Compuware Strobe (discontinued) vs. IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision

Compuware Strobe is very essential if you are working in a multi-system environment to constantly measure the activity of your applications. My setup involves deploying bots to perform repetitive tasks. With Compuware Strobe, I'm able to conduct early tests on codes that reduce by great margins performance issues on the development cycle; It's why I'm making a good recommendation for it.

Incentivized

IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS is an excellent comprehensive mainframe reporting tool that can ingest raw SMF/RMF statistical data, tape management configuration (TMC) data, DCOLLECT data, and proprietary ISV SMF data (Hitachi Mainframe Analytics Reporter SMF records, Oracle VSM SMF data) unlike any other product on the market. The reporting capabilities of IntelliMagic Vision is also best-in-class across all mainframe domains. No other historical mainframe reporting tool in the market can compete with IntelliMagic vision in terms of health/exception reporting, the "Change Detection" reporting - i.e., the ability to compare performance data across data points in statistical terms, and in terms of easy-to-use out-of-the-box (OTB) reports, as well as user-customizable reporting capabilities. IntelliMagic Vision is not a 'real-time' reporter such as Omegamon in that IntelliMagic consumes IBM SMF/RMF data that is DUMPd of SMF log streams, compressed, and FTPd to IntelliMagic's cloud server environment. However, IntelliMagic Vision can be considered as a 'near real-time' reporting facility - as long as the client installation can build the necessary automated infrastructure to "feed" their statistical data to IntelliMagic over several shorter (e.g., 1/2-hour or one-hour) intervals. Our typical turnaround time is about 1.5 hours from the time we create/cut statistical data to the time we can see the statistical reports based on that data in the tool - sometime that lag is even less than 1.5 hours.

• Runs detailed analysis on captured data to aid in tuning applications.
• It's possible to run early tests on the bots' codes to detect early performance issues.

Incentivized

• The provision of hundreds of sample reports, combined with the ability to drill down from each report, is both powerful and a real time-saver.
• I love the ability to take an existing report, customize it to my needs, and quickly export it to a PDF or Powerpoint, or spreadsheet.
• The Health Insight reports are great for helping me quickly hone in on aspects of system performance that require further investigation, without having to browse through hundreds of reports that simply report that everything is 'normal'.

• Does not collect all performance indicators(toolchain measurements) in early CI pipelines.

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

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 ...

There are many different, and powerful, tools on the market. However, we could not find any other product that supported such a broad range of SMF records, provided IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS' collaboration capabilities, and allowed us to delve into the SMF information from many products with a common set of skills. Additionally, and very importantly, the IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS support is first class. The 'IntelliMagicians' are both experts in the use of their product AND experts in the data that is being reported on. They have many years of experience, excellent relationships with their customers, and a real enthusiasm for analyzing and understanding what is happening in the z/OS systems they are analyzing. We couldn't ask for better partners.

• It has helped us identify issues affecting our and our clients' applications' performance.
• Smoothened robots deployment.

Incentivized

• Intellimagic allows support staff to gain a deeper understanding of the environment. This is applicable to both junior and senior staff.