Control-M from BMC is a platform for integrating, automating, and orchestrating application and data workflows in production across complex hybrid technology ecosystems. It provides deep operational capabilities, delivering speed, scale, security, and governance.
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JAMS
Score 8.1 out of 10
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JAMS is a centralized workload automation and job scheduling solution that runs, monitors, and manages jobs and workflows. Reliably orchestrate the critical IT processes that run your business from a single pane of glass.
Control-M is well suited for complex hybrid environments that contain many different platforms. It can handle several other scripts and has many different plugins that make the application more flexible. It can be used on-premises, in the cloud, or various scenarios. It is reliable and has been a leader in the scheduler space for several decades.
JAMS is well suited for centralizing schedules. We have hundreds of databases, and JAMS has allowed us to centralize the scheduling of all of the individual jobs related to each individual database. This allows certain teams to follow the activity of specific jobs without having to access the individual servers on which the databases reside.
Control-M provides a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes in the organization. Nothing is hidden or left unattended in a timely manner.
The proper use of the BIM component has allowed the change of paradigm in the operation, adopting a proactive management instead of the typical reactive management in the event of production failures.
The use of Forecast and production simulations allows you to identify bottlenecks and focus first on managing those failures that have the greatest impact on production SLAs.
Control-M/Change Manager has arrived to shorten development cycles from requirements gathering to production testing. It has been a utility that monetizes the development of Jobs meshes.
The GUI is capable of efficiently handling more than 80,000 jobs per day. This is certainly a challenge in designing a good user experience. I don't know if there is a reasonable limit to this. One of my clients runs more than 80,000 Jobs daily and the GUI remains smooth all the time.
Job-As-Code is a DevOps accelerator that has just begun to be adopted. Its implementation will make workload management even more cost-effective.
Being able to interface / run other programs as either dos window, Power shell window, Python window through configurable execution methods
Purging JAMS history by Parameters, like dates and # of copies to keep of a job
Being able to configure a hot backup to take over in the event a Primary JAMS Server goes down, the backup automatically kicks in after 3 minutes. - High Availability mode
Being able to set up variables that can be used in JOBs / Sequences to hold login information (encrypted), date ranges or other Job Parameter values. And be able to programmatically updated by Power shell scripts to track progress between runs of the same job: count of orders processed, API Skip values when retrieving orders, when the API call only returns X amount per call and you need to get all available orders with multiple calls
JOB logs can be put anywhere on network for other users to access - IT allowing of course. With the high availability option, this is Great, since you don't have to check each of the JAMS Servers for a log when a fail over occures
As with most of the mainframe software products, documentation seems to be the weak link for the products - written by people and for people who already know what they need to do, not for people who are trying to figure how to use the product.
We are a large JES3 mainframe shop. As with all vendors who still provide software for mainframe systems, software is generally designed and developed for JES2 and is frequently not fully tested in a JES3 environment before being shipped out.
Prior to JAMS I organized various batch job runs with a user friendly naming process (job, machine, date, etc). I had to jump through hoops to get JAMS to replicate by having a post-completion job rename and copy the log.
Natively support JAMS commands in Powershell7.
Failsafe guard to prevent runaway jobs that submit other JAMS jobs that were improperly coded. i.e. A throttle setting for new JOBS. I once had production go down when hundreds of jobs used up our daily license allocation in under a minute.
I have similar (but different) Execution Methods that would benefit from a shared template. Current setup is awkward to change.
I'd love my job Definitions to be natively linked to github for version control.
It is a great product plain and simple. We've had Control-M for 20+ years and the support that BMC Software provides is really second to none. There is always a situation that someone can think of where I have to say, "No we can't do that", however I'm confident that we've been able to meet and most of the time exceed our end user expectations with what the product can offer them.
JAMS is an essential application within our organization. There is no chance that at any point in the foreseeable future we would migrate off of the platform or stop our maintenance contract. HelpSystems (now rebranded Forta) releases frequent updates which always add value to the product. The system's reliability and extensibility has earned our trust that it will scale with our organization.
It's not perfect, but there's a lot to like about Control-M. What can sometimes be confusing is the difference between different menus in Control-M. Sometimes, you can clearly see that different parts were designed and added by separate development groups. This leads to similar functions and visuals looking a little different in menus, etc.
At first its not 100% obvious what each item is meant for. When you look at the list for the first time there are a lot of objects, its taken some time to figure out what each one does. Once you figure out what each one does it makes more sense.
JAMS has been super reliable in our implementation. The only reason it isn't a 10 is the web client isn't fully functional so the availability suffers very mildly there
Although the product is very stable there have been a few incidents when I needed support. I have worked with technicians from all around the globe because of the rolling support. This gives me the quickest support when I need it most in those early hours of the morning. The technicians I have worked with have been very knowledgeable and if necessary got help when needed.
We had a very aggressive timeline to look for a new batch job processor that is compatible with our new server that could help us maintain and improve our current data processing procedure. The JAMS support team was there to address our inquiries promptly. On average, their response times have been within 24 hours, ensuring that we receive assistance when we need it
I Was not part of the original Implementation, and the persons did that are no longer with the Organization. But I was part of the recent Upgrade process a year ago and I am the JAMS admin and was very pleased
Since IBM Workload Automation isn't compatible with all of our project's operating systems, we've decided to switch to using Control-C instead. Second, the provider provides top-notch customer service in the event of an emergency. Control-M is a lightweight program that places few demands on the server's resources.
JAMS is easier to use, provides more features and was easier to manage form a central location. simple features in JAMS were missing from VisualCron such as a projected daily schedule. The install setup with a client and agents was better suited for us too
I can only speak in in regards to scalability in the volume of jobs we have created. Many of our jobs exist in multiple environments, with each environment having its own unique folder names, connection strings, etc. We incorporate parameters on the folder level that contain the unique environment information. The jobs reference these values from the folder they are contained in, so we can easily copy a job from DEV to TEST and the source is the same but the values passed from the parameters are not. This makes it very easy to create many new jobs and copy them across multiple environments and have them work
In terms of ROI, Control-M pays for itself within 12 months of purchase, sometimes sooner. Pointing this out to your fellow product qwners will not make you popular.
By automating repetitive tasks you free staff from these mundane and error-prone roles and allow them to be more productive. An example would be using the AFT module for file transfers. File transfer scripts tend to be in-house scripts that need maintaining. Using the AFT removes most of this overhead and allows for easy problem resolution.
JAMS was not the most cost-effective solution to the original program we were implementing at my Agency; but we were able to expand on the services we do provide using it's power and flexibility to enhance other program areas.
The cost-model from MVPSI has been great in allowing us to deploy a DEVELOPMENT, STAGING, then PRODUCTION scheduler integrating the platform into our SDLC.
