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An Independent Consultants Perspective on IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS
February 23, 2022

An Independent Consultants Perspective on IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS

Frank Kyne | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS

We offer mainframe education and consulting services. For the education side of our business, IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS is ideal because it helps us illustrate the concepts that we are presenting to the students in our classes. Its clean and powerful user interface allows us to focus on the meaning of the data that is being presented, rather than spending valuable time on how to use the tool. For the consulting side, if the client is an existing IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS customer, either on-premises or using the Cloud offering, we are able to work collaboratively with the clients' technicians to investigate questions they might have or anomalies that we might discover. In today's world, where everyone works remotely, the ability to quickly and easily pass reports back and forth nearly has the effect of working together on a shared PC. For clients that do not have IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS, IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS allows us to provide them with reports for all major system components with a common look and feel. Once again, they can concentrate on the information being provided, and we avoid the complexity of having to learn and use many different tools.
  • 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'.
  • I wish that the CPU reports would show CPU utilization for LPARs that are not included in the set of SMF records that were provided.
  • I wish the axis labels were a lot larger, so my old eyes could read them.
  • I would love the ability to easily import and export report definitions from one IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS instance to another.
  • I would love to be able to see which SMF fields were used for each of the values that IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS provides.
  • I would love to be able to create a report containing metrics from more than one IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS table.
  • It has been great. It dramatically improves our efficiency, and our clients love the reports that it helps us deliver.
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.

Do you think IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS's feature set?

Yes

Did IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS again?

Yes

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.