If companies want to be successful, they must be able to withstand constant competition and meet market requirements. In addition, they must increase the speed and quality of their results and accelerate their processes while using the same amount of resources. Furthermore, there is a growing need within companies to remove the barrier between IT and other departments.
Technological innovations help to achieve all this and create competitive advantages. BMC Control-M is such a platform for orchestrating application and data workflows. Control-M 21 is the latest release to help IT operations (ITOps) strengthen their orchestration framework for business growth through expansion and efficiency, and give users the freedom to work within their defined, secure framework.
Control-M 21 helps ITOps address market challenges by:
- Expanding the orchestration framework
- Increasing operational efficiency
- Improving self-service and collaboration
Expanding the orchestration framework
Control-M 21 helps organizations reduce complexity and better orchestrate modern workflows in hybrid as well as multi-cloud environments with new data platform and cloud storage integrations. This enables organizations to take a data-driven approach, improve business outcomes and gain competitive advantage.
Key features include:
- Airflow integration: Developers and data engineers can orchestrate their Airflow-based pipelines within the Control-M orchestration framework and take advantage of Control-M’s broader orchestration and advanced capabilities.
- Cloud storage integration and cloud authentication support: Users can easily transfer files to and from additional cloud storage repositories (Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 PrivateLink, Azure Data Lake Storage, and Google Cloud Storage). Additionally, they can simplify and improve security controls when running cloud services by supporting new authentication methods (AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles).
- Monthly releases: The Control-M team delivers new integrations in monthly releases, continuously expanding the orchestration framework.
Increasing operational efficiency
Control-M 21 increases operational efficiency with features that help ITOps eliminate repetitive, time-consuming tasks, minimize risk, and achieve faster time-to-value.
Key features include:
- Operational improvements: Users can log in faster and more securely with single sign-on (SSO) through identity provider (IdP) SAML 2.0 support. They can also define application and data workflows more quickly and better automate their execution using features such as reusing existing folders/jobs in workflow definitions, introducing variables in post-processing logic, and resolving dependencies in different ways.
- New file transfer capabilities: With Control-M 21, the ability to orchestrate internal and external file transfers has been significantly improved.
Not only can users easily transfer files to and from cloud storage repositories, they now have greater control thanks to new options and post-processing actions: for example, they can create copies of the file to be transferred if it already exists on the target host, avoiding errors or unwanted overwrites. Security has been enhanced with new and improved algorithms, and administrators now have a new level of security control with the ability to define internal lists of allowed and blocked users. The MFT/E user experience has also been improved, and a new MFT web interface helps internal users expedite one-time file transfers in self-service mode, freeing ITOs from ad hoc repair requests.
- Administration capabilities: Administrators can now reduce the time spent on installation and configuration tasks, for example, by setting up multiple MFT/E sites with a single MFT/E installation and avoiding repetitive, time-consuming actions with centralized connection profiles. Finally, they can also automate the conversion of old local connection profiles to new centralized connection profiles using a ready-to-use conversion utility and reduce conversion errors.
Improving self-service and collaboration
Control-M 21 also improves freedom within the orchestration framework. As a result, ITOps can provide users, developers and engineers with personalized, secure self-service access to the resources and information they need – all through the interfaces they are familiar with. As a result, ITOps can hand off more tasks to other users, while they themselves can more easily define the organizational standards and best practices they need to adhere to for disruption-free collaboration.
Key features include:
- Framework for collaboration and control: Employees have more freedom to use the technologies of their choice. Developers and engineers can complete tasks without having to submit service requests. They can be given full authority to manage host groups and launch jobs by embedding scripts in their preferred programming language without having to access the local machine. The organizational standards they must adhere to can now be more easily and quickly defined by ITOps through the new site default policies.
- Improved Graphical User Interface (GUI): Users can access more Control-M resources, information and functionality through an improved GUI. For example, it is possible to manage folders, users and roles, and access new reports.
- Improved experience for developers and engineers: Collaboration with ITOps is made easier with JSON import/export. With a new automation API, they can deploy changes easier, faster, and at the subfolder/job level, and access more Control-M resources, information, and functionality through continuous improvements.
In today’s highly competitive marketplace, it’s important to survive. Control-M 21 from BMC Software can help organizations modernize by extending the orchestration framework, increasing operational efficiency and improving team collaboration. BMC Software also explains this in its Control-M 21 webinar-on-demand. Watch the video now!
The original article from BMC Software can be found here.
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