them in alternate servers of the services in the event of a contingency. It facilitates monitoring the operation with more than 15,000 daily production jobs.

Pros and Cons

Pros

High availability of Control-M with its own automatic FailOver.
Load balancing with Control-M's own Quantitative and Control resources.
Stability of the solution in all its Server and Agent components.
Extraordinary capacity to integrate with new technologies.

Cons

More excellent parameter configuration from CCM, for example, enabling or disabling Output Handling in jobs that end NOTOK.
Have greater capacity to Create Dependency from more jobs to one or from one to more jobs.
Greater Find and Update capabilities. For example, MFT Advance options are not found in Forms; they have to be searched by parameters.
Notifications when deleting job dependencies that are not within the workspaces in planning.
Job statistics are in the History and Forecast domain.
There is more information within the GUI client documentation. In previous versions, there was more information about utilities and parameters, examples, and options within the utilities.
Show dependencies between jobs when they use a different option than ODAT.
Agent and Job usage graphs for licensing purposes.
Reports that include definitions of On Do Actions.

Return on Investment

Positive compliance with SLAs with our clients.
Positive continuity of operation thanks to Control-M FailOver Automatic.
Negative, High licensing costs.
Negativo, Altos costos de licenciamiento.

Users and Roles

2000 - We are an economic condensation chamber, a switch between national and international banking institutions. Control-M manages and centralizes all the exchange of monetary information from our clients with their clients, making the information squares of how much each one should be paid or charged. We give continuity to their processes and flows since Control-M sees productive and alternative environments. We comply with their SLAs.

Usability

The solution is very intuitive and easy to learn and use. New staff understand the primary use of the solution in a couple of days, mainly in areas of operation that work with Dominio Monitoring. At the administration level, the installation is simple through menus. The configuration and customization are also simple and minimal. The parameters have an understandable description. Agent installation and upgrades are done in a couple of steps and are ready.

Alternatives Considered

CA Server Automation

I met him as a Control-M consultant, performing migrations from CA to BMC. I knew the product and interface were not as friendly or intuitive as Control-M's and could not integrate new technologies and external applications. One of CA's excellent capabilities was the ability to incorporate executions with Java Scripting to obtain variable values or to order processes natively in the application using its utilities.

Key Insights

Do you think Control-M delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Control-M's feature set?

Yes

Did Control-M live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Control-M go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Control-M again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Jira Work Management

Likelihood to Recommend

In the past, I was a Partner at BMC Software, having contact with many national and international clients; knowing different ways of working in each of these clients that acquired Control-M or migrated from another WLA to BMC, I saw that it is the most adaptable to the different ways of working of each company. Today, I work as a BMC Software client as the administrator and see all the possibilities that can be done, having known many ways of exploiting Control-M in different companies. That is why I highly recommend Control-M as the best way to integrate, unify, and automate different applications, services, and products in one place.

Control-M Feature Ratings

Using Control-M

Support Headcount Required

24 - Operator - Review the Monitoring Domain, take the first solution actions.

Supervisor - Has more privileges than operators, to be able to reexecute Jobs or start flows earlier.

Administrator - Implementation of Jobs and administration of Control-M at the Jobs level and at the infrastructure level.

Business Processes Supported

On-time delivery of accounting settlements with our clients
daily accounting closings
Detection of arrival of files from external clients to initiate their internal flows and balances.

Innovative Uses

load balancing
high availability schemes, pairs of active-active, active-passive services and clusters
early notifications by SLA

Future Planned Uses

Integration with new cloud and OnPremise
Greater use of Web Client for users internal to the company but external to Control-M
Control multiple data centers from a single Control-M

Likelihood to Renew

It is one of the best solutions on the market, in terms of innovation, reliability and stability.
Control-M provides security when used by the largest companies in Mexico such as banks, department stores and logistics.
It has proven to be able to integrate with new technologies on the market and provide almost 100% availability, thanks to its automatic FailOver scheme.

Evaluating Control-M and Competitors

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Scalability
Integration with Other Systems
Ease of Use

1.- Easy use for users, at all levels, operator, programmer, administrator and external users.

2.- Easy implementation and scalability with different third-party applications and different operating systems.

3.- Centralized monitoring and operation point for different applications and operating systems.

4.- Implementation of Manage File Transfer B2B for external clients at no additional cost.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Compliance with the benefits of the tool.

Best implementation and deployment practices.

Scalability in architecture and new technologies.

Acquisition and maintenance costs.

Fast return on investment

Continuous training of new functionalities

Comments

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Control-M is my life and growth.

Modules Used