Doug Fuerst writes: >....And every piece is another >charge. SMS? Gimme some money. USS? Gimme some money. DASD, VTAM, >whatever? gimme money.
I cannot comment on everything mentioned in this thread, but I can comment on this area. Candle used to have every monitor priced separately, yes. IBM changed at least some of that. As of V4.1 (December, 2006), the single Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for z/OS product now includes UNIX System Services monitoring, for example. Cryptographic monitoring used to be separate, and now that's in the same product, too. As another example, Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for Mainframe Networks combines TCP/IP and VTAM functions. IBM also has a no-charge Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for z/OS Management Console product which you may download. You may be remembering MAINVIEW, in fact, and have this reversed in your recollection. BMC lists MAINVIEW for z/OS, MAINVIEW for VTAM, MAINVIEW for IP, and MAINVIEW for UNIX System Services separately, among other monitors. I believe ASG's TMON is very similar in its splits, to pick another example. Or it's possible you missed the December, 2006, announcements where this changed after IBM acquired Candle. That's OK -- sometimes it's hard to keep up. Mainframes have a lot of velocity now. In fairness I really don't think this packaging factor is particularly important. Each vendor is trying to establish the "right" granularity for their monitoring products because each customer is different. That way you can pay for as much or as little function as you need. Lately IBM has been consolidating more functions into the single products (e.g. OMEGAMON XE for z/OS and for Mainframe Networks) since, at least in IBM's experience, most customers now need more base functions -- simplicity over "too much" granularity, basically. At the same time IBM may introduce more new monitors. Tivoli OMEGAMON XE for CICS Transaction Gateway is the only product that monitors CICS TG, for example, and is a very recent addition to the family. As for the other comments in this thread, I would suggest getting the requirements into SHARE and through other avenues. I know there's a lot of IBM effort to work through requirements, and a lot has been done but more to come. One thing that I care about personally is that V4.1 OMEGAMON XE products now have complete Japanese language support, so that's quite helpful here. - - - - - Timothy Sipples IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect Specializing in Software Architectures Related to System z Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan and IBM Asia-Pacific E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
