BMC Software Inc. is targeting DevOps devotees with Control-M Workbench, a no-cost, self-service, standalone development environment that builds upon the capability of the Control-M Automation application programming interface it introduced last year.

The API enables developers in a DevOps environment to automate workflows in a self-service process that’s compatible with DevOps’ agile release philosophy, which involves software developers and information technology operations people working closely to speed application development. The free-to-download Control-M Workbench, which the company said can be deployed in minutes, gives developers the autonomy to code, debug and test workflows on their own.

Control-M Workbench is part of BMC’s Digital Business Automation initiative, which is an adaptive approach to IT automation that simplifies management of hybrid multi-cloud environments. Part of that is a concept the company calls “jobs-as-code” in which code, business logic and the operating environment are combined in one unit. Developers can code business application automation directly into the delivery pipeline using DevOps tools and thus move automation task out of operations and into development.

“The Control-M Automation API is the commands you need to create and code the automation that later on gets tested,” said Saar Shwartz, vice president of product with the Digital Business Automation unit at BMC. “Anything can be coded into the application logic using JSON, Git, Jenkins and any other automation tool you like.”

Developers can use Control-M Workbench to build, test and debug in a sandbox environment, and then seamlessly integrate with their preferred continuous integration/continuous delivery tools and methods. The result is that the operations organization receives applications that have already been tested for use in production.

“They can code the automation at the same time they’re building the application. That cuts out the middleman and gets applications into production quicker,” Shwartz said. “In a world where every business is becoming software-defined, speed is the new currency.”

Beta testing results indicate that customers that use Control-M Workbench deliver applications up to 20 percent faster, require only about half as many full-time equivalent operations people, reduce production incidents by up to 25 percent and cut the impact of batch processing failure by up to 80 percent, Shwartz said. The free utility can be downloaded here.

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