Control-M vs SaltStack comparison

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4,601 views|1,638 comparisons
98% willing to recommend
SaltStack Logo
2,821 views|1,550 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Control-M and SaltStack based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Pega, BMC and others in Process Automation.
To learn more, read our detailed Process Automation Report (Updated: May 2024).
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Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It has multiple features. You can plan your execution in Control-M. It provides one single window where you can define workflows regardless of geographic boundaries and platforms. A batch process can be executed from this single window. It provides insights into your processes. Your business people will know what process they are running and what is the state of the process. Instead of knowing that they're not going to meet the SLA the next morning, the business people immediately know the changes in their process. Control-M is very easy. I can tell a non-technical person that this is how it works, and he would be able to easily understand it. Business people can understand the methodology of Control-M and the intuitive features that it has. It has a fantastic graphical user interface and is easy to understand. You just have to drag and drop but in a very intuitive way. Monitoring features are also good. It has different color coding schemes, which can help you to understand the status of your workflow. An operator who is not that technical and is just monitoring the status of the application can see by color-coding the status of a process. If anything goes wrong or a process is stuck, it gives you a hint. You can just right-click and see the logs and the output. Even if the system is not right there in the data center and is located somewhere else, you can monitor it right from there and see the workflows.""If a job fails, that development team is notified right away, which improves reliability. Previously, it was on the operators to notify the developers that their job failed, erred, or aborted. Now, it's all automated.""Speeds up processes and automated tasks.""It has a very good GUI. We can search for a job very easily. The web interface, user account creation, and access control are very good. From an access control point of view, we can provide access to as many users as we want. A second group of users can be given a certain number of features, according to the requirements. The web interface is very easy for end users to login and use. A lot of features have been added, e.g., adding jobs. They can add jobs to their stuff, whatever they want, then get it validated by the scheduling team and work it into production.""Control-M has enabled true enterprise batch automation, which combined with the other BMC Control products on our mainframe platform, allows us to run a 24/7 site with the lights out.""It is very easy to use. The HA feature is also very good.""The scheduling feature and scheduling tool are the most valuable features. I like the scheduling services that we have in Control-M, which are very beneficial to our organization because they are automating things. There is also less manual work. We can schedule a task without any manual interruptions.""The integration with ServiceNow is good. When a job ends and there are problems with it, we automatically open an incident in this platform, and the number of the incident is forwarded to Control-M. This means that we have a record of it with the log of the job."

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"I want to build automation that is intelligent, part of the fabric of our environment, and is somewhat self-sustaining. I think SaltStack can help me do this.""SaltStack has given us the ability to deal with systems at scale and rectify issues at scale.""The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment.""It is a highly stable solution.""We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server.""The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security.""The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack."

More SaltStack Pros →

Cons
"Finding documentation on the website can be a bit confusing.""Control-M reporting isn't that good. It is very limited. We would like the ability to create our own reports as well as the ability to publish dashboards in the cloud, which would help us. Improved reporting will help us determine statuses and get the answers that we need. However, I personally think BMC is not focusing on the reporting. I have even visited the BMC office in India, and asked, "Why haven't you improved the reporting?"""With earlier versions, the support was not accurate or delivered in a timely manner. What would happen is that I would be in production mode and I would have an issue and would want to get someone on a call to see what was happening. But they would always say, “Hey, provide the log first and then we'll review and we'll get back to you." I feel that when a customer asks about a production issue, they should jump onto the call to see what is going on, and then collect the logs.""It is a very strong product, but the reporting could be better.""Their technicians should be more involved when we're applying new technology to Control-M, such as cloud. We're working with cloud right now, with AWS, and getting the attention of a technician, sometimes, can take some time. It would be nice if they had somebody assigned to it. Dedicated support.""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.""Right now, Control-M is the leader in EMA analysis, which is similar to Gartner. However, clients want to invest in a strong technology, and therefore this product needs to keep up with the high expectations set for it.""The history module only contains a maximum of 10 days, but we would like to have access to more. For example, it would be helpful to have 30 days or two months of history available."

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"Its configuration process could be better.""It is difficult to set up.""This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering.""A hardened set of tests would be much appreciated.""SaltStack's features are minimal.""Web UI.""There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."

More SaltStack Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Compare to other tools Pricing and licensing was more. It should be decrease."
  • "BMC does NOT have a great licensing model from my perspective."
  • "we are more looking for a better cost/license/performance model because BMC, while we could say it's the best, is also the most expensive. That is what we are probably most annoyed with. We are paying something like €1,000,000 over three years for having 4,000 jobs running. That's expensive."
  • "We have account based licensing. There are two or three types of licensing. One of them is based on the number of jobs, so we a license close to 4,000 jobs per day. The cost is based on the different modules, which we buy from them. If we a buy a hardware module, which we are presently using and integrating, that is an additional cost, but I'm not sure of the amount. Each module comes with a different cost."
  • "As we increase the number of tasks or jobs on the system, there are concerns about cost."
  • "We have a five-year contract with task-based licensing."
  • "This product saves hours in a day based on my experience working here versus other companies with manually operations."
  • "It works on task-based licensing."
  • More Control-M Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."
  • "The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."
  • "The solution is free of cost."
  • "It is an open-source product."
  • "SaltStack is an open-source product."
  • More SaltStack Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful because nothing gets left unattended since it is all visible in one place, and… more »
    Top Answer:First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.
    Top Answer:They are expensive. If we were a small company, it would be complicated because we have to have strong sales and operations to be able to afford a tool of this level. Being a large company, the… more »
    Top Answer:We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server.
    Top Answer:SaltStack's features are minimal.
    Top Answer:We use SaltStack for configuration management, where we maintain configurations of 150 servers. It also helps with file integrity monitoring.
    Ranking
    3rd
    out of 68 in Process Automation
    Views
    4,601
    Comparisons
    1,638
    Reviews
    21
    Average Words per Review
    1,562
    Rating
    9.0
    14th
    Views
    2,821
    Comparisons
    1,550
    Reviews
    3
    Average Words per Review
    209
    Rating
    7.7
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Control M
    Learn More
    Overview

    Control-M simplifies application and data workflow orchestration on premises or as a service. It makes it easy to build, define, schedule, manage, and monitor production workflows, ensuring visibility, reliability, and improving SLAs.

    • Accelerate new business applications into production—by embedding workflow orchestration into your CI/CD pipeline
    • Scale Dev and Ops collaboration, with a Jobs-as-Code approach
    • Simplify workflows across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform integrations
    • Deliver data-driven outcomes faster, managing big data workflows in a scalable way
    • Take control of your file transfer operations with integrated, intelligent file movement and visibility

    SaltStack is an intelligent IT automation platform that can manage, secure, and optimize any infrastructure—on-prem, in the cloud, or at the edge. It’s built on a unique and powerful event-driven automation engine that detects events in any system and reacts intelligently to them, making it an extremely effective solution for managing large, complex environments. And with the newly launched SecOps offering, SaltStack can detect security vulnerabilities and non-compliant, mis-configured systems. As soon as an issue is detected, this powerful automation helps you and your team remediate it, keeping your infrastructure securely configured, compliant, and up-to-date.

    Sample Customers
    CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
    IBM CloudTD BankScotiaBankLinkedIneBayLiberty MutualTargetHyattCyxteraNetAppFacebookLyft
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm33%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Retailer9%
    Healthcare Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm29%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Insurance Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company46%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Cloud Solution Provider8%
    Healthcare Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Government8%
    University8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise78%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise75%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business40%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise70%
    Buyer's Guide
    Process Automation
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Pega, BMC and others in Process Automation. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Control-M is ranked 3rd in Process Automation with 110 reviews while SaltStack is ranked 14th in Configuration Management with 33 reviews. Control-M is rated 8.8, while SaltStack is rated 8.2. 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 SaltStack writes "Orchestration tool that powers automation of processes with the click of a button". Control-M is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Rocket Zena, Automic Workload Automation and ESP Workload Automation Intelligence, whereas SaltStack is most compared with Microsoft Configuration Manager, VMware Aria Automation, HashiCorp Terraform, Red Hat Satellite and VMware Aria Operations.

    We monitor all Process 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.