Control-M Review

We use it to handle most of our batch processing and all of the transactions that we do on a daily basis. It's a large financial institution which handles quite a bit of processing on an individual basis, and we both mainframe and distribute it.

We are receiving files from another system, then we use the File Watch Utility (because we have no view into the other system and how it works). However, when files arrive on certain servers, we're able to pick them up and trigger further downstream processes from them.

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.

• The ability to go from one system to another.
• To be able to trigger something off of it, yet we are still on a mainframe for our batch processing. 
• To be able to trigger something from the batch, then distribute that back and forth.
• The solution has always been very streamlined. 
• Ease of use
• The BMC customer service behind the tool has been most valuable.

They have Workload Change Manager, and I would like to see a little more of that. Being in the business that we're in, there's a lot of hesitance. We are very hesitant to change things in the banking industry. It isn't bleeding edge by any means. Getting people to buy into things is sort of the hard part, because everybody wants their money to be handled properly.

The solution is very stable. We have our mainframe as well, which has not been bad at processing, and it's pretty stable. With the application of Control-M, we've seen minimal downtime. If there has been downtime, it hasn't been with the application. It has been with the hardware, and you can't get around that part of it.

It is a good application for scaling. We're able to scale pretty fast, whether we're building a small or large set of jobs. When we have new servers being built, agents are already put on them, and we can work pretty quickly without having to step back to handle it.

The technical support is extremely helpful. You can provide just a basic description of your case. If they need to, they can log onto your system. They can shoot you into the right direction, whether it's a knowledge article, community forums, etc. Overall, it is great technical support. Though, it has been a while since I've had a technical call with them.

Sometimes, with technical support, they will take feedback, but you don't know where that feedback goes or if it proceeds along in the thought process.

They did previously use CA-7 for the mainframe. They switched for the ability to use both distributed and mainframe from one central point.

We did recently migrated to version 9.0. Our organization did use a reseller. Our national IT group manages the application. We are just the user of it, so I wasn't involved in any of that.

It has absolutely saved us time. It has made us more efficient. As far as the processing between systems, we don't have as many people. They have been able to focus on other efforts, because we have been able to automate more stuff with Control-M.

Do the trial demo. Reach out to others via the BMC community forums. I don't believe a license is required. It's just a sign on. There are multiple vendors who are resellers or BMC partners who will provide you with input. All you have to do is ask. Feel free to ask others. The people who I have dealt with have always been forthcoming with information. They will tell you what they see as a plus or minus.

It has helped us streamline some things in IT operations, which is probably a slight improvement. We haven't seen any negative impacts.

I've used it in different forms and versions for about 20 years now. I'm pretty familiar with it from an operations standpoint. The tool itself is a ten, and the customer service behind it has made that even more so.

It's worked pretty well. I haven't been able to take a lot of advantage of some of the new features, so I haven't been able to expand on those. For what we do now, it chugs along pretty well.