We performed a comparison between ActiveBatch Workload Automation and Control-M based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: ActiveBatch Workload Automation is highly praised for its versatility and ease of use. Users appreciate the prebuilt jobs, scheduling, monitoring, and alerting mechanism provided by the software. It is also commended for its scalability and intelligent automation features. Control-M stands out in areas such as Managed File Transfer, credentials vault, integration capabilities, Role-Based Administration, collaboration, and forecasting. Users find the software to be particularly useful for these functionalities.
ActiveBatch improvements include managed file transfer, subscription model transition, cloud aspect, interface, crashes, triggers, monitoring dashboard, price, documentation, help center, setup process, email alerts, lag/stability issues, customization options, and customer support. Control-M needs enhancements in microservices, API integration, web interface, testing/quality assurance, reporting, customization, upgrade process, distributed architecture, third-party tool integration, FTP job logs visibility, and QA testing.
Service and Support: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has been praised for its customer service, with users appreciating the helpful, reliable, and responsive support team. Control-M has received mixed feedback. Some customers have praised the prompt and knowledgeable support team, while others have faced slow response times and a lack of proactive assistance.
Ease of Deployment: The setup process for ActiveBatch Workload Automation was smooth and uncomplicated. Nevertheless, there is a minor requirement for additional instructional material when importing files. Control-M had a direct setup procedure, although a few users mentioned a learning curve and the necessity to manually convert jobs and scripts.
Pricing: ActiveBatch Workload Automation is highly regarded for its flexible and reasonably priced setup cost. Users appreciate the ease and speed of the process. Control-M's pricing and licensing elicit varied opinions, with some users considering it costly and perplexing.
ROI: ActiveBatch Workload Automation has proven to be highly effective, leading to substantial financial gains for users. It has resulted in a significant boost in net revenue. Control-M offers a more cost-effective solution, improving overall efficiency and providing advanced automation features.
Comparison Results: ActiveBatch Workload Automation is the preferred product over Control-M according to user reviews. It is praised for its simplicity and ease of use during setup. ActiveBatch offers more versatility and ease of configuration, with prebuilt jobs and a user-friendly interface. Its pricing is considered reasonable and competitive, especially for smaller companies.
"The user interface is really incredible."
"Managing the workload and monitoring the tasks were very difficult with manual interventions. Now, by using ActiveBatch, the process is automated and it runs tasks on a scheduled basis."
"There are hundreds of pre-built steps."
"Using this tool, if there are any huge failures, we immediately get an email notification, and the proper team will be informed, at which time they can act accordingly."
"ActiveBatch provides summary reports and logs for further analysis and improvements in monitoring servers, which is very handy."
"By implementing a sophisticated scheduling mechanism, the system allows for the precise triggering of jobs at user-selected frequencies, enabling a seamless and automated execution of tasks according to specified time intervals."
"The most valuable feature is its stability. We've only had very minor issues and generally they have happened because someone has applied a patch on a Windows operating system and it has caused some grief. We've actually been able to resolve those issues quite quickly with ActiveBatch. In all the time that I've had use of ActiveBatch, it hasn't failed completely once. Uptime is almost 100 percent."
"From a scheduling point of view, it is pretty 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."
"Automation of the batch jobs is the most valuable feature."
"We use Control-M for maintenance on our Oracle and SQL Server databases. It automates maintenance on packages, including standard procedures on the databases themselves, snapshots, checking integrity, verifying the RDBMS of the databases, etc. It ensures they aren't clogged and that they are running smoothly and that there aren't any jobs stuck, eating up the performance of the server or any of the CPU cores."
"I find Control-M for SAP and Control-M for Informatica good. You can connect to the Linux or Windows servers, and you can run multiple jobs."
"Control-M is excellent when it comes to building, scheduling, managing, and monitoring production workflows. Those workflows are of very high importance to our operations."
"Promotions between environments, as well as local, mass update, versioning, and self-service."
"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."
"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."
"They have some crucial design flaws within the console that still need to be worked out because it is not working exactly how we hoped to see it, e.g., just some minor things where when you hit the save button, then all of a sudden all your job's library items collapse. Then, in order to continue on with your testing, you have to open those back up. I have taken that to them, and they are like, "Yep. We know about it. We know we have some enhancements that need to be taken care of. We have more developers now." They are working towards taking the minor things that annoy us, resolving them, and getting them fixed."
"It does have a little bit of a learning curve because it is fairly complex. You have to learn how it does things. I don't know if it's any worse than any other tool would be, just because of the nature of what it does... the learning curve is the hardest part."
"The help center and documentation are not that helpful."
"The UI could potentially offer a more refined and user-friendly experience, fostering smoother interactions and facilitating easier navigation for users engaging with the application."
"ActiveBatch UI could use a little more help, and video tutorials would be greatly appreciated for user guides."
"Some of the advanced features in the user interface are a bit confusing even after referring to the documents."
"A nice thing to have would be the ability to comfortably pass variables from one job to another. That was one of the things that I found difficult."
"Providing some detailed training materials could be very helpful for new users who have very limited technical information about the tool."
"A lot of businesses are using ServiceNow, which is another tool. I would like there to be some integration with ServiceNow or other third-party tools as well as have easily available integrations. Right now, we need to write scripts. Apart from that, if there were some integrations with an ITSM tool, then that would be good. Because at the end of the day, most of our clients are using different ITSM tools. I know that BMC Remedy is easy to integrate with Control-M. However, if there was availability for Jira as well as other ITSM and DevOps tools, that would be a good improvement."
"The infrastructure updates could use improvement. Some of the previous updates that we have run to get to version nineteen were troublesome. So, a more seamless upgrade path for the infrastructure components would be useful. I don't know if they have replaced that in version 20 or if version 20 has an easier path, but I would like to see the upgrade from one version to the next version be a little smoother."
"Its installation can be better. Currently, we have to install it manually. The file transfer feature can also be improved. It is not very easy to transfer a file from business to business. In terms of new features, they can include new technologies. It can have API integration."
"With the current version update, I'm not sure why we needed a separate database upgrade. Why not put it all in one package? Previously, you could do it either via a manual upgrade or an in-place upgrade but it wasn't separate."
"It can definitely expand promotions, so that a single job can be moved. Currently you can only promote a job by promoting the entire table."
"It has a slight issue with daylight savings time while advancing the clock in the Spring."
"We have some plug-ins like BOBJ, and we need a little improvement there. Other than that, it has been pretty good. I haven't seen any issues."
"Advanced File Transfer (AFT) has limitations that cause us to use a bit more licensing than we feel is appropriate."
ActiveBatch by Redwood is ranked 6th in Process Automation with 35 reviews while Control-M is ranked 4th in Process Automation with 110 reviews. ActiveBatch by Redwood is rated 9.2, while Control-M is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of ActiveBatch by Redwood writes "Flexible, easy to use, and offers good automation". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Control-M writes "We have seen quicker file transfers with more visibility and stability". ActiveBatch by Redwood is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, Tidal by Redwood, Redwood RunMyJobs, IBM Workload Automation and VisualCron, whereas Control-M is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Rocket Zena, Automic Workload Automation and ESP Workload Automation Intelligence. See our ActiveBatch by Redwood vs. Control-M report.
See our list of best Process Automation vendors, best Managed File Transfer (MFT) vendors, and best Workload Automation vendors.
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