Breaking down IT barriers for seamless mainframe application problem resolution

Compuware Corporation has announced industry-first functionality that dramatically improves the way IT teams collaborate when resolving application exceptions and performance problems. The siloed nature of enterprise IT departments can lead to a lack of understanding and communication between IT teams, resulting in inefficient problem-solving, slower time to market and rising costs. Compuware has united its revolutionary Compuware APM for Mainframe with its industry-leading Developer Productivity solutions, further breaking down barriers between Development, QA and Operations teams. Unprecedented levels of integration now enable the automated capture of detailed information about an issue, enabling Development teams to jumpstart the resolution process and accelerate the delivery of IT services.

Wednesday, 15th January 2014 Posted 10 years ago in by Phil Alsop

New Functionality
Compuware’s solutions have helped IT teams collect detailed analysis of performance problems and application exceptions for more than 30 years. The handoff of this information from Operations or QA to Development is a critical--and undervalued--part of the problem re-creation and resolution process, impacting how quickly a problem will be resolved. Yet most IT organizations currently lack this collaboration and rely on manual, limited communication of the problems. A major global CIO survey showed that:
• Only 31 percent of CIOs see cooperation across technology silos and 81 percent believe there is a need to bridge gaps so that IT as a whole can take a more unified approach to problem solving.
• When it comes to notifying Development about known problems, 60 percent of organizations rely on manual handoff methods.

This lack of collaboration and the manual sharing of information can prolong resolution time and increase application backlogs, both of which can be detrimental to the business. This is especially critical because technology failures are plaguing businesses at alarming rates. In a separate survey, Compuware found that 48 percent of IT executives reported a performance issue daily and 81 percent indicated they experienced the same failure multiple times.

Compuware is helping to solve this age-old issue by uniting the tools used to find problems with those used to fix them. Using Compuware APM for Mainframe (Strobe and PurePath for z/OS CICS) and Abend-AID, Operations and QA teams can quickly pinpoint the root cause of a mainframe application performance problem or exception. Operations will initiate a “fix request” right from their dashboard, which automatically gathers the contextual insights about the issue. The request is sent to the Compuware Workbench, a modernized development environment where Development can access the full suite of Compuware’s Developer Productivity solutions to re-create, debug and ultimately fix the problem. This new functionality provides seamless collaboration between Operations and Development, a cornerstone of a DevOps model that many customers are starting to incorporate into their IT environments.

“We know from our recent research that CIOs are experiencing frequent application failures and increasing difficulty resolving problems,” said Kris Manery, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Compuware Mainframe Solutions. “Furthering our commitment to the z/OS platform, we are not only providing IT teams with complete visibility of application performance across the delivery chain, but we’re also enabling Development to get the key details they need to quickly re-create, debug, test and ultimately resolve exceptions and problems. We believe these advancements will lead to significant productivity gains and faster time-to-market for our customers.”

Compuware Workbench and Strobe
Compuware also announced it has made significant enhancements to the Compuware Workbench and Strobe.

The Compuware Workbench, a modern, intuitive Eclipse-based mainframe environment, has been updated to include more robust data search and editing capabilities, additional debugging support and a code coverage reporting feature. It has also been more tightly integrated with Compuware APM for Mainframe and the company’s other Developer Productivity solutions, dramatically improving the way teams collaborate when resolving application exceptions and performance problems.

Strobe, the leading mainframe application performance measurement and analysis solution that has helped customers pinpoint application inefficiencies for more than four decades, has been enriched with greater automation, intelligent analytics and increasing ease of use to help those less familiar with mainframe applications to diagnose problems more quickly and effectively.

“IT teams face a number of external and internal pressures to deliver quality multi-platform applications under budget and ahead of schedule. That’s a tall order, given today’s complex and dynamic IT environment,” said Manery. “By further innovating the Compuware Workbench and Strobe, we are taking developer productivity to the next level, enabling more team-to-team collaboration and higher levels of developer proficiency to meet business and end-user demands.”