Hi, Syzygy, Inc. has a complete automation suite which was primarily designed to allow sites to reduce head count in Operations and Technical Support (systems programming) which is installed at over 300 z/OS sites and the license is less than 10% of IBM or CA's product costs. That automation software is the only product available that can (without any JCL changes or major system exits) send step and max condition codes, plus job output to any email or SMS (cellphone) address.
We also do site management for sites exactly like yours which are in the process of "sun setting" and don't want to or can't keep or afford a full time systems programming staff. We currently maintain 78 z/OS (and a couple z/VM) sites, (115 processors total). Several of those are COMPLETELY maintained (problem resolution, product updates, and installation, and performance tuning) with what works out to about 15 hours every two weeks (30 hours total per month), and the yearly cost is less than a single on-site systems programmer. Those sites are kept at whatever system level "current-ness" that they wish, although a couple want nothing more than to just stay where they were at the time we started there, with them in a sort of frozen state. One of them is still running z/OS 1.8 with Adabas and Com-Plete and they are very happy with staying there until they are ready to drop the mainframe. We keep offering to upgrade them, but they are not really interested. They (and a few others) have been getting out of the z/OS mainframe platform for several years. Some have gone to the brink of dropping the mainframe only to come roaring back to a full fledged new development site. Some do actually shut the mainframe down, and it's very hard to keep a technical support and operations staff as that sort of thing happens. It becomes a sort of slow death that no one wants to willing participate in, so we can take up the slack with automation and providing them with part-time or full time support as they need or want it. If you are interested in either the software or z/OS system support, please feel free to call us, the number is on the web site www(dot)SyzygyInc(dot)com Brian Westerman Syzygy Incorporated ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
