What are the critical features for Control-M?

Compare Control-M alternatives based on these five features: 1. Scheduling and task management across various platforms and environments, including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid setups. 2. Workflow coordination and orchestration including multiple dependencies and integration points. 3. Monitoring task performance to identifying errors, and promptly notifying relevant stakeholders. 4. Analytics and reporting for task performance, resource usage and adherence to compliance standards. 5. Batch processing to ensure timely execution and resource optimization.

How to decide over an Control-M Alternative for Your Business

Here we provide a guidance to help you revise and pinpoint the alternative that aligns with yor unique needs and operational requirements: 3 Factors to consider 1. Budget constraints: Assess your available budget and financial resources for the adoption of a BMC Control-M alternative. 2. Specific requirements: Define your organization's precise automation and workload management needs. 3. IT environment complexity: Consider the size and complexity of your IT infrastructure and how well the alternative can adapt to it. Vendor evaluation 1. Reputation: Investigate the reputation of potential vendors in the market. 2. Track eecord: Examine the vendor's history of delivering reliable solutions. 3. Support eesources: Evaluate the availability of training and support resources provided by the vendor. Evaluation 1. Trial periods: Take advantage of trial periods offered by alternative solutions to gain hands-on experience. 2. User feedback: Research feedback and reviews from current users to understand real-world performance. 3. Industry expert insights: Seek insights and recommendations from industry experts and analysts.

Enterprise Software Workload Automation WLA Tools

Compare Top 10 Control-M Alternatives by Pros & Cons

Hazal Şimşek

updated on Sep 28, 2025

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Control-M is one of the WLA feature leaders according to AIMultiple’s analysis based on 7 different data sources. However, it has alternatives which users rate more strongly, such as:

Evaluate Control-M and compare the best Control-M alternatives in terms of features, pros and cons to identify the right tool for your organization:

*Average score, number of reviews and ease of use scores are based on leading B2B review websites.

Ranking: Products are sorted by the number of reviews, except for sponsors, which are placed and linked at the top.

Pros & cons of Control-M

Note that pros and cons are based on real user reviews from B2B review platforms.

Control-M is a WLA software developed by BMC Software that can automate and manage complex workflows across IT infrastructure, including on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Figure 1: A user review for Control-M ¹

Highlights from Control-M user reviews:

Pros

Ease of use: Control-M ranks as one of the easiest solutions to use and navigate (See Table 1). Control-M is noted for its user-friendly interface, with 15% of reviewers finding it easy to navigate and 4% describing it as straightforward.
Job scheduling: The job scheduling feature receives the highest score with 9.4. However, alternatives like ActiveBatch and RunMyJobs outperform Control-M across all functionality categories.

Cons

Automation capabilities: Control-M alternatives demonstrate superior scalability, workload processing, and intelligent automation compared to Control-M
Integrations/APIs: One user cited weak API integration with other applications as a drawback (Figure 1).
Administration: Control-M ranks lower than competitors like RunMyJobs and ActiveBatch in administrative capabilities.
Clunky: In all Control-M software reviews, 2% of users describe the tool as clunky.
Analysis and visualisation: Control-M has the lowest analysis and visualization scores among all its alternatives on TrustRadius.

Screening for Control-M alternatives

Selection criteria for best Control-M alternatives:

Number of B2B reviews: 30+
Number of employees: 10+ employees on LinkedIn.

The graph above compares Control-M alternatives: ActiveBatch, RunMyJobs, Stonebranch and Fortra’s Jams in terms of ease of use, reliability and customer support based on total user reviews. Other alternative tools, such as Tidal Software and OpCon automation are omitted due to the lack of data.

For an extended list of Control-M competitors, check out:

5 Shortlisted Control-M alternatives

Here is a comparison of shortlisted Control-M alternatives based on their features, pros & cons:

1. ActiveBatch

ActiveBatch is usability-focused with its:

intuitive drag-and-drop interface
Flow Control Job Steps to direct jobs within workflows based on conditions and dependencies, rather than basic If-Else statements.
Super REST API adapter. ActiveBatch would not have native adapters for applications built at your company. API adapter makes it easy to build API connections to such applications thanks to capabilities like automated response parsing and authentication wizard.

Pros:

Automation capabilities: ActiveBatch is highly rated for its scalability, workload processing, and integration capabilities.
Functionality: ActiveBatch has higher functionality scores for job scheduling, integrations and API integrations than Control-M.
Ease of use: Although ActiveBatch ranks slightly lower than Control-M in terms of ease of use, setup, and administration on G2, 16% of B2B reviews find ActiveBatch easy to use.
Analysis and visualisation: ActiveBatch scores significantly higher in analysis and visualization compared to all Control-M alternatives.

Cons:

Administration: ActiveBatch has similar scores for each administration-related feature. Yet, it ranks top for workflow management among all Control-M alternatives.

Figure 2: ActiveBatch architecture ²

Compare ActiveBatch vs. Control-M in more detail and discover pros and cons.

2. RunMyJobs by Redwood

RunMyJobs provides:

SaaS availability: RunMyJobs is managed by the Redwood team. While Control-M users need to maintain the installation and carry out updates, all of this work is taken over by the Redwood team in the SaaS model.
SAP integrations: The most SAP modules integration to orchestrate and monitor jobs across the SAP ecosystem.
Load balancer: An automated and easy to set-up to maintain the reliability and performance of applications and services. On the contrast, Control-M’s load balancing is more complex, requiring connecting via origin IP.
Advanced capabilities: Including integrated report builder and logging.

Pros:

Automation capabilities: RunMyJobs performs best for all automation capabilities according to reviewers.
Functionality: RunMyJobs achieves the highest scores among all Control-M alternatives for job scheduling and integrations.
Ease of use: RunMyJobs exceeds its competitors on ease of use and ranks as top with 9.3.
Administration: RunMyJobs receives top scores for all administration-related activities, including error alerts and service management.

Cons:

Workflow management: The functionality scores for RunMyJobs and Control-M in workflow management are similar, both falling below ActiveBatch’s score.

Learn all advantages and disadvantages of RunMyJobs against Control-M.

Figure 3: RunMyJobs architecture ³

3.Stonebranch Universal Automation Center

Stonebranch UAC provides:

Deployment options, including on-prem, public cloud, and SaaS deployment options to orchestrate workflows, processes, and data
Integrations with ETL (Extraction, Transformation, Loading) tools, cloud automation platforms, and Hadoop distributed file systems.

Pros:

Automation capabilities: According to the B2B reviews, Stonebranch slightly outperforms Control-M in workload automation.
Functionality: Stonebranch ranks higher than Control-M in integration and API integration.
Administration: Stonebranch UAC receives top scores for administration console on B2B review platforms. However, Control-M and other top alternatives perform better in other key administration aspects.

Cons:

Job scheduling: Control-M scores higher than Stonebranch for job scheduling.
Ease of use: Stonebranch performs slightly less effectively in ease of use compared to Control-M (See Table 1).

Learn more pros and cons of Stonebranch UAC and compare it against its alternatives.

4. Fortra’s JAMS

Fortra’s JAMS outperforms Control-M in terms of ease of use, scalability and customer support quality. Fortra’s Jams also provides integration with JD Edwards, enabling:

Unified console for real-time status updates of JD Edwards and external processes
Management across multiple JD Edwards instances and environments, such as JDE orchestrator and JDE scheduler.

Figure 4: Fortra’s Jams architecture ⁴

Pros:

Automation capabilities: JAMS has higher scores than Control-M for scalability and workload processing.
Functionality: Fortra’s Jams leads in API integrations and performs better than Control-M in integrations with other tools and job scheduling functionalities.
Ease of use: Fortra’s JAMS is rated as easy to use by 5% and user-friendly by 2%.
Administration: Fortra’s JAMS is rated higher for service management compared to Control-M. However, JAMS lacks proactive workflow capabilities unlike other top competitors.

Cons:

Intelligent automation: JAMS scores lower than Control-M in this specific feature.
Clunky: In Fortra’s JAMS reviews, 1% of users describe the tool as clunky.

Explore Fortra’s JAMS alternatives to assess JAMS’ strengths and weaknesses.

5. SMA OpCon

SMA OpCon offers containerization to isolate applications and their dependencies into lightweight containers. This capability allows users to orchestrate complex, cross-environment workflows, enhancing scalability, optimizing resource utilization, and accelerating development cycles.

Figure 5: OpCon automation architecture ⁵

Pros:

Automation capabilities: According to reviews, OpCon outperforms Control-M in workload automation.
Functionality: OpCon has a higher score than Control-M for API integration.
Ease of use: SMA OpCon scores slightly better for ease of use compared to Control-M (See Table 1).

Cons:

Administration: Although there isn’t enough data on administration-related capabilities for OpCon, Control-M performs better in workflow and service management.

What is BMC Helix Control-M?

BMC Helix Control-M is a cloud-based workload automation solution designed to streamline the scheduling, processing, and orchestration of complex business workflows across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

BMC Helix Control-M offers:

Native integrations with AWS (Lambda, Step Functions, Batch) and Azure (Logic Apps, Functions, Batch) for seamless orchestration across multi-cloud environments.
Support for Kubernetes to run jobs within clusters and manage containerized workflows.
Centralized control of data pipelines across public, private, and hybrid clouds, streamlining data-driven operations.

BMC Helix Control-M vs. Control-M

BMC Helix Control-M is the modern, cloud-based version of Control-M. It’s not an entirely new product, but rather an updated delivery model with added cloud benefits and simplified management.

Control-M

Deployment: Installed and managed on your own infrastructure (on-premises or in a private cloud).
Management: You are responsible for managing updates, patches, infrastructure, scalability, etc.
Best for:
- Organizations with strict compliance, security, or customization needs.
- Enterprises that require full control over their environment.

Helix Control-M

Deployment: Delivered as a fully managed SaaS solution by BMC.
Management: BMC handles infrastructure, upgrades, and scaling.
Best for:
- Companies that want to reduce infrastructure maintenance.
- Businesses looking for faster time to value and modern, cloud-native features.
Part of: The BMC Helix family, which includes AI/ML and other ITSM/ITOM tools (like a competitor to ServiceNow).

Similarities between BMC Helix Control-M and Control-M

Control-M and BMC Helix Control-M share several key features, such as:

Automation and orchestration: Both Helix Control-M and Control-M offer robust automation capabilities, enabling end-to-end orchestration of workflows across multiple platforms, including SAP, cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure), and more.
Job scheduling and workflow Management: Both solutions handle complex job scheduling, job dependencies, and workflow management, supporting a variety of job types and integration with external applications.
Managed file transfer (MFT): These solutions support secure, efficient, and regulation-compliant data transfers across systems and cloud providers. These are essential for organizations managing sensitive information.
SLA management: Both provide features to monitor and ensure SLA compliance, with predictive delay detection and alerts.
Data pipeline management: Visibility into data pipelines across stages like ingestion, processing, and analytics is a shared feature.
Self-service: Both platforms allow users to manage workflows through a self-service interface, offering secure role-based access.