CA Eases Optimization of Business-Critical Mainframe Applications with Advanced Network and Systems Management Solutions

Latest Versions of CA NetMaster and CA SYSVIEW Help IT Organizations Reduce Outages and Improve Performance

ISLANDIA, N.Y. – As part of its commitment to simplify management of IBM mainframes in heterogeneous enterprise environments, CA (NASDAQ: CA) today announced new releases of its network and systems management solutions that help customers improve performance and increase availability for their increasingly complex business-critical applications.

Enterprise IT organizations continue to run most business-critical applications on IBM mainframes, but their network and systems management staffs have to cope with an increasingly complex range of tasks requiring a broad range of skill-sets. CA’s newly enhanced solutions—CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP r11.6 and CA SYSVIEW Performance Management r12—greatly reduce the complexity of managing mainframe-based services, enabling IT to deliver greater value to the business with its existing resources.

In accordance with CA’s Mainframe 2.0 initiative, both products are available via electronic software distribution—allowing customers to install them directly from local DASD without creating a tape cartridge.

“As companies leverage their mainframe investments to deliver a growing portfolio of services to internal and external users, they must be able to quickly discover and correct technical issues affecting those services,” said Mark Combs, senior vice president of CA’s Mainframe Business Unit. “CA’s latest releases of CA NetMaster and CA SYSVIEW directly address this critical issue by enabling IT personnel to more quickly and effectively prevent outages and optimize performance.”

CA NetMaster Reduces the Impact of Network Problems on Business Availability

The new release of CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP helps organizations address network management challenges with IBM’s Enterprise Extender (EE) technology, which enables legacy applications to run over IP networks without modification but keeps these layers of network activity hidden from view.

Powerful exception-based diagnostics in r 11.6 reveal “hidden” EE issues that enable IT to better safeguard application availability and performance. New EE functions include visual indicators, proactive warnings, packet traces using SmartTrace, resource usage reports, diagnostic tools and built-in best practice recommendations

Supports ZIIP Processing, IPv6

CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP r 11.6, which supports IPv6, offloads a large part of its processing to zIIP engines, thereby enabling sites to reduce their consumption of costly general processor CPU cycles. It also helps organizations address Requirement 11 of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, which governs the protection of customers’ personal information.

Through integration with solutions such as CA Service Desk, CA NSM and CA OPS/MVS Event Management and Automation, CA NetMaster Network Management for TCP/IP r11.6 enables organizations to integrate mainframe-related network management tasks with their overall enterprise management processes. Organizations also can view and manage systems alerts from CA SYSVIEW on the CA NetMaster console.

CA SYSVIEW Features New GUI, Auditing Capabilities

CA SYSVIEW Performance Management r12, an interactive solution for proactive management and real-time monitoring of z/OS® environments, makes it easy for IT staff to optimize service levels across multiple systems. Enhancements in r12 include:

* Graphical performance “dashboards” that enable users to easily manage diverse mainframe systems, subsystems, databases, networks, and middleware from a single point-of-control, personalize data displays for individual manager’s needs, and set customized alert thresholds.
* Integrated access to performance data from other CA solutions—including CA Vantage™ Storage Resource Manager, CA 1® Tape Management, CA ASTEX™ Performance, and CA PDSMAN® PDS Library Management.
* Intuitive reporting tools that let users quickly produce customized reports that can be easily exported to Excel, PDF, XML, text file, email, or HTML formats.
* Compliance-focused auditing that allows commands entered by all users to be recorded and reviewed as required to manage IT compliance requirements.
* Simplified deployment and maintenance that enables faster adoption of new releases by maintaining settings and thresholds. The new release also simplifies the transition to new releases of CICS® by eliminating the need to recycle CICS regions.
* Advanced centralized management through the added support of IMS Type 2 commands that enables users to centrally issue IMS commands and query responses across multiple systems.

Supports IBM’s RMF and Other Third-Party Data Sources

CA SYSVIEW Performance Management r12 supports third-party data sources such as IBM’s RMF, including access and utilization of past-performance RMF displays to speed the diagnosis of performance problems. CA SYSVIEW Performance Management r12 is also tightly integrated with CA’s rich portfolio of mainframe and enterprise management solutions—including CA OPS/MVS Event Management and Automation and CA Insight Performance Monitor for DB2® for z/OS.

“Enterprise IT organizations continue to lean heavily on the mainframe to deliver essential services, but they are not able to staff up proportionally to meet the growing demands of the business,” said Clay Ryder, president, The Sageza Group. “With its most recent upgrades of CA NetMaster and CA SYSVIEW, CA is demonstrating its commitment to address this disparity by making it easier for IT staffs to effectively manage and optimize the performance of their mainframe environments.”

CA (NASDAQ: CA) is the world’s leading independent IT management software company. With CA’s Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision and expertise, organizations can more effectively govern, manage and secure IT to optimize business performance and sustain competitive advantage. For more information, visit www.ca.com.