BMC and Compuware integrate best-in-class solutions

BMC and Compuware have integrated three complementary solutions:
· BMC Cost Analyzer for zEnterprise visually maps the relationships between mainframe workloads and costs over time.
· BMC MainView discovers high-level application performance issues that are indicative of inefficient resource utilization.
· Compuware Strobe delivers granular insight into the behavior of application code, allowing mainframe operations teams to quickly pinpoint and remedy wasteful resource consumption.

The tight integration between these solutions enables customers to quickly and easily identify tuning opportunities that will have the greatest impact on their monthly software licensing costs by applying BMC Cost Analyzer’s visual mapping to the detailed batch and transaction information provided by Compuware Strobe. These opportunities can include moving workloads to non-peak periods, running IBM subsystems on fewer LPARs, and capping LPAR utilization.

The integration also makes cost management easier for mainframe operations staff by allowing them to invoke Strobe data collection directly from BMC MainView.
“Mainframe cost conservation is an imperative for public- and private-sector IT organizations attempting to fulfill customers’ escalating digital expectations within ever-limited budget constraints,” said Karen Robinson, CEO of KWR Acuity Strategies and former CIO for the State of Texas. “The work BMC and Compuware are doing together is a perfect fit for this universal imperative.”

Mainframe workloads are growing significantly as organizations embrace mobile apps, Big Data analytics, IoT and other technologies in pursuit of improved customer engagement and overall business performance. These technologies all place greater demands on mainframe-resident applications, data and transaction/compute processing power. New capabilities offered on the newly debuted IBM z13—including Java-enabled specialty processors—are also likely to attract new workloads.
This workload growth drives up the Monthly License Charge (MLC) for IBM mainframe software, which represents a significant portion of mainframe operating budgets and is based on mainframe utilization for all applications on each LPAR. To minimize their MLCs, customers must 1) diligently tune each application to minimize its individual consumption of mainframe resources and 2) orchestrate application workloads to minimize the utilization peaks they generate collectively at any given time.
“IBM z Systems transactions and workloads are growing—not shrinking—so enterprises urgently need help avoiding the potential increase in their operating costs,” said Pete Harteveld, Compuware’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Business Development. “By collaborating in the interests of our customers, BMC and Compuware are enabling organizations to drive down those costs even as their mainframe transaction and compute workloads increase.”

“The BMC-Compuware partnership underscores how committed both companies are to ensuring that customers get maximum business value from their investments in the IBM z Systems platform,” said Brian Bergdoll, Executive Vice President of Sales at BMC. “We believe that the mainframe’s scalability, reliability, security, and cost-efficiency make it ideal for meeting the intensifying demands of the digital economy—and that customers therefore need their mainframe ISV partners to work more closely together than ever to address their evolving needs.”

The two companies re-iterated their commitment to continue working together to discover opportunities to provide customers with compelling value.