Automation stretches mainframe capacity; leaner, automated shops turning focus to user service, extending systems life - Enterprise Systems and Networking

Software Magazine, May, 1993 by Janet Butler

Leaner, automated shops turning focus to user service, extending systems life

Many data center managers who feared that automation would put them out of business are now finding that automation can keep them in business. Data centers are fending off threats of outsourcing and downsizing by using automation to extend the life of the mainframe, to slowly streamline the data flow, and to provide seamless service to end users.

Ask Bob Jones, technical services manager at Physicians Mutual Insurance Co. in Omaha, Neb. Jones attended an outsourcing conference with his vice president who, after the session, asked both the outsourcers and Jones to come up with operating budget figures. Fortunately, Jones and his 17-member staff had begun an automation effort four years ago, and the operations house was running clean and lean.

Jones said he took a month's worth of measured data and came in with a low figure on the operations budget, "far surpassing what the outsourcers could do." He attributed his success to automation and good contract negotiation.

Companies like Physicians Mutual are providing early automation boosters right. These advocates believed an IS environment would run more efficiently with less human intervention. They maintained that the starts, processes and completes could be done without fingerprints. The output could then be sent back to the user in electronic data format. In this environment, "you don't touch anything, and no one's in the middle. Every time a human is required, is slows down the process," said Arnold Farber, president of Farber/LaChance, Inc., a consultancy in Richmond, Va.

An early initiative in unattented or automated operations was a low-visibility project in 1983 by the IBM user group, Guide. Rosemary LaChance, a partner in Farber/LaChance, headed the initial Guide session, which fewer than 30 people attended. Back then, said Farber, "Operators thought, 'We can't automate our world; it's too complex, too difficult.'"

About this reluctance, Farber said, "We're slow to use our own medicine. We don't use technology well in the data center, and we're the last to automate our processes."

Proponents of automation persevered, however. IBM's announcement of the SystemView framework for systems management in the early '90s resulted from the Guide work.

When software vendors picked up on the idea of limiting human intervention, they started bringing console automation products to market. Candle Corp.'s console automation product, acquired in late 1987 from a Bay Area company called Compucept, was originally called Intercept. This name reflected the product's initial intervention focus, said Robert Sackett, R&D manager for the AF line of automation products at Candle, Santa Monica, Calif. When enhanced with new functions, the company renamed the product AF/Operator.

Oliveier Thierry, director of marketing and business development at Boole & Babbage, Inc., in Sunnyvale, Calif., traces the phases of automation from console automation to outage reduction, and on to proactive management of service levels, which spawned a second wave of automation products. "It's one thing to deal with CICS going down," he said. "However, it's another to proactively bring up a subsystem that fails every day. Why not try and solve the problem [by] determing what's causing the failure?" he asked.

Today, multiple vendors market automated operations tools, and every major systems software vendor has a line of automation products. Now, integrated automation products aimed at managing a mixture of systems across an enterprise are beginning to emerge.

However, it has been 10 long years from the industry's early console automation efforts to the launching of this enterprise-wide automation trend.

Data centers have made progress down the automation road, some stopping at point solutions while others have sought more comprehensive answers.

REDUCING INTERVENTION

Physicians Mutual originally acquired Candle's AF/Operator to reduce the amount of messages its system produced. The firm runs a Hitachi GX 8210 (IBM 3090 500 equivalent) with MVS, CICS, TSO and IMS.

The data center staff began with AF/Operator to "at least have the system start off on its own, instead of having operators watching the screen information," said Jones. The product also enhanced the operations staff by having the system run the day-to-day functions by itself.

In addition to automating the initial program load (IPL) process -- starting the MVS system from scratch -- the insurer has since moved to more advanced functions. These include eliminating exists in the operating system, enforcing standards, and making changes on the fly rather than shutting down the system.

With some basic problems solved, Jones turned to AF/Performer, Candle's automated availability product, to reduce CICS outages and trapping, and to handle storage violations. With AF/Performer, the firm reduced outages by five a month.

Physicians Mutual uses Candle's AF/Remote to initiate start-up and shutdown of the machine, said Jones. If a problem occurs, the system responds by automatically calling someone via phone voice message or a pager, using an alpha display. This has eliminated weekend shifts, said Jones. The firm is without operators from 3 p.m. Saturday until 7 a.m. Monday morning. The company is also working toward eliminating the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, where they now have one operator. The swing shift is down from three operators to two.