Using BMC Data Management for IMS and DB2 on z/OS has greatly improved our database administration tasks. Although we don't test the database before production, we have experienced benefits in disaster recovery situations and capacity management. For instance, when facing capacity issues during peak transaction times, I've been able to quickly allocate additional resources to ensure smooth operations. This has been crucial, especially during times when the demand surges, such as peak flight hours.
BMC AMI DevX
BMC SoftwareExternal reviews
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Transforms Mainframe Analytics with Valuable Insights
What do you like best about the product?
I like the industry benchmarking feature in BMC Compuware zAdviser. It's probably the coolest part because not only does it show our data, but it also lets us compare our performance against other organizations using the tool. It's really helpful as it gives us a performance tier ranking—'High, Medium, or Low,' which is super useful for reporting to executives. I also appreciate the 'Shift-Left' quality insights, particularly the Escaped Abend Ratio. It tracks crashes that happen in production versus those caught in testing, and seeing this metric drop over time proves our modernization efforts like automated testing are actually working.
What do you dislike about the product?
BMC Compuware zAdviser is most effective when you're using the full BMC AMI DevX suite. If you use a mix of vendors, zAdviser can feel 'blind' to those activities. It would be better with more robust 'plug-and-play' connectors for non-BMC tools to make it a true universal DevOps dashboard. Also, while the standard dashboards are great out of the box, tailoring them to unique organizational structures can be difficult. Limited customization and a steep learning curve make it hard to create highly specific views without deep technical knowledge of the underlying data schemas.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
BMC Compuware zAdviser helps shift from 'gut feelings' to data-backed decisions, pinpointing where code stalls in the lifecycle and replacing guesses with accurate DORA Metrics like Deployment Frequency and Change Failure Rate.
BMC Compuware zAdviser is great for use
What do you like best about the product?
Realtime mainframe performance monitoring and in depth analytics for resources utilisation
What do you dislike about the product?
Complexity and limitations of customization
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It helps in Saving high mainframe cost and helps in inefficient resources utilisation
Automate unit, functional, and integration
What do you like best about the product?
Topaz has been particularly useful to us regarding testing on mainframes. The environment virtualization that the unit testing affords to brokers is the greatest since it offers good isolation and control hence encompassing facilitation of debugging.
What do you dislike about the product?
Topaz does not include features for integrating tests into our mobile CI/CD applications. This actually means that it needs additional tools and workarounds to be accomplished and this slows down the flow of the testing process.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
With Topaz, we feel that the quality and efficiency of our mainframe testing has greatly enhanced. Thus, automated testing of different types helps to identify issues in the development cycle and prevent defects to be released into production.
Working with BMC Compuware zAdviser Review
What do you like best about the product?
Key Elements
Easy implementation and customer support is good.
Wide range of Devops KPIs.
AI recommendations for improvement and solutions.
Easy implementation and customer support is good.
Wide range of Devops KPIs.
AI recommendations for improvement and solutions.
What do you dislike about the product?
Not much but multiple cloud integration will be nice.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Improvement in the CI/CD.
Enabling cloud based environments for legacy applications is really helpful.
Enabling cloud based environments for legacy applications is really helpful.
BMC Compuware Review
What do you like best about the product?
It is best tool for KPI and it works smooth with Machine Learning that is used
What do you dislike about the product?
The UI could be more better as it lacks in understanding
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Monitoring and in maintaining data
Improves disaster recovery processes and offers an efficient CPU cycle optimization
How has it helped my organization?
What is most valuable?
BMC Data Management improved our data recovery process by simplifying it. With IMS, recovery meant reloading the last transaction backup to restore databases quickly during downtime. It has been effective, ensuring minimal disruption and enabling smooth operations even during recovery events.
What needs improvement?
One area for improvement with this product could be in providing clearer guidance and tools for disaster recovery planning and execution. As someone involved in managing infrastructure, understanding the steps and terminology around disaster recovery is crucial for effectively rebuilding the business after a disaster.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Within our company, which has many thousands of employees, the data management team, including project managers and other roles, typically consists of around 50 people.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate the support as an eight out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
Setting up IMS with BMC's data management solutions is straightforward, but it requires collaboration across different parts of the business to understand critical data and recovery needs. It involves imagining scenarios and planning for disaster recovery, ensuring that essential data and operations can be restored efficiently in case of a disaster. The number of people maintaining the solution varies depending on the enterprise size, but typically it ranges from five to ten individuals.
What other advice do I have?
From my perspective as an infrastructure guy, the most valuable aspect of BMC's data management solutions was their ability to optimize CPU cycles, improving IMS performance without directly impacting the database. This helped ensure smoother operations and faster transaction processing without significant changes to the underlying data structures.
I wouldn't recommend this product over others without considering individual business needs. For a small company, an SQL solution might be more suitable. The choice between BMC and other solutions depends on factors like support and budget availability. Overall, I would rate BMC Data Management as an eight out of ten.
Helps to make mainframe data management process easier and saves manhours
What is our primary use case?
We use the solution clone test files.
What is most valuable?
The product has made our mainframe data management process easier. It has helped us save manhours. The tool's most valuable feature is the ability to edit tape files. Its ability to clone files is beneficial in application development.
What needs improvement?
We plan to replace BMC Compuware File-AID due to its price. Two years back, we paid 11,000 dollars. However, the current price is 27,900 dollars. The price has increased to at least eight times its initial cost. We would need to pay around 60,000 dollars to have all three products together. We also encountered issues during version updates.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the tool's stability a ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
BMC Compuware File-AID is scalable.
How was the initial setup?
The tool's deployment is simple.
What was our ROI?
We have seen ROI with the tool's use.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the product an eight out of ten.
Effective and easy Mainframe data editing
What do you like best about the product?
Allows data inteligent editing for your products. You may stablish filters and set conditions on an excel data and make changes easily. You also save your project edits and return to your project later.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes you may see a lot of variables on your programming and could be confusing for no experts on the field.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It is the best way to debug mainframe programmes. There is a step over feature that allows you to reuse saved configurations.
Ultimate File Management Tool for Mainframe Users
What do you like best about the product?
BMC Compuware is easy to use; all file-handling options are available, and options such as compare files are in addition provide great value.
What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing about BMC Compuware File-AID to dislike it.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
File AID helps to manage different types of files in mainframes such as PS files, tapes, VSAMs, GDGs. It helps to map the files to their record structure to understand the data.
Great tool for devops
What do you like best about the product?
I quite like the fact that I can do everything in one place for devops, including development, testing, automation and even regression tests. The performance and speed of the tool is great and the design as well.
What do you dislike about the product?
Really steep learning curve, not intuitive many times and can be confusing to use the tool. Reporting functionality could also be better as we'd like to see better kpis
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
A lot of security related matters as well as issues related to our mainframe infrastructure (testing and automation mostly), and team productivity because the tool helped a lot in this area
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