We all know that SMF data is one of the unique strengths of the mainframe. We have clients that produce terabytes of SMF data every day. SMF can tell you just about anything you could want to know about your z/OS system – if you have the right tools to turn raw SMF data into information. When we perform a health check for our customers, we want to spend our time applying our experience to the information we get from SMF, not wrestling with a multitude of programs just to get the information out of SMF.
That is why we teamed up with IntelliMagic. IntelliMagic Vision is powerful, easy to use, and is now a vital part of our toolkit when creating presentations, classes, Tuning Letters, or customer reports. We wouldn’t go anywhere without it.
Cheryl has been a fan of IntelliMagic founder Gilbert Houtekamer for years, and is delighted to have this chance to work closely with him and his team. IntelliMagic has years’ of experience working with SMF data. They use advanced techniques to modernize how RMF and SMF data is processed and interpreted. This includes artificial intelligence capabilities that apply built-in expert z/OS-specific knowledge to normalize the data, relate physical knowledge to logical workload data, and to rate metrics (good, warning, or bad) based on the context.
These ratings, and especially the corresponding exception summary table, help analysts quickly identify the most important thing to spend their time on, even in large complex environments. For customers (unlike our use at Watson Walker) that continually monitor their data with the product, this can enable problems to be spotted before the production environment ever feels a disruption. It also expedites the resolution of other problems and helps you more easily identify inefficiencies that, for example, drive up MLC (Monthly License Charge) costs unnecessarily.
To mark the announcement of our alliance with IntelliMagic, they are offering a no-cost MLC assessment to help you identify opportunities to reduce your monthly software costs. This free analysis examines five key areas beyond capping that are important for many sites. This analysis takes a little of your time to collect the data, but results in a personalized two-hour presentation for your performance and capacity team. You can find more information about this offer here: http://info.intellimagic.com/ww. It would be a shame to pass up this opportunity!
IntelliMagic Vision is provided as Software as a Service (SaaS) for quick implementation and to remove software upgrades, database maintenance, and daily processing from your team. This also enables (if you allow it) access for expert consultants from Watson & Walker or IntelliMagic to advise your team. On-premise installation is also available.
Stay tuned for more examples of IntelliMagic Vision reports in upcoming Tuning Letter issues.