BMC Control-M Alternatives

Comparing Control-M with ActiveBatch Workload Automation Software

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Overview

Control-M by BMC Software and ActiveBatch Workload Automation by Redwood are both enterprise-grade orchestration and workload automation solutions. These automation platforms provide drag-and-drop job development and orchestration, cross-platform batch job execution (Windows, Linux, UNIX, IBM iSeries Mainframes, and more), and unified monitoring of critical processes, application performance, and IT operations. Both products also offer intuitive user interfaces to automate workflows, including on-premises thick clients, web interfaces, mobile apps, and self-service portals for help desks and business users.

Out-of-the-box features, and the headstart it gives you in deployment, are the key differentiators between ActiveBatch and Control-M. For example, ActiveBatch offers intelligent, innovative features that use historical and predictive analytics to optimize and dynamically scale resources.
 

Functional Areas and Software Categories

Control-M

ActiveBatch

Job Scheduling

Job Scheduling is the process of scheduling, triggering, and running automated workloads. Modern job schedulers have advanced date/time, fiscal calendar, and interval-based options for ultimate flexibility.

 

Included
with Control-M*




*Some configurations charge
per Job template created.

Included with ActiveBatch


Workflow Mapping and Low-Code Orchestration

Workflow Mapping helps teams route end-to-end IT processes and workflows from one point to another based on conditional logic, business rules, or other constraints. Workflow mapping tools can feature visualization displays that allow users to visualize dependencies between workflow components.

Orchestration tools allow diverse systems and applications to communicate cross-platform and be collectively managed from a single console.

Included
with Control-M*




*Orchestrate IT Processes Using Separately Licensed Product: BMC TrueSight Orchestration

Universal Orchestration
Included with ActiveBatch


Event-Driven Automation

Just-in-time job scheduling method triggers workflows based on a particular event such as a database modification, file creation, or email delivery. This method of batch-process scheduling reduces delays and bottlenecks by kicking off jobs as soon as, but not before, they are able to successfully run.

 
Partially Included
with Control-M*




*Database Triggers, File Triggers, and Auto-Remediation Triggers may require add-ins or plug-ins.
 

Included
with ActiveBatch



Runtime Monitoring, Conditional Alerting, and Auto-Remediation

Runtime Monitoring and Service Level Agreement (SLA) Management involves monitoring and tracking KPIs related to IT and business process service level performance. Conditional alerting is a required element of this monitoring, as operations teams need to know relevant, context-aware information as soon as possible in the event of a potential breach. Some tools provide automated remediation capabilities such as freeing disk space or provisioning additional resources to processes at risk of failure.

Not Included
with Control-M




Requires Control-M
Batch Impact Manager Add-In

Included
with ActiveBatch


Managed File Process Automation

Secure and reliable file transfers are essential processes within every enterprise. Managed File Transfer Automation takes simple file transfers to the next level with parallel transfer capabilities, validation checks, templated transfer logic, centralized credential and connection info management, and more.


Not Included
with Control-M




Requires Control-M
Managed File Transfer Add-In

 

Included
with ActiveBatch


IT DevOps

DevOps is an agile framework and strategy focused on collaboration between development and operational teams. IT DevOps tools assist IT developers with low-code development functions and provide operations with up-to-date information, documentation, and remediation functions. Plus, DevOps tools offer channels to collaborate across functional teams, securely promote objects between environments, and more. Our workload automation tools operate in hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, and on-premises IT environments.


Partially Included
with Control-M*


*e.g. Job logic cannot be easily expanded to add additional steps or actions; additional add-ins required for some features.

Included
with ActiveBatch



Change Management

A facility that tracks all object revisions, multi-user audit trails, and approval processes for promoting objects between production and non-production environments. Many Change Management or source control tools also offer the ability to perform transformations to objects when migrating from one environment to another, plus simple and reliable methods for rolling back to prior versions of an object or all-inclusive changeset.

Not Included
with Control-M




Requires Control-M
Workload Change Manager Add-In

Included
with ActiveBatch



All-in-One Operations Monitoring

Operational teams need to know what’s happening at a moment’s notice. Real-time, all-in-one operations monitoring tool provides a single pane of glass to monitor workflows, activities, and machine loads. This end-to-end visibility allows operators to troubleshoot problems faster by making it easy to drill into the individual components that caused a setback.

Included
with Control-M


Included
with ActiveBatch



Intelligent Resource Optimization and Machine Load Management

Intelligent resource optimization is the process of using machine learning, predictive analytics, and dynamic scaling to automatically distribute workloads among disparate machine resources. Machine load management not only visualizes which machines have the highest loads, but is also used by the system to dynamically balance machine loads.

Not Available
for Control-M


Included
with ActiveBatch



Database Automation

Automated management of popular RDBMSs such as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle Databases. Easily add, modify, or remove data within and between databases. Plus, perform low-code ETL processes between providers, monitor database contents for changes, and automatically trigger workloads based contextually on events.
  

Not Included
with Control-M




Requires Control-M
for Databases Plug-In

Included
with ActiveBatch


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Other ActiveBatch alternatives: CA Automic,  IBM Tivoli, Tidal Workload Automation (formerly Cisco Tidal), CA Autosys alternatives, JAMS Scheduler alternatives, Stonebranch alternatives


Coordinate and Consolidate Automation Tools

According to Gartner, most organizations have 3-8 scheduling and automation tools in place. ActiveBatch offers a comprehensive feature set and a wide range of both pre-built connectors and an API adapter. This allows you to consolidate other limited tools - bringing all automation into one platform using the same modules and plug-ins. Low-code API accessibility makes consolidation and orchestration simple. As your IT team deprecates or adopts new tools and technologies over time, ActiveBatch is ready.

Learn more about our flexible and scalable model here.

 

Get More from ActiveBatch for Less

Frequently Asked Questions

BMC’s Control-M solution is based on an architecture that is not well-suited to the needs of a modern enterprise. It requires a large installation footprint that is burdensome and time-consuming to update when security patches are needed. It has high operational and administrative costs. ActiveBatch workload automation provides universal workflow actions for common IT automation tasks out-of-the-box, so IT can assemble end-to-end processes without paying for extras. Plus, with low-code API accessibility, dozens of event notifications, alerting and monitoring and more, IT can reliably support orchestration across platforms. Explore what you can accomplish with ActiveBatch.

ActiveBatch provides a central automation hub for job scheduling and monitoring so that business-critical systems like CRM, ERP, Big Data, BI, ETL tools, work order management, project management and consulting systems work together seamlessly with minimal human intervention. IT/DevOps can manage data across systems, transfer files between departments or manage cloud-based resources using intelligent workload management tools. With ActiveBatch, users can execute jobs based on granular date/time schedules or use advanced event triggers. Explore even more functionality with ActiveBatch.

Yes. ActiveBatch customers can easily export BMC Control-M alternative objects and SMART folders for import into ActiveBatch with help from in-house support and migrations teams. Automated migrations for BMC Control-M alternative reduce risk, increase optimization and help with scalability, and customers have self-service access to ActiveBatch’s online academy with hundreds of training modules. Learn more about automated migrations.

Workload automation software is used to manage real-time data and dependencies across disparate tools such as managed file transfers/ETL tools, business process applications, enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools, BI platforms and more.
Workload automation tools that support on-premises and SaaS deployment often provide universal connectors and/or powerful REST API adapters that make it possible to integrate virtually any tool into an end-to-end process, without the need for custom scripts. Learn more about workload automation capabilities and pricing.

ActiveBatch’s back-end database supports Windows SQL, Azure SQL and Oracle databases for storing all system- and user-created objects and instances. ActiveBatch integrates with and automates virtually any database via direct integrations, scripts or low-code UI. ActiveBatch is available on AWS and also provides integrations with IBM, Informatica, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and the Hadoop Ecosystem and its many subsets. Explore ActiveBatch’s integrations and capabilities.

Be ready to automate anything.

Build and automate workflows in half the time without the need for custom scripting. Gain operational peace of mind with real-time insights, customizable alerting, and more.


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