More intuitive, granular insight into critical DevOps

zAdviser leverages AI, specifically machine learning, to find correlations between developer behaviors and key performance indicators (KPIs) based on DevOps toolchain data and Compuware product-usage data.

Wednesday, 3rd October 2018 Posted 6 years ago in by Phil Alsop

Compuware has introduced significant enhancements to zAdviser, an innovative service for maintenance-current Compuware customers that gives mainframe modernization leaders the actionable metrics they need to continuously measure and improve development velocity, quality and efficiency.

zAdviser’s AI technology helps DevOps teams pinpoint trends and patterns in their development processes and behaviors that may be helping or hindering their mainframe software delivery. By applying advanced machine learning algorithms to metrics captured across their DevOps toolchains, teams, individual users, and applications, zAdviser reveals actionable insights that would otherwise be difficult or impossible for DevOps leaders to identify.

Additionally, zAdviser aggregates data from across customer sites to optimize the accuracy of analytic results and provide useful industry benchmarks that show mainframe leaders how their organization is performing in relation to their peers. VeraSafe, a leader in data protection, privacy and trust seals, evaluated zAdviser against relevant GDPR requirements and found it to be fully compliant with that regulation. As such, zAdviser masks user IDs, encrypts data in transit and at rest, and ensures the Right to be Forgotten—fulfilling customers’ privacy and security requirements.

The latest zAdviser enhancements include:

A highly intuitive and interactive dashboard interface built on Elastic’s Elastic Cloud service and its acclaimed Kibana data visualization and exploration technology.

Capture of broader, richer behavioral and operational metrics from Compuware mainframe tools and popular third-party solutions such as Atlassian Jira and ServiceNow, as well as many source code management (SCM) systems including Compuware ISPW, the fastest-growing, state-of-the-art mainframe SCM.

Secure, near real-time streaming of customers’ proprietary Compuware product usage data to Amazon Web Services (AWS) with encryption in transit and in place, enabling continuous delivery of measurements to zAdviser for analysis.

Expanded AI/algorithmic correlation between behavioral data inputs and operational results, enabling DevOps leaders to better pinpoint anomalies that lead to opportunities for process improvements.

For example, mainframe modernization leaders can quickly determine if a high defect rate in a particular application immediately following a new update correlates to developers who have not maximized their use of specific DevOps tools. These leaders can then act on that insight with targeted training for developers on the optimal use of specific features in the tools in order to more effectively protect applications against potential future defects.

Similarly, leaders can easily explore their data to discover if increases in development velocity leads to decreases in application quality. If so, leaders may discover that increasing automated unit testing may help them maintain velocity while increasing quality. zAdviser also gives customers high-level insights into other DevOps KPIs—such as how much time their teams are spending on defect management vs. innovation in the form of turning enhancements into production code.

“Enterprises that have put off their mainframe modernization efforts must move quickly to bring their DevOps practices on the platform up to par if they want to stay competitive in a marketplace where continuous digital innovation has become table stakes,” said Daniel Howard, Senior Researcher at Bloor Research. “Rich, fact-based insight into their current state—and into whatever might be impeding them from achieving their desired state—is essential for accelerated adoption of mainframe DevOps.”

“It’s well known that you can’t improve what you don’t measure,” said Tina Johnstone, Director of Application Development at Pacific Life. “We can now engage in that continuous measurement to keep our modernization efforts on track and focus our skills training on what will have the greatest impact on the performance of the business.”

While zAdviser captures a broad range of metrics—including usage of specific tools and tool functions, SCM KPIs, and diverse DevOps performance parameters—customers don’t have to engage in “boil-the-ocean” deployments to get value from it right away. Instead, they can focus their scope at first on “low-hanging fruit.” For example, they may focus on improving their ratio of trapped bugs (found in pre-production) vs. escaped bugs (found in production) for a critical application that must meet increased code-drop frequency requirements.

The new release of zAdviser marks the 16^th consecutive quarter that Compuware has delivered significant innovations that empower large enterprises to modernize and mainstream their mainframes, so they can better leverage the platform’s unmatched performance, scalability, reliability, efficiency and security. Compuware also announced today a partnership with CollabNet VersionOne to provide cross-platform visibility into agile development work throughout the enterprise.

“In their quest to become high digital performers, large enterprises must transform their mainframe software delivery methods to fulfill relentlessly escalating business requirements for quality, velocity and efficiency—and to seamlessly unify the mainframe into a single cross-platform enterprise DevOps toolchain,” said Chris O’Malley, CEO of Compuware. “With the release of zAdviser, Compuware has demonstrated once again that we are the single most committed, capable and consistent partner for enterprises that recognize this reality and want someone to help them achieve it with the utmost timeliness and confidence.”