Compuware provides deep-transaction-management solution for z/OS applications

Compuware Corporation, the technology performance company today announced Compuware APM for Mainframe, the industry’s first and only solution for deep transaction management from the edge through the mainframe. By combining Compuware dynaTrace’s patented PurePath Technology with Compuware Strobe’s unrivaled mainframe application management expertise, distributed system and mainframe teams can resolve performance problems faster, reduce MIPS costs, postpone hardware upgrades and accelerate time-to-market for new applications.

Compuware APM for Mainframe is available in two versions:
• PurePath for z/OS CICS : for monitoring CICS application transactions in a CICS region or CICSPlex; and
• PurePath for z/OS Java : for monitoring mainframe Java applications.

“As applications mature in order to be delivered on mobile, tablet, and new interfaces many business still rely on tried and true mainframe processing for those transactions.” said Jonah Kowall, Research Director at Gartner, Inc. “Triage and trace of transactions across these discrete tiers is a complex problem to solve, which is not helped by separate organizations, monitoring and other tooling ownership between these IT towers. This makes it difficult to determine the impact these transactions have on mainframe resource and application performance.”

PurePath for z/OS provides unprecedented visibility into mainframe applications and reduces complexity in several unique ways:
• Deep Transaction Management From the Edge Into Mainframe CICS and Java Procedures: automatically discovers, maps and monitors all transactions through distributed tier and mainframe applications with complete mainframe CICS and Java transaction steps and timings;
• Mainframe CPU MIPS Savings: by optimizing transaction requests and improving application performance efficiency, expensive mainframe upgrades are eliminated or delayed;
• Zero-configuration Instrumentation: automatic discovery, transaction mapping and out-of-the-box dashboards for 100 percent deep visibility into mainframe transactions, with no code changes required; easy to deploy and manage;
• One-click Hotspot Analysis: provides faster mean-time-to-resolve (MTTR) with one-click hotspot analysis of mainframe applications, including long-running and highly distributed jobs. Shows root cause in minutes instead of hours or days; and
• One-click Strobe Measurement Request: Strobe provides reporting and analysis for profiling mainframe WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere MQ, Message Broker, Enterprise Service Bus, CICS, IMS, Batch, DB2, CTG, JMS, Web Services, and Cobol, PL/I.

“The increasing need for mainframes to support real-time systems of engagement like banking, travel and retail has created a huge industry problem that hasn’t been addressed —until now,” said Bob Paul, Chief Executive Officer at Compuware Corporation. “Typically when organizations have mobile, web or business applications that put performance pressures on the mainframe, they are blind and can’t trace transactions from the distributed tiers deep into the mainframe. For the first time ever, with Compuware APM for Mainframe, we’ve extended deep transaction management into the mainframe. This innovation propels Compuware’s APM leadership and our competitive advantage, by providing our customers with an unmatched new-generation APM offering for mainframe.”

Compuware APM for Mainframe maps each mainframe transaction procedure, including timings to determine which procedure steps are taking longer than expected to complete. With complete n-tier visibility from an end-user’s browser across web and app servers, through message brokers into CICS and all the way to the database, operators can immediately determine the problem root cause and fix issues before they turn into serious problems.

“Our application delivery chain is very complex and has multiple tiers in different locations, which can make finding performance issues challenging, creating a lot of finger pointing during war room meetings,” said Sean O’Neil, Director of Enterprise Performance and Stability for one of the world’s largest health carriers. “With Compuware’s new PurePath for z/OS solutions, we now have the ability to trace an end user’s business transaction across any number of distributed or mainframe tiers in real-time, 24/7. Now we can actually see the iterative calls between each tier that’s causing performance issues and fix them before our customers are impacted. Without PurePath z/OS, this task would have taken months, where now it only took us just a  few hours.”