Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

BMC Software and IBM came to an agreement late in 2001 that allowed BMC to once again claim ownership over the preeminent capacity planner for the OS/400 platform. Last Friday, the Houston, Texas, software company started shipping that new product, called PATROL for iSeries-Predict, the replacement for the BEST/1 for AS/400 capacity planning tool, which was developed by BGS, a company acquired that was by BMC.

While there are various capacity planning and hardware sizing tools available for the OS/400 platform, from IBM and third-party vendors, the BEST/1 for AS/400 tool is widely regarded as one that offers the most complete capacity planning functionality. The BEST/1 tool was originally developed for the IBM mainframe platform in the 1970s. BEST/1 capacity planners for Unix and the AS/400 followed in the early 1990s, and IBM eventually established a reseller agreement with BGS for the BEST/1 for AS/400 tool, and maintained that agreement when BGS was acquired by BMC, in 1998.

Last week, BMC announced a new performance assurance initiative within its enterprise systems management operation. This initiative is aimed at helping companies get the most out of their hardware investments and, most important, ensuring that companies make wise upgrade and migration decisions. "You can't afford to look just at where you've been going," said Mike Matchett, a product manager in BMC's systems management unit. "You have to look at where you're going."

Part of this new initiative includes two new product lines, MAINVIEW Performance Assurance, or MAINVIEW P.A., for the mainframe, and PATROL Performance Assurance, or PATROL P.A., for distributed systems such as OS/400 and other platforms. PATROL P.A. includes three core product areas, with each of those product areas having products that are tailored to a particular platform, like OS/400. BMC officials realize its product organization and naming scheme is somewhat confusing at first glance, but let's take a shot at sorting it out.

For the OS/400 platform, the three main products in BMC's new PATROL P.A. initiative are PATROL for AS/400-Perform (an existing product), PATROL for iSeries-Predict (the new capacity planner), and PATROL Perceive, a new tool that allows administrators to share performance data with others over the Web. PATROL Perceive supports Unix and Windows platforms in the Version 1.0 release, but will support OS/400 and mainframe data with the next release, in spring 2003, Matchett said.

A good way to categorize BMC's iSeries and AS/400 product line is to think of the data they manage in terms of the past, present, and future. Let's start in the past and work our way into the future. BMC's PATROL for AS/400-Perform provides administrators with tools for looking at past performance history. Another BMC tool, called PATROL for AS/400-Knowledge Module (or PATROL for AS/400-K.M.), provides real-time monitoring of OS/400 systems, and is most often deployed using BMC's systems management and monitoring tool for OS/400 systems, which is called simply PATROL for AS/400 (stay with us). Lastly, BMC's new PATROL for iSeries-Predict provides the predictive algorithms that allow administrators to chart the non-linear growth of consumption of system and application resources, and performs "what if" analysis on a variety of system and application scenarios--the basic job of a true capacity-planning tool.

BMC and its lead OS/400 product developer, Jerik Tornheim, made several significant enhancements in PATROL for iSeries-Predict, compared with the old BEST/1 for AS/400 tool, said Leah Anathan, Patrol for iSeries-Predict product manager.

The most significant enhancement is that the capacity planning tool is no longer a green-screen application. It pulls performance data from an OS/400 server and crunches the numbers on a Windows desktop machine. "BEST/1 was a comprehensive green-screen application, but customers found it to be complex and not as easy to use and understand as they would have liked it to be," Anathan said. Now, with Windows-like tree directories, pull down menus, and other graphical features, users should become proficient with the capacity planner in a shorter amount of time.

The reporting is also greatly improved with PATROL for iSeries-Predict, Anathan said. The application now features seven groups of reports, many more than the old BEST/1 for AS/400 tool. Another key feature in the new software is integration. In the near future, BMC will introduce a new collaborative interface called PATROL Central that will allow BMC users to use many of the features of its products through a centralized browser interface. Think of it as iSeries Central for BMC's entire PATROL line. That product may debut next spring, officials said.

BMC is selling PATROL for iSeries-Predict through its direct sales force and reseller channel. The software is also being resold by IBM, which co-developed the software with BMC. "We're very excited about partnering with IBM," Anathan said. "We're getting great visibility with the AS/400 customer base."

The price of licenses for PATROL for iSeries-Predict is tier-based and ranges from $350 for the P05 group to $12,000 for the P60 group. For more information, go to www.bmc.com.