Control-M vs Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Control-M
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (3rd), Workload Automation (1st)
Sterling Commerce Connect:D...
Ranking in Managed File Transfer (MFT)
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Managed File Transfer (MFT) category, the market share of Control-M is 4.3% and it increased by 54.4% compared to the previous year. The market share of Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is 7.5% and it decreased by 22.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed File Transfer (MFT)
Unique Categories:
Process Automation
3.0%
Workload Automation
30.4%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

JA
May 23, 2024
Reliable with good integrations for increased visibility
I like the unified dashboard and the reporting. We get all the information in a single place, as well as how many tasks are running successfully or how many tasks failed. You can easily get the information you need. Control-M's ability to build, schedule, manage, and monitor applications and workflows in production is useful. It is very powerful in this area. It is also a global brand you can rely on. Using Control-M, you can easily track all your processes, your schedulers, and your tasks in a single place. You can also send the report to your senior management. We are using the solution to deploy workflows for DataOps and DevOps initiatives. The workflow orchestration for these initiatives has been very helpful. We use AirFlow mostly. We have integrated our platform with many third parties through APIs and other data sources. AirFlow has been good at supporting our ability to interact with Control-M. It's perfectly compatible. The solution has positively affected our ability to orchestrate data pipelines in production. It is fully automated, completely reliable, and scalable, and we can easily integrate or orchestrate our data pipelines so that no manual information is required. All of our data pipelines will be created, designed, and implemented in operation directly. It's given our business users visibility and control over their jobs and has helped free up IT staff time for other tasks. It both enables better customer experiences and increases team confidence. Removing manual tasks and adopting more manual processes helps a lot. We have full visibility now. With automation, we've likely saved 25% to 30% of our team's time. It has positively impacted collaboration between IT and business users. All teams are happy with the results. When business teams need timely reports, the IT can provide that easily, for example. It's made business processes faster and provides rich visibility via reporting. The unified dashboard can be viewed by senior management. It increases the level of confidence between teams. We've been able to consolidate job schedules in our organization. It decreases the cost of operations and provides the reliability and scalability we need within the organization.
Ankit Rahangdale - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 6, 2022
Secure, fast, and 100% reliable
The setup depends on the requirement. In the current environment or current project, we have it as a middleware. We have other tools for displaying the output of a file, and there is an application that is taking it to the display servers so that it can display the data. That is one implementation in the current project. There are also multiple implementations for their finance-related file transmission because that requires security. All the financial data is automatically transferred by the Connect:Direct whenever the application team puts a file into one of the directories. We provide the directory where they need to put the file. We have the automation job that picks up the file and delivers it to the user or the application that needs to utilize that file. Its setup is straightforward. The concept is straightforward. All the related information is also available on the internet. If any of the newbies want to check or get some info on Connect:Direct, they can go to the IBM site, and they will get all the details regarding the implementation, configuration, and any issues they are facing. They can just check with the error message, and they will be able to get some details about it. It is a pretty straightforward tool. In open systems servers, the setup and configuration take 10 minutes or less than that. It also supports silent installation, which hardly takes two minutes. It can be deployed anywhere. It supports on-premises and cloud deployments. IBM recently provided a patch for cloud HPE servers. There were a few vulnerabilities that caused data leaks, and they have fixed that in their recent updates.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The File Transfer component is quite valuable. The integration with products such as Informatica and SAP are very valuable to us as well. Rather than having to build our own interface into those products, we can use the ones that come out of the box. The integration with databases is valuable as well. We use database jobs quite a bit."
"Switching to Control-M has helped reduce the total cost of ownership by 60%."
"Our data transfers have improved using Control-M processes, e.g., our monthly batches. When we used to do things manually, like copying files and reports, we used to take three to four days to complete a batch. However, with the automated file transfers and report sharing, we have been able to complete a batch within two and a half days and our reports are on time to users. So, 30% to 40% of the execution time has been saved."
"Control-M provides us with a unified view, where we can easily define, orchestrate, and monitor all our application workflows and data pipelines. It also provides the ability to filter. So, if I don't want to see everything, I can also narrow it down or open ViewPoint. This is very important since we have thousands of jobs to monitor. If we did not have this ability, it would be very difficult to see what is going on."
"The initial setup is largely straightforward."
"We can set up automated email notifications to the programmers or the whole team for a particular job. It helps save time because we're not consistently looking at the job to see if it has ended or failed."
"It has certainly helped speed things up."
"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."
"Offers secure file transfers with a fast and efficient protocol for very large files."
"Security is the most valuable feature of this product."
"The product has been very stable."
"The most valuable feature is that it provides 100% reliability for file transmission. It ensures that files get delivered in a secure manner. When you use Connect:Direct, your file 100% gets delivered to the next delivery location. If the log shows that a file got delivered, it will have all the transmitted data without truncation or other data issues."
"Automation is the most valuable feature."
"The Security Plus feature of this solution is excellent, and allows you to send encrypted files very securely to remote destinations."
"Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is a solution that is on the market for a very long time. There is an integrator that has been developed and evolves every year. On the roadmap, there is always a new integration. For example, it's one of the solutions in the market that out of the box can handle EBICS protocol. The file processing is done very well. By default, there are a lot of configurations that can be customized."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see minor changes in the user interface."
"The performance could be better. Control-M Enterprise Manager tends to slow the system down even on a server with a six-core processor and 32 gigabytes RAM. The console is Java-based, so maybe OpenJDK 16 or 17 would be a performance improvement."
"An issue we have run into in our lower environments is that Control-M can log you out frequently."
"A smartphone interface would be welcome."
"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."
"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."
"The next major release needs to focus on the lightweight web client."
"While they have a very good reporting facility, the reports that I'm asked to produce, a lot of times aren't necessarily what we need."
"Technical support is the number one concern."
"This solution cannot be deployed on a root_squash NFS, which limits superuser privileges."
"Sometimes we face issues and can't figure out the cause of failures."
"Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct could improve by adding some of the functionality that some other vendors have. For example, GoAnywhere has call agents, which are small clients that can be installed on the endpoints and can be handled by the central point on the server. If I want to do this with the IBM solution, I have to sell a lot of account addresses. The price could be unprofitable for the customer. There is some small functionality that could be implemented and could be easily done to improve this solution."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"They have File Agent, which is an additional utility and a component of Connect:Direct, for automated file transmission. In that utility, there is some issue with the file name. There is a limitation on the file name, and that is being fixed by IBM."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly."
"User interface is not user friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing and licensing could be a little bit better. Based on my experience and discussions with other existing customers, everybody feels that the regular Managed File Transfer piece, not the enterprise one, is a little overpriced, especially for folks who already have licensed Advanced File Transfer. We understand that Advanced File Transfer is going away and is going to be the end of life, and there is some additional functionality built into MFT, but the additional functionality does not really correlate with the huge price increase over what we're paying for AFT already. This has actually driven a lot of people to look for alternative solutions."
"The cost of the hardware is high. Because you need to license each job, it is costly."
"The pricing and licensing could be better. However, when I compare Control-M pricing with JAMS, Control-M is still better priced than JAMS enterprise."
"Initially, our licensing model was based on the number of jobs per day. That caused some issues because we were restricted to a number. So at our renewal time we said, 'We want to convert from number of jobs to number of endpoints.' That cost us extra money but it gave us additional capabilities, without worrying about the number of jobs."
"We have a license till 2024. We are good and satisfied with it."
"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."
"The annual licensing within BMC Control-M is on a per task basis. Three- and five-year contracts are also offered. The customer usually buys a bundle of tasks, e.g., 5,000 tasks, then my team configures Control-M for their usage."
"Its cost is a little bit higher than other solutions such as AutoSys or DAC. For the demo, there were some plans, such as start plan, scale plan, etc. Pricing was based on the plan."
"Annual licensing fee."
"The price and licensing of Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Managed File Transfer (MFT) solutions are best for your needs.
787,226 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
43%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?
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 th...
What do you like most about Control-M?
First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Control-M?
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 cos...
What needs improvement with Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct?
There is room for improvement in monitoring. We don't have good visibility tools and monitoring, so I believe there may be some enhancement needed in its monitoring dashboard.
 

Also Known As

Control M
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CARFAX, Tampa General Hospital, Navistar, Amadeus, Raymond James, Railinc
HZMO, Bank of Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about Control-M vs. Sterling Commerce Connect:Direct and other solutions. Updated: June 2024.
787,226 professionals have used our research since 2012.