We performed a comparison between Control-M and IBM Workload Automation 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 several valuable features such as Managed File Transfer, credentials vault, integration capabilities, Role-Based Administration, file transfer integration, collaboration dashboard, reporting, workload archiving, and forecasting. IBM Workload Automation provides user-requested features, job triggering in multiple nodes, pre-scheduling, system stability, and efficient batch application management.
Based on the reviews, Control-M could enhance its microservices and API integration, fix bugs in the web interface, improve reporting capabilities, streamline the upgrade process, and integrate better with third-party tools. IBM Workload Automation could benefit from improvements in performance, job dependencies, stability, and integration with new technologies.
Service and Support: The customer service for Control-M has received both positive and negative feedback. Some customers appreciate the quick and knowledgeable support team, while others believe that support can be sluggish. IBM Workload Automation is renowned for its exceptional technical support, although there may be difficulties in pinpointing the origins of specific problems.
Ease of Deployment: Control-M is considered to be uncomplicated and easy to deploy, although there might be a learning curve. The duration of the setup can vary depending on the complexity involved. IBM Workload Automation may pose difficulties for users who are not familiar with IBM tools. However, with proper assistance, the setup becomes relatively simple. Additionally, agent-based installations can be deployed quickly.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Control-M is determined by the number of jobs or endpoints, which may be perplexing and costly for certain users. IBM Workload Automation's pricing is based on the customer's contract and switching to a per job license can lead to savings. The number of licenses needed for IBM Workload Automation can differ based on usage.
ROI: Control-M offers a notable return on investment due to its cost reduction, enhanced efficiency, automated batch scheduling, and decreased reliance on manual tasks. IBM Workload Automation's ROI is uncertain and necessitates additional investigation and analysis.
Comparison Results: Control-M is the preferred product when compared to IBM Workload Automation. Control-M is highly praised for its simple setup process, ease of maintenance, and efficient automation abilities. Users appreciate the Managed File Transfer feature, credentials vault, integration capabilities, and Role-Based Administration offered by Control-M. Additionally, Control-M provides valuable features like scheduling, easy configuration, and a user-friendly web interface.
"The Automation API has opened up a world of possibilities for us, including the ability to create workflows on-demand using traditional DevOps tools."
"It is simple to create, integrate, and automate data pipelines and to ingest data from different platforms. It integrates well between platforms."
"The solution has the power to reduce resources, which is good for business. It is constantly updated to remain compatible with new technologies such as Amazon, Azure, and Google Cloud. It's very easy to take advantage of the compatibilities."
"The monitoring tool is very good. It's very easy for expert and entry-level users to use on short notice."
"BIM is a good tool to monitor SLAs, and being a financial organization, this is a very good feature for us."
"Because it's a tool which allows us to do scheduled work, it allows for notifications when jobs aren't running within that scheduled time frame. This improves the opportunity to meet SLAs."
"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."
"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."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"The project we worked on involved the running of nearly 24,000 job instances in a single day, so I would say that the solution is stable."
"The whole product is valuable because it is a tool for batch automation."
"The technical support is great, the product is easy-to-use, and it is stable."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Jobs can be triggered in multiple nodes."
"This solution has a request feature where users can request the added features they need to have developed. Based on client voting for those features, these are developed and released."
"Technical support from IBM is very good."
"Advanced File Transfer (AFT) has limitations that cause us to use a bit more licensing than we feel is appropriate."
"We did encounter a few scalability issues. Sometimes, there are too many jobs in our environment on different servers, but that’s not the tool issue, we can simply increase the FS size. However, that requires bank cost; hence the scalability issue."
"I talked to Control-M guys back in October or November when they had a gathering here in Atlanta. We talked about not being able to go back in history in Helix Control-M for more than two weeks. We submitted a request for enhancement. They told us that they are working on it, and they are thinking of expanding that to 30 days. We would like to see it expand to 90 days, but they are working on it."
"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."
"I'm not sure how the solution fits together with our business modernization initiatives, as there are things outside of my area, even though Control-M is the scheduling tool of the company. They may use other things, e.g., Big Data."
"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."
"Its architecture is old. AutoSys gives more flexibility."
"The infrastructure could be improved."
"The configuration of IBM Workload Automation has some challenges. We have a difficult time customizing it, but it is similar to other solutions."
"It would be helpful to have a mobile app that could be used to follow the job schedule."
"This solution does have bugs and could be improved in this regard. However, these bugs are resolved relatively quickly."
"It should support other schedulers that aren't IBM products."
"It is missing some features and can improve in areas where the competition is somewhat better like linking job dependencies."
"The schedule refreshes daily and that's a challenge for us."
"The performance of the previous versions could be better."
"Scalability-wise, it can be a little bit challenging."
Control-M is ranked 1st in Workload Automation with 110 reviews while IBM Workload Automation is ranked 13th in Workload Automation with 28 reviews. Control-M is rated 8.8, while IBM Workload Automation 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 IBM Workload Automation writes "With an easy setup phase in place, agent-based installation can be done in minutes". Control-M is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, Rocket Zena, Automic Workload Automation, ESP Workload Automation Intelligence and Redwood RunMyJobs, whereas IBM Workload Automation is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, HCL Workload Automation, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Tidal by Redwood and BMC Compuware ThruPut Manager. See our Control-M vs. IBM Workload Automation report.
See our list of best Workload Automation vendors.
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