We performed a comparison between Control-M and Stonebranch Universal Automation Center based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Control-M offers a range of valuable capabilities such as Managed File Transfer, credentials vault, integration capabilities, Role-Based Administration, file transfer integration, collaboration, scheduling, ease of configuration, web interface, reporting, workload archiving, and forecasting. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center is commended for its strong performance, graphical representation, intuitive interface, job dependencies, rerun function, GUI, task monitor, stability, scalability, and reliable technical support.
Control-M could improve its microservices and API integration, fix bugs in the web interface, develop a lighter web version, enhance reporting capabilities, and improve support and documentation. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center could benefit from cloud availability, improved analytics, easier task monitoring, and a mobile app for job hour calculation. Collaborating with the vendor for future releases would also be helpful.
Service and Support: Control-M's customer service has received mixed feedback, with some customers commending the prompt and knowledgeable support team. However, others believe there is room for improvement. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center's customer service has garnered high praise. Users describe support as very good and always available to help.
Ease of Deployment: Control-M's initial setup was simple and aided by useful guides and videos. Upgrades were seamless and caused minimal disruption. While customization and migration posed some challenges, Control-M proved adaptable and offered assistance. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center's setup was rated as mediocre in terms of ease. The infrastructure's complexity led to complications and necessitated the relocation of certain components.
Pricing: The opinions on setup cost for Control-M vary, with some users expressing concern about the expense associated with hardware and licensing for each job. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center is seen as a more cost-effective option compared to its competitors, leading to its popularity among companies.
ROI: Control-M has proven to be more cost-effective than Stonebranch Universal Automation Center, resulting in improved productivity, decreased downtime, and streamlined processes.
Comparison Results: Control-M is highly preferred over Stonebranch Universal Automation Center. Users appreciate Control-M for its user-friendly setup process, stability, easy maintenance, and smooth upgrades. They find its Managed File Transfer, credentials vault, integration capabilities, role-based administration, and dashboard collaboration features to be valuable.
"The ability to dynamically predict batch run time is so valuable."
"We used Control-M's Python Client and cloud data service integrations with AWS and, as a feature, it was very customizable. It gave us a lot of flexibility for customizing whatever data maneuver we wanted to do within a pipeline."
"In our bank, all new applications need to be implemented with Control-M. We try to look for the best way to establish communication between both products. One of the new features for us is Application Integrator. It is a very interesting feature because it lets us integrate with those applications that are not included in Control-M. By using Application Integrator, we can easily integrate new technologies. With the help of Application Integrator, we recently integrated with Blue Prism, which is a robotic product. We could integrate such processes into Control-M. Now, we are working with Ansible, and we are putting Ansible automated processes into Control-M."
"The product has improved dramatically over the years; it offers a lot in terms of features and capabilities and integration with third-party tools. A wide range of models available with the product is critical in reducing manual and mundane work such as custom script writing. This saves significant amounts of time and, by association, money for the organization."
"Most valuable feature would be the ability to detect and notify when a process has not completed successfully."
"We have a team called pro-mon and they monitor all the jobs for us. A single view for them makes it easy for them to monitor things."
"The initial setup is largely straightforward."
"The solution is innovative. Specifically for the overseas and time differences, you can feel the efficiency of Batch Impact Manager on jobs, batch processing, and impact management. It works the best on these kinds of issues. It saves us time and money, which is important. We save a lot using Control-M."
"We lean a lot on the multi-tenancy that they offer within the product, the ability to get other people to self-manage their estate, versus having a central team do all the scheduling."
"The most valuable feature is the reliability of the agents, because we need them accessible and we need to run stuff. The agent technology and compatibility are top-notch."
"I have found the agents to be so much simpler, when compared to ESP."
"We like that it has GUI and is not just a command line."
"I love the Universal Controller. It's been great for us. We host it on-premise... It's High Availability, meaning there's failover from one server to the other if one goes down."
"The Universal Agent is the most valuable feature. Being agent-based and being able to go across multiple technology stacks, which is what our workflows do, Stonebranch gives us the ability to bridge those disparate technologies. It enables us to remove the dependency-gap with the agent so we know the status of the workflow at each step."
"When it comes to agent technology and compatibility with other vendors, from a platform perspective it was the one vendor that fit all the platforms that we have, from your old platforms - mainframe, NSK, IBM i - to the new ones, going into cloud and container"
"The support is good from Stonebranch Universal Automation Center."
"Everybody's biggest gripe is the reporting capability option. It is a gripe because there is a lot of information in Control-M, but the solution doesn't have a good reporting tool to extract that information. Now, if you want all that information, you need to rely on another third-party BI tool to extract the information out of Control-M."
"We've also had a few database bugs within our organization. I think we are migrating to OpenJDK rather than just regular Java and that has since shown some issues with our Control-M instance, timing out and causing our jobs to stop running. We are still working with BMC to fine-tune that and get that resolved."
"It is a very strong product, but the reporting could be better."
"The initial setup was complex, because I wasn't used to it."
"Sometimes, with technical support, they will take feedback, but you don't know where that feedback goes or if it proceeds along in the thought process."
"Control-M doesn't have any dynamic reporting facilities or features."
"Some of the features are not available. We were about to deploy the REST API, but we had some challenges. We had to use a third-party application. So, it should be improved in terms of integrating REST API jobs. That was something that was lacking. The customer was not that happy in terms of getting the desired output. So, we had to use a third-party application called Hangfire. We would like to have more videos on REST API integration, and we would like to have easy integration with the Control-M application through the REST API."
"You need to pay for extra features if you need them."
"It would be ideal if they had the exact same features as the CA Workload Automation DE series. It would be helpful to have calendaring options."
"I have a request regarding our agent on the mainframe. It may time out when communicating to the Universal Controller, when the mainframe is extremely busy. That can cause a task which is running at that time to not see the results of the job that ran on the mainframe. It happens sporadically during times of really busy CPU usage. We're expecting that enhancement from them in the fourth quarter."
"There is room for improvement with its connectivity with the Microsoft SRS system. It is very weak. They keep telling us it works with it, and technically it does, but it does not provide a lot of visibility. We have lost a lot of visibility migrating to Stonebranch, compared with just running tasks on the SRS server. That's really about the only thing that is a sore point for us."
"It can't handle negative written codes."
"Occasionally, we have an agent that doesn't come back up after patching. That doesn't happen very often... It's really just a restart of the agent and it comes back up. But that might be one thing that could be improved."
"The Universal Controller is decent for the money it costs... It needs some work to have full features, compared to other products that are out there, specifically IBM's Workload Scheduler."
"There is a component called the OMS, which is the message broker. We rely on infrastructure, resiliency, and availability for that piece. If that could change to be highly available just as a software component, so that we don't have to provide the high-available storage, etc. for it, that would be a plus. It would just be cheaper to run."
"It's not available on the cloud, so they should take that due to safety, security, and scalability."
Control-M is ranked 1st in Workload Automation with 110 reviews while Stonebranch is ranked 16th in Workload Automation with 26 reviews. Control-M is rated 8.8, while Stonebranch is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Control-M writes "We have seen quicker file transfers with more visibility and stability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Stonebranch writes "Allowed us to develop workflows without having to train and develop very specialized skillsets". Control-M is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Rocket Zena, ESP Workload Automation Intelligence and Tidal by Redwood, whereas Stonebranch is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs, ESP Workload Automation Intelligence, IBM Workload Automation and VisualCron. See our Control-M vs. Stonebranch report.
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