Auvik vs. IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS

Auvik is well suited for managed service customers and small-scale SMB customers who do not have enough technical resource to manage and monitor their network. Also for customer who has distributed networks spreaded across worldwide or nation wide, Auvik is well suited since it does not need any on-premise setup at each site except for a collector. For customer who has already adopted and used cloud network and hosting services, Auvik is better as Auvik is also fully cloud based offering

Incentivized

IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS is perfect for just about any after-the-fact analysis that I have tried to use it for. Sometimes it doesn't provide support for the latest SMF fields, but that is the nature of SMF data analysis - it is impossible to keep up with the rate at which new SMF fields are added. Combine that with the fact that the description of new fields is often poor, and it is amazing that IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS is as up-to-date as it is. I think that less experienced users might benefit from material that more clearly differentiates products like IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS, which feed off SMF data, and products like Omegamon, which report in real-time contents of various system control blocks.

• Auvik is the big pic tool of choice for network diagramming, helps layout of our network infrastructure, and we'll know immediately the status of the devices that are successfully communicating, and those that may have, for example, credentials issues.
• Auvik's "Traffic Insights" are key accelerators for intuitively isolating and resolving traffic-related issues quickly and easily, and the historical information makes it simpler to deduce what aspects may need replacement, capacity improvement, or possibly even re-architecture.
• Auvik integration tools are excellent solution enhancers - that are of particular interest to our company, as we make use of MS Teams and Connectwise products; we would like to see some features to integrate to ServiceNow as well.

Incentivized

• IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS is easy to use for beginners and experts.
• Search and drill down helps to find overview and deep dive.
• IntelliMagic has implemented expert knowledge into Vision and the rating of the report is really helpful.
• Predefined reports can be modified very easily and individually adapted reports (replacement of old SAS programs) are also possible without any problems

• The map is not easy to quickly zoom in and out of or pan around. Usually requires a lot of filter toggling. Keyboard shortcuts for this would be nice.
• Better global settings that can be pushed to multiple client organizations
• Security groups/RBAC for user permissions across multiple clients
• Ability to change the URL

Incentivized

• The voluminous data is a challenge for all tools. As always, improved response time is always appreciated.
• I really appreciate reading the descriptions and field descriptions that are provided with the screens. All additional elaborations will be appreciated.
• Monthly trending and cyclical pattern detection

Because it's an amazing product.

Incentivized

In comparison to other products (even on IBM Z), IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS is really RAS (reliability, availability, and serviceability). The GUI is really stable; analyze/reduce jobs with detailed diagnostics; restart functions with Automator

The program can be a bit unwieldy at times, however the majority of information is displayed in a readable and friendly way. The maps and popup information box from the bottom can be harder to use on a smaller screen but on a 1080p+ display tends to work fine.

Incentivized

with more than 12 years of experience in Mainframe performance tuning and analysis, it was much easier to translate and understand the tool. New college grads without Mainframe exposure struggled a bit to connect the dots, it might be good to have a recording from IM to go through mainframe basics before the staff start to use the tool covering mainframe concepts than tool itself.

Incentivized

We have never had a major outage or impact that was noticeable.

Incentivized

Pages can be slow to load on larger sites but tends to be fine for most clients.

Incentivized

Fast response and knowledgeable. If the technician does not know, they will look for the information and get back to you.

Incentivized

Really highly skilled IntelliMagic team:

• Head of IntelliMagic (Gilbert Houtekamer, Els Das and Jean-Marc van der Kolk)
• Account manager DACH/Europe local support team ...

Auvik can stand up against any of the big network management and monitoring solutions on the market. I've implemented and used SolarWinds at many organizations for over 15 years. The paradigm that SolarWinds, PRTG, Prime, etc., work under is completely different than Auvik. It's apparent that Auvik was aiming to solve a different problem and built that solution from the ground up. For any organization responsible for multiple other organizations' infrastructure, Auvik is invaluable in comparison to the other products listed.

These are the legacy products that have been used for capacity/performance/billing and report generation over many years. Some are better suited for solutions using programmatic interfaces ( internal billing ), and processing IMS transactional data in particular. For most tasks, however, Vision can generate charts, provide levels of drill-down, allow a focus on analysis rather than report generation, much faster with greater reliability and less required training than the above products

Incentivized

Auvik has worked on sites with 15+ offices connected with VPN's and we have not encountered any issues with the monitoring. On larger sites the map can be a bit cumbersome to read however it can be cleaned up easily with device filters.

Incentivized

• the ROI for Auvik comes from the time it saves in updating documentation and onboarding, new clients. We no longer have to spend a day investigating a network and documenting it, this is life and up to date so you always have true information for reporting and troubleshooting.

Incentivized

• Based on data from Vision, we have not had to expand the hardware this year.
• Any expansion of hardware in the coming years can be well supported by figures from Vision.