Precisely Software Product Offerings

My main use case for Precisely Assure MIMIX  is for a backup in case of disaster or a recovery or an outage.

A quick specific example of how I have used Precisely Assure MIMIX  for disaster recovery or during an outage is when we had an event of weather or a circuit went down from our Telco, AT&T; we had to do a rollover to the backup box, which was located in another state, and we ran on that box for a week or until a set time, the disaster was over.

I also have another scenario to add about my main use case for Precisely Assure MIMIX: we used it as a test where we could roll, do a virtual rollover, and test a product on production data, and after the test was complete, we could roll back over and everything would be put exactly back the way it was.

The best features that Precisely Assure MIMIX offers are that it is very designed and simple to use; it just works. The screens are very designed, informative, and show you everything that you need to know about your current and backup system, and with the proper speeds across the circuit, the instant you make a change on the production box, that change shows up on the backup box. The reporting for Precisely is very good, and you can run reports that tell you information, and for audit purposes, it is excellent to mark off the list that you have a disaster recovery box, which a lot of auditors look for.

Precisely Assure MIMIX alerts you when there is an issue by sending information to your job queue or your message queue or Q-CIS OPER message queue, which are always monitored, and it allows you to send messages and be updated about any issues by the colors that are changed on the screen. There are also instant alerts, instant messages that allow you to see exactly what is happening all the time.

Precisely Assure MIMIX has positively affected our organization by reducing downtime because it takes 30 minutes from swapping from one box to another; production is back up and running within 30 minutes, and a lot of times, I could get it down to 20 minutes. I believe I also had a successful 15-minute rollover from the time I took down the production system to the time I brought the disaster recovery box back up, which is an incredible time saver, money saver, everything saver for all the plants involved in the disaster recovery process. We had a total of 10 plants that were all back up and running within a coffee break.

In terms of productivity and customer satisfaction, it was great; everybody loved the ability to roll over and have that functionality available. Many companies do not have the ability to bring production back online within minutes, especially during a critical fiber cut or a critical disk drive error, and it very much became essential to have Precisely Assure MIMIX, as without it, we would lose thousands of dollars.

Improving Precisely Assure MIMIX is going to be a really hard one; over the years, the tech support started off kind of rough but gradually got better and better as I used it often, being on a first-name basis with many of the customer service reps because of having to call with issues that they were always able to resolve fairly quickly.

I would have liked to see more reporting, maybe automation of reports, but as far as integration with other systems, I always used Precisely Assure MIMIX on an AS/400, iSeries, IBM iSeries machine, and I cannot speak to using it on any other device.

I have been using Precisely Assure MIMIX for 15 years.

Precisely Assure MIMIX is absolutely stable without a shadow of a doubt; even during the update process, I downloaded the update, stopped the product, installed the update, and it automatically did it. You could watch it; it was very thorough, simple, efficient, and stable, and I never had an issue with the product's stability.

Precisely Assure MIMIX handles growth very; we bought another company and had to add that company into the mirroring process, and it was very simple to set up. Getting them going involved a save and then a restore, and with the proper bandwidth over the internet, we could and I believe did that over the T1 line to our disaster recovery box, making the process very easy.

The customer support for Precisely Assure MIMIX was good; in the beginning, it was a little shaky, taking a while to respond and resolve issues. But over the years, their customer support became very advanced, with quicker responses, better responses, and simpler resolutions, improving significantly over time.

Neutral

I did not previously use a different solution; we searched out and looked at several different solutions, but Precisely Assure MIMIX was the one that we preferred over the others.

I have seen a return on investment with Precisely Assure MIMIX; you definitely have money savings because the savings are realized during downtime. If you have to be down for five or 10 hours overnight, you are talking hundreds or even thousands of dollars in lost production, and not being able to ship products or bill customers, so the return on investment comes from getting back online, back in business, and back to production within a matter of minutes.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Precisely Assure MIMIX is that the pricing was a little steep; I believe it could have been lower, but for what I received as far as the service, the price is pretty close. I don't remember there being any specific setup cost, just the initial cost, and the monthly maintenance fee was a little steep because if you didn't use the product a couple of times a year and didn't call maintenance or use support, it's unclear why you would need a steep maintenance cost.

Before choosing Precisely Assure MIMIX, we evaluated other options, including IBM, which was not as far along in the process and didn't have the visibility that Precisely did, so we went with Precisely instead.

My advice to others looking into using Precisely Assure MIMIX is to give it a chance; it works, is efficient, and makes your backup system a production system in a matter of minutes. You have to ensure that you test and do role swaps regularly to prepare yourself effectively.

My additional thoughts about Precisely Assure MIMIX before we wrap up are that it is a product that will work for you. You have to get a system in place, dot all the i's, and cross all the t's, but Precisely just works.

I rate Precisely Assure MIMIX 9 out of 10.

I use the solution in my company since it offers more flexibility compared to other software that I have worked with, including IBM I Cluster technology, Precisely OMS/ODS, and a little bit at the base level of MIMIXOWN. Precisely Assure MIMIX is a very old tool that I have used several times, and because of that, I feel comfortable using it.

For those companies looking into the products available in the market, I would say that nothing comes close to Precisely Assure MIMIX in terms of the functionalities and the area of usage that the tool provides.

The most valuable features of the solution are auditing and object replication. The tool takes care of the recovery part by allowing our company to use its auto-recovery features.

The high cost of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required.

The cost of the product should be reduced a little bit, especially compared to the products offered by the other vendors or competitors in the market.

I have been using Precisely Assure MIMIX for fifteen years. I use Precisely Assure MIMIX V10.

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I have experience with IBM I Cluster technology, Precisely OMS/ODS, and DataMirror in some of my previous organizations. My current organization started off with DataMirror and then switched to Precisely Assure MIMIX later.

The product's initial setup phase was straightforward and simple.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

I have seen a return on investment from the use of the solution in my company, especially in terms of cost, since it helps our company deal with downtime and during a disaster, the product helps us with the switchover process, owing to which such issues did not have an impact on us.

The solution helped our organization save a lot of time by ensuring that my company did not experience any downtime.

The cost of the product is too high.

My current organization is evaluating options like IBM i high availability technologies.

Precisely Assure MIMIX has improved our organization's disaster recovery efforts since my company has multiple LPARs. Precisely Assure MIMIX has around 45 LPARs for the database recovery, and I have one site-to-site replication for one of the servers in our environment, which is really good.

The failover process of Precisely Assure MIMIX has enhanced our company's business continuity planning, considering that we have been testing the failover test area once a year and found out that the area revolving around recovery is good.

When I was having a discussion on one of the online forums meant for Precisely Assure MIMIX around five years ago, which was even before the LAKEVIEW stuff was introduced by Precisely. Through the online forum, the team of Precisely Assure MIMIX helped my company deal with the area related to ServiceNow integration.

I have never faced a scenario where Precisely Assure MIMIX prevented data loss during an unexpected outage in our company.

I would ask those who plan to use the product to evaluate their own environment before purchasing Precisely Assure MIMIX.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.