Top 10 Control-M Alternatives in '24

78% of IT employees shared that pressure on their IT infrastructure and operations was growing steadily or rapidly. ¹ Workload automation is an IT automation tool that can reduce this pressure by automatically executing critical business processes and monitoring IT infrastructure.

However, choosing a workload automation solution that fits your business goals and objectives in a complex market landscape can be challenging. For instance, Control-M is one of the WLA market leaders along with ActiveBatch, Redwood RunMyJobs, Stonebranch Universal Automation Center (UAC) and JAMS WLA according to AIMultiple’s analysis based on 7 different data sources. 

This article provides pros and cons of Control-M and compares best Control-M alternatives to help business leaders and IT professionals identify the best tool for their organization. 

Control-M and alternatives’ comparison

The table below shows the total number of B2B reviews, average score and ease of use score from these reviews:

*Ratings are based on Capterra and G2. We sorted companies first by sponsorship level, the vendors with links are sponsors, and then by their ratings and number of reviews.

While deciding over best Control-M alternatives to recommend, we have taken into account two factors: 

• The number of B2B reviews: B2B reviews indicate the adoption rates for the tools, and they help understand the tool’s strengths and weaknesses better. Therefore, we excluded vendors with no reviews. We focused our detailed comparison on alternatives that have more than 100 reviews in total in review sources, such as G2, Gartner, Trustradius and Capterra. 
• The number of employees on LinkedIn: The number of employees indicates revenue and overall success of firms as more personnel can support company’s products and services. Therefore, we excluded vendors with less than 10 employees on LinkedIn.

Shortcomings of Control-M

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.

Highlights from Control-M user reviews:

• Automation capabilities: Overall, users voted positively on Control-M automation capabilities. However, top Control-M alternatives, such as ActiveBatch and Redwood, perform better in terms of scalability, workload processing and intelligent automation (See Figure 4).  
• Functionality: 7% of all Control-M reviews analyzed by AIMultiple, 7% focus on WLA features.
  • Job scheduling: On G2, the job scheduling feature receives the highest score with 9.4. However, Control-M alternatives, ActiveBatch and Redwood obtain higher scores for each category under functionality than Control-M (See Figure 5). 
  • Integrations/APIs: A user mentioned API and integration to other applications as a weak capability of the tool (Figure 1).
• Ease of use: Control-M ranks as one of the easiest solutions to use and navigate (See Table below). Control-M software reviews on B2B review platforms identify it as user friendly 15% of the time. Also, 4% of users mention drag and drop capability. 
• Administration: Control-M performs well for each administration capabilities, such as workflow management, proactive workflow and error alert features. However, for all these capabilities, it did not obtain higher scores than its competitors, such as Redwood or ActiveBatch on G2 (See Figure 3).

10 Control-M alternatives

1. ActiveBatch

ActiveBatch is a versatile workload automation tool that can optimize and simplify manual and redundant tasks, enabling business process automation. ActiveBatch offers an intuitive drag-and-drop interface and a wide range of functionalities on a single platform for a centralized workload automation.

Pros:

• Automation capabilities: 29% of total B2B reviews on ActiveBatch mentions high quality of features. On G2, ActiveBatch performs better than Control-M considering scalability and workload processing. 
• Functionality: ActiveBatch has higher functionality scores for job scheduling, integrations and API integrations than Control-M (See Figure 5). 
• Ease of use: Although ActiveBatch ranks slightly lower than Control-M in terms of ease of use, ease of setup and admin on G2 (see Figure 2), it has been described as easy-to-use by 16% of total B2B reviews we gathered. 

Cons:

• Administration: ActiveBatch has similar scores for each administration-related feature. Yet, it ranks top for workflow management among all Control-M alternatives (See Figure 3). 

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

2. Redwood RunMyJobs

RunMyJobs is a workload automation and job scheduling solution that enables business users to connect various systems and data effortlessly, regardless of the size or complexity of their IT setup. With advanced features such as dashboards, logging, and a load balancer, RunMyJobs ensures effective digital business automation.

Pros:

• Automation capabilities: Redwood performs best for all automation capabilities according to reviewers on G2 (See Figure 4).  
• Functionality: Redwood scores best for job scheduling and integrations among all Control-M alternatives (See Figure 5).
• Ease of use: On G2, Redwood exceeds Control-M and other alternatives on ease of use and ranks as top with 9.3 (See Figure 3).  
• Administration: Redwood has the highest scores for all administration related activities, such as error alerts or service management (See Figure 3).

Cons:

• Workflow management: Redwood and Control-M workflow management functionality receive similar scores, both under ActiveBatch’s score.

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

3. Stonebranch Universal Automation Center

Stonebranch Universal Automation Center (UAC) is a job scheduling and workload automation software that provides real-time automation for IT tasks, including data pipeline automation and workflow orchestration.

Pros:

• Automation capabilities: According to the B2B reviews on G2, Stonebranch performs slightly better than Control-M in workload automation (See Figure 8). 
• Functionality: Stonebranch has higher ranking than Control-M for integration and API integration (See Figure 7)
• Administration: On G2, Stonebranch UAC has the top scores for service management and administration console (See Figure 6). For the other important aspects of administration, Control-M and top 3 Control-M alternatives perform better. 

Cons:

• Job scheduling: Control-M has higher scores for job scheduling than Stonebranch (See Figure 7). 
• Ease of use: Stonebranch has slightly lower performance for 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 is a workload automation and enterprise job scheduling software to streamline, manage, and monitor tasks across different systems (e.g. ERP systems), platforms, and applications.

Pros:

• Automation capabilities: 13% of total reviews positively mentioned Fortra’s JAMS features. On G2, scalability and workload processing are the automation capabilities where JAMS has higher scores than Control-M (See Figure 4). 
• Functionality: Fortra’s JAMS is the top performer for API/integrations. Also, it ranks better for integrations to other tools and job scheduling functionalities in comparison to Control-M (Figure 4). 
• Ease of use: in all Fortra’s JAMS reviews, 5% of reviews rate JAMS as easy-to-use and 2% as user friendly. 
• Administration: On G2, Fortra’s JAMS can only rank better for service management compared to Control-M. Also, JAMS is the only top tool that does not provide a pro-active workflow (Figure 3). 

Cons:

• Intelligent automation: Jam’s score performs lower than Control-M’s for this specific feature.

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

5. SMA OpCon 

OpCon is a job scheduler that can automate simple batch processes, manage external file transfers and optimize resource utilization.

Pros:

• Automation capabilities: According to the reviews, workload automation is the only automation capability that OpCon’s score exceeds Control-M (See Figure 8). 
• Functionality: On G2, OpCon has a higher score than Control-M for API integration (See Figure 7).
• Ease of use: SMA OpCon obtains a slightly better score for ease of use compared to Control-M (See Table 1). 

Cons:

• Administration: Although there is not enough data on administration-related capabilities for OpCon, Control-M performs better than SMA OpCon for workflow and service management (See Figure 6). 

Further reading

Read more on other workload automation tools and other IT automation technologies:

• Top 5 Alternatives to AutoSys
• Top 12 IT Automation Software: Vendor Benchmarking

If you have more questions, let us know:

Transparency statement

AIMultiple serves numerous technology vendors, including Stonebranch and Redwood which provides Active Batch, RunMyJobs, and Tidal.

External links

• 1. “The Impact of Automation on IT Operations.” Freeform Dynamics Ltd. July 2017. Revisited May 26, 2023.
• 2. “Control-M Reviews 2023“, G2, Retrieved July 22, 2023
• 3. “Control-M comparison table.” G2. Revisited July 21, 2023.
• 4. “Control-M comparison table.” G2. Revisited July 21, 2023.
• 5. “Control-M comparison table.” G2. Revisited July 21, 2023.
• 6. “Control-M comparison table.” G2. Revisited July 21, 2023.
• 7. “Control-M comparison table.” G2. Revisited July 21, 2023.
• 8. “Control-M comparison table.” G2. Revisited July 21, 2023.
• 9. “Control-M comparison table.” G2. Revisited July 21, 2023.