We performed a comparison between Control-M and OpCon 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 features such as Managed File Transfer, credentials vault, integration capabilities, Role-Based Administration, file transfer integration, collaboration dashboard, scheduling, configuration ease, reporting, workload archiving, and forecasting. OpCon shines in its flexibility, integration capabilities, self-service, automation of manual tasks, GUI, database functionality, deployment concept, testing environment, self-service solution manager, on-demand access, file watcher, MAS feature, reliability, process linking, and automation capabilities.
Control-M can be improved by enhancing its microservices and API integration, addressing bugs in the web interface, developing a lighter web version, improving reporting capabilities, streamlining the upgrade process, and integrating with third-party tools. OpCon needs improvement in the functionality of its web-based interface, upgrading process, documentation, and accessibility through a mobile app.
Service and Support: Control-M's customer service has a range of opinions, with some customers appreciating the quick and knowledgeable support team, while others feel that the support could be more proactive and faster. OpCon's customer service and support have been consistently praised, with customers commending the technical support team for their timely responses and effective solutions.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for Control-M is typically considered simple and user-friendly, aided by informative guides and videos. Nevertheless, a few users noted that manually converting jobs and scripts introduced complications and delays. OpCon's initial setup may be intricate, but with the support of SMA consultants, the procedure becomes more seamless.
Pricing: Control-M is seen as costly, particularly for smaller businesses, whereas OpCon is acknowledged as a pricier but high-quality option. Control-M's pricing is dependent on the number of jobs or endpoints, while OpCon offers tiered pricing based on usage.
ROI: Control-M is a valuable solution that enhances efficiency, minimizes maintenance windows, and offers cost-efficiencies. OpCon saves time, decreases errors, improves productivity, and provides cost benefits.
Comparison Results: Control-M is the preferred choice when comparing it to OpCon. Users find the initial setup of Control-M to be straightforward and easy, with a clear understanding of the architecture and installation process. Control-M's Managed File Transfer feature is highly praised, as it eliminates the need for manual file transfers and offers a unified view for monitoring and orchestrating workflows and data pipelines.
"It gives us the ability to have end-to-end workflows, no matter where they're running."
"Our ability to integrate with many different solutions has been invaluable. The new approach of the automation API and jobs-as-code is also valuable."
"There is a batch monitoring tool called Batch Impact Manager, which proactively warns when processing is behind and SLAs are in jeopardy of being missed."
"BIM is helpful because we do not miss any SLAs, as we get to know the issue well in advance. It is the topmost service that has helped us provide better solutions for the business."
"The unified view where you can define, orchestrate, and monitor applications, workflows, and data pipelines is important because we have more than one team working on Control-M. We have a support team, a job-creation team, and a SAP team. We can all work together on it. It avoids anyone from working on his part and not using the latest modifications."
"Promotions between environments, as well as local, mass update, versioning, and self-service."
"Control-M has improved application reliability and the SLAs in our company by quite a bit. You can see if problems are coming. If we have an SLA in a couple of hours, we know well before that couple hours if processing is behind, and it allows us to take some preventative action."
"We value Control-M mainly for the ability to control multiple nodes in a coordinated manner. Control-M has the ability to really coordinate across a lot of nodes."
"The core system is the most valuable part: being able to view the processes that we've never really been able to view as a whole before. That is super-helpful, as is being alerted when issues arise."
"OpCon has also reduced our data processing times because of the way you can build out workflows. It can run things in sequence. It's not restricted to a linear process, so you can run multiple jobs at once, allowing for multi-threaded jobs."
"The ability to chain jobs together allows us to create complex interdependencies between our jobs, and the integration into our core system is important because it allows us, through an automated system, to do a huge number of things that used to be done manually."
"It has streamlined operations, specifically with the timing of our processes. We don't have to worry about if things are going to run at a certain time. The automation allows us to say, "Okay, we want this to run at this time, and this to not run until that is done." So, it has really streamlined the accuracy and timeline of when jobs run throughout the day."
"Last year, we added a second environment and the OpCon Deploy product. This has allowed us to build a testing environment. This has been a great addition for us as we can work through our workflows without disrupting our production environment."
"The whole product is valuable to us because of the integrations that it has with the MCP and the Windows environments. You have to have the agent on each one of them that you want to monitor. The integrations that we have created are along the lines of extracting files and sending them through SFTP to another vendor. Those are the things that were taking a lot of time away from my staff."
"It is so simplistic that it gives us peace of mind. Before, we had all these processes that were run manually, such as different file transfers and jobs running for our core at certain times. Now, all that stuff is done automatically."
"We particularly like the fact that it's graphical because it is Windows-based. Before, we were text-based on the mainframe. You can also produce flow charts. Because it's point-and-click, its ease of use is very nice."
"Regarding product design and R&D, the DevOps pipeline could be improved with better capabilities and automation. API security and authentication is another area that could use improvement; users must have static credential passwords, which is a security concern."
"Its architecture is old. AutoSys gives more flexibility."
"Whenever I pull an S4HANA job to the Helix Control-M tool, it pulls it naturally with all the steps. A job can have several steps, and in this case, it is very easy to control the steps taken. However, in the case of the SaaS IBP tool, it can pull the job but cannot identify the steps. So, when I want to take an action in a step, I have to split the job."
"I would like not to have to reach out to a third-party application company to do automated notifications. Right now, we still have people manually calling people and emailing people. There's a company called xMatters - and there are others - that has an API through Control-M that can automate any aspect of failure management. I'd like to see it build right into the product. I'd like to see a better notification product."
"We develop software. More frequently, we are working with microservices and APIs, using our integration tool, MuleSoft. While Control-M is really a good tool to integrate with other tools, it is important for them to continue improving their microservices and API."
"I've never been very successful when researching ways to utilize Batch Impact Manager. It's a tool to set up dummy jobs in your job flow and it's supposed to come back to you and say, 'Okay, for this job flow, you are 50 percent complete at a certain point in time'...I would like things like Batch Impact Manager to be a little more user-friendly, out-of-the-box."
"I would like to see more auditing capabilities. Right now, it has the basics and I've been trying to set those up to work with what our auditors are looking for."
"They can give more predefined plug-ins so that we don't have to create them."
"The logs are a little daunting to look at the first few times, however, as you begin to understand what you're looking at, it becomes easier."
"More functionality within self-service would be greatly appreciated."
"We are still in the early stages of our implementation, so at this point, I cannot see any needed improvements or features."
"There is some difficulty with the ease of use when I don't have some of the templates that were already created. More templates would be great. Non-core featured templates are my biggest struggle."
"The learning curve could be shorter. The problem is that it's difficult to simplify a product without taking away functionality. I would love to see OpCon become a little easier to grasp. However, my concern is that making things easier isn't always better for the product. If they can keep the integrity of the product while making it easier to learn, that would be an area of improvement."
"Licensing would be the first part I would overhaul. Each time a new licensing paradigm comes out, more features are removed and costs are added. They "add" features that are rarely used and increase charges for the number of jobs run. I'm sure someone in finance got a raise for their brilliance but the end-users won't thank them one bit. Expect price hikes and threats when you hold them to account at every opportunity."
"The solution has quite a learning curve for beginners. It's challenging. I wouldn't rate it as super-easy to automate processes. It's medium-weight. I've used more complex software, but I've used simpler software."
"It is a complex product to use. Programming the schedules is complex. It does require training from OpCon... I would like to see some online training, some videos. When I bring in a new employee... it would be nice if there was some basic information for her to look at to understand this program. Even for my systems administrator, it would be helpful if there were tips and tricks available."
Control-M is ranked 1st in Workload Automation with 110 reviews while OpCon is ranked 9th in Workload Automation with 56 reviews. Control-M is rated 8.8, while OpCon is rated 9.2. 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 OpCon writes "Gives us the ability to schedule dependent jobs across different mainframes". Control-M is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Rocket Zena, ESP Workload Automation Intelligence and CA 7 Workload Automation Intelligence, whereas OpCon is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Automic Workload Automation, UiPath and Tidal by Redwood. See our Control-M vs. OpCon report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
We monitor all Workload Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
