ignio AIOps, from Digitate in Santa Clara, is a solution designed to improve business agility by creating a unified view of the IT estate, connecting business functions to applications and infrastructure. This is combined with behavior profile of systems and applications that is continuously learnt using this blueprint. ignio aims to improve the transparency of complex Enterprise IT landscapes.
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OpenText Dimensions CM
Score8 out of 10
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Dimensions CM is Software Change and Configuration Management for Agile development, developed by Serena Software and now sold by OpenText.
It's good for issue resolution, user access request automation, standard report generation, health checks, executing self-healing as configured in the attributes. Currently not good at real-time monitoring to trigger an action. Health checks have to be on a scheduled basis.
Serena CM is well suited to highly controlled, audited, and process driven environments. It will allow strict segregation of duties, and change traceability. If implemented correctly it will help you quickly build trusts with your auditors. It is also well suited to environments that require constant branching and merging. Due to the complexity of the product and learning curve for your development and operations team it may be overkill in a small shop with loose rules
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Code Promotion: Dimensions CM allows supervisors to control changes to code, in that they delegate requests to developers, and act as a gatekeeper prior to promoting to the next environment. This functionality is configurable so you can set up a workflow that best fits the structure and requirements of your own company.
Code Repository for changes and versioning: Code can be checked out by item or by synchronizing folders. Code revisions can be compared against other revisions or work files. Item histories show which developers made which modifications, and which supervisor and operations personnel were involved in assigning the request and promoting the code to each environment. Additionally a pedigree will show a stream diagram which graphically displays branches and merges.
Deployment: Serena Change Management offers help automating deployment including integrations with SVN and Jenkins. Its newer versions also have a powerful graphical deployment automation tool (Serena Deployment Automation- SDA). It comes with a certain amount of licenses built-in. If you have a many nodes to deploy to there will be separate licensing costs for that.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
There is a lot more the desktop tool can do. For example, we need to apply an upgrade to get the tool to talk to our infrastructure while employees are working from home. The tool was initially installed with the assumption that the desktops would be in UserLand. Instead after COVID-19 the desktop/laptops have been used for over a year on people's home networks. As of right now, we have to sync when the devices are connected to VPN. Moving forward with the upgrade, we will be getting this data over TLS when they are connected to the untrusted networks.
The concept of ignio AlOps requires OCM efforts within most operational teams. This isn't necessarily the fault of the tool itself, but when implementing ignio, or any AIOps tool, the team will get a lot of pushback as an outside team is centralizing the operational improvements. The tool should have a centralized intake process that will allow the collection, ranking, and management of automation opportunities. ignio AlOps should then simulate the proposed efficiencies from implementing something within the backlog. Right now a lot of local teams are having a hard time getting on the same page as the enterprise teams, and a common methodology for prioritizing (even if overly simplistic) would go a long way to enterprise planning.
These tools are very new and things get added to them all the time. There should be a way for the product's stakeholders and process owners to understand the additional value ignio AlOps is gaining over time.
The only major negative that I have encountered with Serena CM product is that the very power and flexibility of the tool means there is a risk that you will make a mess of things. In other words it gives you plenty of rope to tangle yourself with. I recommend careful, well thought out deployments implementing the built in roles and workflows that can be turned on and configured, using a consistent methodology.
My experience with the Serena help desk support has not been impressive. Though reasonably polite and diligent, the technicians were well trained, and often gave bad advise and terrible scripts. On several occasions I had to rewrite scripts they have me; if I had run them as provided they would have caused even more difficulties than the problem I was trying to solve. I speak of the support in the past tense because I conditioned myself not to call them, it was usually just easier to solve nay problems my self. They do have a good account management team though, and for any major issues you can go thru them.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
ignio AIOps version upgrades were a heavy lift. Having to learn a new language versus an industry standard language took time. More consideration on overall internal long-term support needs to be determined.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We have built a healthy relationship with the vendor support team throughout the implementation phase, all incidents raised were resolved within the SLA without a fail
I am happy with the way team has implemented and shared the product for our organization. However, would like to see it get extended to the other line of business too.
Serena CM is superior to Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) in overall functionality, but does not have very good native integration with Microsoft. Therefore in a Microsoft centric shop with no audit needs ,TFS would be better. Otherwise I would choose Serena CM
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Serena has facilitated our annual completion of various audit and technology control certifications. These certifications make a huge difference to our company's reputation and bottom line.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
