Computer Associates delivers full benefits of Unicenter TNG enterprise management platform for OS/390

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) has announced Unicenter TNG for the OS/390 strategic operating system. Clients with OS/390-based applications will immediately benefit from all the end-to-end enterprise systems management services that already support more than 40 hardware and software platforms.

By using Unicenter TNG for OS/390, clients with OS/390-centric workloads - as well as clients with plans to deploy OS/390 as part of an enterprise-wide management platform - can realise the full benefit of the Unicenter TNG management architecture. Applications, databases, network components and other resources can be discovered, monitored, visualised and managed using the traditionally robust and secure host as a centralized management server of unprecedented scale.

"Unicenter TNG for OS/390 represents a convergence that many analysts have been predicting, but that has eluded the industry until today," said CA Chairman and CEO Charles B. Wang. "The industry has sought to make the OS/390 platform a full participant in the distributed, Web-enabled environments that modern enterprises must deploy. Today`s announcement effectively enables a new class of OS/390 business solutions."

Extending the full management platform spectrum of Unicenter TNG to OS/390 represents a pivotal moment in the evolution of information technology, because it extends the operational attributes of IBM`s strategic environment with the management disciplines of the world`s most powerful architecture for administering distributed enterprises.

Unicenter TNG for OS/390 is fully compatible with other Unicenter TNG implementations. Users benefit from a universal administration client that can be used for enterprise management and reporting functions across OS/390, Windows NT, Unix and other platforms supported by Unicenter TNG.

"Unicenter TNG for OS/390 delivers benefits that give enterprises welcome bottom-line and top-line impacts," said Wang. "These services facilitate a new class of e-business initiatives on the OS/390 platform that offer organisations access to new markets and channels, creating exciting opportunities to add revenue to the top line. At the same time, any cost reductions from making OS/390 more responsive and manageable by exception drop straight to the organisation`s bottom line."

A key component of Unicenter TNG for OS/390 is the Distributed State Machine (DSM), a management process that centralises the discovery of and interactivity with all objects and resources within an OS/390 management domain. DSM gathers real-time information from software agents monitoring managed objects, providing policy-driven management; agent control and interaction; Web-enabled administration; and seamless integration across platforms. Deploying and managing multi-tier workloads such as Lotus Notes and SAP R/3 become much easier under a common infrastructure.

"The dependability and availability of OS/390 systems is critical for our business," said Ken Chandler, MFTS technical support at Rohm & Haas, one of the world`s premier suppliers of specialty chemicals. "Management of the system is complex and time-consuming, creating the possibility that some problems are not detected until they impact the business. By using Unicenter TNG for OS/390, I can monitor the health of my platforms and automate management of my critical OS/390 systems and subsystems. Problem analysis provides for correlation with network, database and application events."

Visualization Across Platforms - Unicenter TNG for OS/390 provides 2D or 3D visualization services to Web-enable OS/390 solutions for e-business. Traditional OS/390-specific management functions can be accessed using the Java GUI provided by the OS/390 TNG Manager.

Neugent Predictive Technology - CA`s Neugent intelligent agent technology extends the benefits of Unicenter TNG for OS/390 by providing genuine predictive capabilities for proactive problem detection and resolution.

Using neural networking algorithms, Neugents technology predicts the effects of changing system characteristics on system performance.

E-Business Solutions - Enterprises seeking a platform for e-business have favoured the most recent releases of OS/390 for its rock-solid, Web-friendly, secure and scalable architecture. This announcement makes OS/390 an even more attractive foundation for strategic e-business solutions.

"Consumers everywhere are becoming more discerning and less forgiving of downtime and network outages," said Wang. "Companies that think it`s sufficient to minimise downtime will be left behind. The lesson of CA`s Neugent technology is that it is always better to avoid network outages than to resolve them after they have occurred."

The following Unicenter TNG agents will be available on the OS/390 platform: OS/390 base system agent; CICS; OS/390 Unix Services; CA-IDMS; CA-Datacom, DB2; MQSeries; Lotus Notes/Domino, SAP R3, PeopleSoft, Baan; Oracle, and Novell NetWare for OS/390.