BMC AMI Ops vs. IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS

The best part of AMI Ops for z OS, CICS DB2, or Network management, which I like and prefer to use, is that there are so many very useful Views for almost all purposes, specifically to analyze system performance issues that really impact Business.

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.

• Monitor the health of the system. Alert when the threshold is met such as CPU DASD I/O MVS Storage
• Does a very good job with IMS Reporting and threshold notification. region Looping, high CPU
• Java region Gabbage collection reporting work great with IBM Health center.

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

• Going back in history must be improved, its not that flexible.
• The current interval in the z OS panel is 1 minute. However, the backward details show 15 15-minute intervals, which is not helpful.
• The job delay reason column should include a more exact reason instead of a general statement.

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

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

Because of the overall feature set is has. However I feel there is some room for improvement especially in documentation and wider API integration

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

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 ...

BMC AMI Cloud and Data provides a data resiliency solution for the cloud. It is for customers looking to 1. backup their decades-worth of data stored in physical or virtual tapes to Cloud storage (AWS S3), 2. perform analytics and business intelligence to run targeted customers or campaigns on mainframe data now available in the cloud, and 3. use the data as backup/ restore copies in the event of a disaster.

Incentivized

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

• Negative: Not effective use of archive data for historical displays, it takes much time and hangs.
• Negative: The installation method through the installer is not friendly.
• Positive: CICS issues can be identified, diagnosed and fixed promptly.
• Negative: Applying passcodes is more difficult than desired.

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.