Timothy,

Usually I am in agreement with most of what you say, as I am partly with
what you say below, in that IBM has done some good things with Omegamon
since acquiring it.  But, that being said, I must strongly disagree with
your assertion that we should be putting in Share requirements or so on
to get some of these things fixed.  Put in a Share requirement to get
IBM to actually put out documentation that matches the code base?  I
would think that NEEDS to be something that ships with the product, not
some half-baked excuse that the 2-generation old documentation is
enough!  Especially when a bunch of the elements got renamed and/or
changed some other external way.  Trying to install it was a mess
because the documentation wasn't even close to what actually got
installed.

Rex

-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Timothy Sipples
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 12:45 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Is IBM/Tivoli turning into CA?

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]

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