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Monday, May 4, 2015

BMC brings radical improvement to Database Solutions with Next Generation Technology for DB2 for z Systems®

By Rich Ptak

BMC is stirring up the mainframe solutions market with a radically new approach that promises to dramatically reduce the costs, effort and time spent on managing data on the mainframe.  This announcement[1] focuses on one of the most prosaic of tasks, i.e. data base management and reorganization to optimize performance and retrieval times. This allows the enterprise to successfully meet service delivery commitments and assuring an exceptional customer experience. Explosive growth in the amounts and variety of data collected, analyzed and reported has been escalating the cost, complexity and importance of this function.

Several generations of improvements in the mainframe architecture itself, largely outpaced the capabilities of existing utilities to economically deal with current problems. A new foundation was needed, built around the latest in technology, able to exploit the power of the latest z Systems and speedily deal with massive amounts of every format and data configuration imaginable. And, this had to be available now.

BMC’s Next Generation Technology (NGT) for DB2 for z Systems® provides that foundation as it combines the best of BMC’s existing products with the newest technology developed from recently acquired CDB (see blog[2]). This release includes DB2 for z Systems includes BMC Utility Manager for process management and BMC LOBMaster to “find and fix problems with unstructured data before they impact…digital customers.”

The savings described in BMC’s press release include “reductions in CPU and elapsed times of 65-75% and storage savings of as much as 85% through advanced processing techniques”. The immediate reaction is skepticism which disappears as BMC walks through the details of completely updated technology operating and leveraging the latest mainframe improvements. Let’s look at reorgs.

Integrating new technology with leading edge applications allows for full, truly automated real-time reorgs (from process definition and creation to continuous process optimization) that can run 24x7 on large data bases. The management and optimization is done without interrupting the operation of applications using the data base. The traditional lag between problem determination – process definition – process creation – reorg implementation is eliminated. Operations staff defines what they want to accomplish. The BMC Utility Manager automatically generates processes, timing and task workflows to achieve the desired end. All management and optimization follows predefined policies. The intelligent management includes on-going analysis so adjustments can be made to assure optimization and management tasks are done in the most efficient and effective manner.

We discuss more about the capabilities in our commentary entitled “BMC’s NGT = DB2 utilities for the 21st Century[3]”. We think you will want to follow-up with BMC to get the technical details.
BMC is offering this as an optional upgrade to customer’s with their management products. They provide customers a gradual path to this next generation of technology.

There must be something about being privately owned that stirs a company to action. At last year’s analyst event, CEO Bob Beauchamp promised that they were going to move faster and innovate more freely than was possible before. He’s kept his word. They are introducing solutions faster and more radically improved than have been seen in years. This past quarter has seen a number of announcements for cost management and reduction in the mainframe space from all the big time players in that management space.

BMC is redefining IT solutions for the management and optimization of not only data bases but IT infrastructure. Their move can be expected to provide long-lasting benefit to both the business and IT. They are raising the expectations of IT staff for management solutions that are easier to use, more comprehensively integrated and cost effective.

It’s a real challenge to other vendors. We look forward with great interest to future developments and offerings!

1 comment:

  1. Useful information shared. I am very happy to read this article. Thanks for giving us nice info. Fantastic walk-through. I appreciate this post.BMC plays a very important role in database solutions.This is a very nice latest technology blog.I hope you would update more

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