We performed a comparison between Control-M and Tidal Automation based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Control-M offers a range of valuable features such as managed file transfer, secure storage for credentials, seamless integration capabilities, role-based administration, collaboration dashboards, efficient scheduling, easy configuration, and accurate forecasting. Tidal Automation also provides valuable features like a job scheduler, a unified and intuitive interface, flexibility in running jobs, effective error handling, role-based access control, and dynamic job scheduling.
Control-M can enhance its microservices and API integration, address bugs in the web interface, streamline the upgrade process, and integrate with third-party tools. Tidal Automation needs improvement in its graphical user interface, pricing model, cloud/hybrid solution, migration process, artificial intelligence capabilities, user interface intuitiveness, initial setup process, security features, and performance scalability.
Service and Support: Control-M's customer service elicits a range of opinions, with some customers commending the prompt and knowledgeable support staff, while others express reservations about slow response times and the desire for more proactive assistance. Tidal Automation's customer service receives widespread acclaim for its responsiveness, expertise, and willingness to assist. The support team is consistently described as experienced and well-versed in the product.
Ease of Deployment: Users found the initial setup for Control-M to be straightforward and easy, with a relatively short deployment time. Learning the system and implementing it was considered manageable. The initial setup for Tidal Automation was also described as straightforward and easy, however, with a longer deployment process. Learning how to use the system was relatively simple, with a slightly steeper learning curve for administrators.
Pricing: The cost of setting up Control-M has garnered diverse feedback, as some users find it costly due to hardware and licensing expenses for each job. Furthermore, pricing and licensing can be perplexing, particularly for smaller businesses. Users perceive the pricing of Tidal Automation as reasonable and predictable, with a transparent and easily comprehensible licensing model.
ROI: Control-M offers advantages such as reduced expenses, enhanced job setup, stability, and efficient data transfers. Tidal Automation delivers cost savings, improved efficiency, and better risk management.
Comparison Results: Control-M emerges as the favored choice compared to Tidal Automation. Users appreciate Control-M's user-friendly and effortless setup process, as well as its comprehensive guides and videos. They also value its capability to automate file transfers and provide a consolidated view for monitoring workflows.
"It is very stable. We hardly get calls in respect to issues on Control-M, particularly on version 9.0.19."
"BIM is helpful because we do not miss any SLAs, as we get to know the issue well in advance. It is the topmost service that has helped us provide better solutions for the business."
"It is very easy to use. The HA feature is also very good."
"First of all, the shift from manual to automation has been valuable. We have a tool that can automate."
"Control-M has helped to improve our data transfers because it allows us to monitor the execution of the process. With other technologies, we cannot do that."
"The multiple scheduling options allow you to do anything you want, whenever you want, and however you want. You can easily be in control when things happen."
"We are using Control-M for day-to-day operations only. It is helpful for us in our day-to-day operations. It is a key in our financial sector. We are automating via Control-M in our treasury operations, including any evening updates. Control-M makes things easier and faster by helping our treasury operations go without any interruptions."
"The most valuable features are the Advanced File Transfer and the manage file transfer. They make transferring files securely seamless. It's very easy to set up, get deployed, and have it transferred to and from vendors. As long as we can get our firewall rules implemented at a decent time, it's very easy and seamless to get important files transferred in a secure manner."
"We have to run about 12,000 jobs every day and the majority of them need to be launched from our ERP, JD Edwards. The native compatibility of the Tidal platform with JD Edwards dovetails with our greatest need. It's directly connected to the heart of our IT system. We couldn't work without it."
"With the varied features in the varied adapters provided, we use Tidal Enterprise Scheduler because we want everything to be scheduled in one place. Tidal provides that for us with its tools and varying platforms in our organization. Tidal provides all the connectors to the platforms. This is very useful because we don't want to look for another scheduler for scheduling certain jobs. We don't want to look at those schedules manually between platforms."
"The feature that I find to be valuable, as I'm working with other folks, is the ability to cross-schedule across platforms, and the flexibility that comes with that."
"The data management on offer was valuable."
"We use the solution for cross-platform, cross-application workloads. The solution’s ability to manage and monitor these workloads is very easy and accurate. We have file dependencies for running jobs. The job does not start until a file exists on a completely different server, then where the job will run. So, it is cross systems."
"It's easy to use and easy to administer, and it's very flexible."
"One of the most useful features is being able to set up a schedule and create dependencies. The calendar can kick off processes at certain times, based on dependencies that you specify, like time, or whether another process has finished. Dependencies are the most useful thing."
"The job dependency is something that you cannot have in a regular, simple cron job or simple scheduler dependency. The event-driven jobs are core for us, as we really need that. Therefore, we really need Tidal with its ability to run thousands of jobs per day."
"After we complete FTP jobs, those FTP jobs will be cleared from the Control-M schedule after the noon refresh. So, I struggle to find out where those jobs are saved. Then, we need to request execution of the FTP jobs again. If there could be an option to show the logs, which have been previously completed, that would help us. I can find all other job logs from the server side, but FTP job logs. Maybe I am missing the feature, or if it is not there, it could be added."
"Control-M reporting isn't that good. It is very limited. We would like the ability to create our own reports as well as the ability to publish dashboards in the cloud, which would help us. Improved reporting will help us determine statuses and get the answers that we need. However, I personally think BMC is not focusing on the reporting. I have even visited the BMC office in India, and asked, "Why haven't you improved the reporting?""
"The unifying features between Control-M for different platforms needs improvement. The scheduling options on the Control-M mainframe jobs are different than they are on our Linux server. There are a few differences here and there."
"I would like to have a web version of Control-M to replace the client. Currently, our support and jobs-creation teams are using the client and that needs to be installed on a PC. It's very heavy, consuming a lot of resources compared to the web portal. I know that they're trying to improve the client with the latest version, but for me, there hasn't been enough improvement yet."
"The biggest improvement they could have is better QA testing before releases come out the door."
"I would like to see them adopt more cloud. Most companies don't have a single cloud, meaning we have data sources that come from different cloud providers. That may have been solved already, but supporting Azure would be an improvement because companies tend not to have only AWS and GCP."
"The performance could be better. Control-M Enterprise Manager tends to slow the system down even on a server with a six-core processor and 32 gigabytes RAM. The console is Java-based, so maybe OpenJDK 16 or 17 would be a performance improvement."
"I talked to Control-M guys back in October or November when they had a gathering here in Atlanta. We talked about not being able to go back in history in Helix Control-M for more than two weeks. We submitted a request for enhancement. They told us that they are working on it, and they are thinking of expanding that to 30 days. We would like to see it expand to 90 days, but they are working on it."
"They can do better reporting in terms of production statistics reporting."
"The product’s UI is outdated. They should work on this particular area."
"With the client, we have had certain issues. The user interface for Tidal is a little slow. A lot of people would love this tool if they had a faster user interface. The drill-down functionality should be much quicker than what it is pulling out now. If I fill out some data, then it takes awhile to get that data back onto the screen. It's not as fast as we were expecting."
"Understanding and using Tidal Automation could be overwhelming for someone with minimal programming language."
"The GUI, the graphical user interface, gets a little bit busy."
"The current user interface of Tidal Software is functional. However, it can be improved to make it more intuitive and user-friendly."
"I don't know if Tidal wants to get into the business of monitoring long-running jobs, but that could be a feature for the future: a job launching and monitoring tool. Using Tidal for monitoring doesn't seem like a good fit, but if they could offer something that did that as an add-on or include it, it might be helpful."
"For the most part, the drill-down and the logging are really good. But if we take an Informatica job, for example: We have the ability, and the operators have the ability, to actually drill down and see, at a session level, where the failure is. There is, unfortunately, no way to extract that into an actual output email or failure email. It's not that that information is not available, but extracting it into an email would be a nice-to-have."
Control-M is ranked 1st in Workload Automation with 110 reviews while Tidal by Redwood is ranked 2nd in Workload Automation with 37 reviews. Control-M is rated 8.8, while Tidal by Redwood is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Control-M writes "We have seen quicker file transfers with more visibility and stability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Tidal by Redwood writes "Great visibility with a single pane of glass and a low learning curve". Control-M is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Rocket Zena, Automic Workload Automation and Camunda, whereas Tidal by Redwood is most compared with AutoSys Workload Automation, IBM Workload Automation, Redwood RunMyJobs, ActiveBatch by Redwood and Rocket Zeke. See our Control-M vs. Tidal by Redwood report.
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