Energizer for CICS

MAINVIEW^® by BMC Software

Key benefits

Dynamically tunes CICS systems for optimal performance
Decreases CPU usage, typically by 10% to 15%
Dynamically matches workload to the existing environment
Increases CICS throughput, typically by 10% to 15%
Creates virtually no overhead

Business challenge

CICS is the backbone supporting much of the world's S/390 applications. It links end users with applications, and links applications with the necessary data and databases. CICS is also an integral part of today's e-business environment, acting as the primary gateway for Web access to S/390 applications, and as a key component of IBM^®'s WebSphere Web server environment.

Ensuring CICS performance and availability is critical to standard and e-business applications, but performance tuning depends mainly on passive monitoring and the experience and time of your scarce CICS system programmers. With the increasing complexity of systems and applications and the highly variable workloads that e-business applications can generate, current tuning processes are not as efficient and effective as they used to be. This environment also creates a need for more jobs, more throughput, and often, CPU upgrades to keep pace with the growth.

The Energizer for CICS solution

ENERGIZER for CICS takes the guesswork out of CICS performance management. As a logical extension of CICS, it manages, in real time, CICS system parameters, resource utilization, and transaction throughput. It transforms CICS from a static system into a dynamic and flexible system, which provides optimal performance and workflow.

Energizer for CICS provides significant resource savings and real-time problem resolution 24 hours a day, no matter what the transaction mix or workload. It matches, in real time, the system environment to the actual workload being processed. It dynamically manages and tunes CICS system parameters and resource utilization.

In addition, Energizer for CICS improves transaction throughput by using an exclusive, patented algorithm to optimize the way OS/390 dispatches CICS. This capability is important for standard applications, but it is essential for handling the highly variable workloads generated by Web applications.

ENERGIZER for CICS provides the following key benefits:

Improves system availability by eliminating bottlenecks, lockouts, and sympathetic outages
Reduces CPU utilization and resources for all workloads, thereby increasing throughput for existing applications and/or the number of simultaneous jobs that can be run
Dynamically manages and tunes CICS to handle the ever changing workload
Provides spare CPU resources, buffers, and strings at peak demand periods to meet performance expectations
Matches the workload to available resources, thereby eliminating over-commitment of resources and the resulting degradation of response time
Works with CICS V4.1 and later to dynamically manage the mix of transactions according to user priority
Eliminates CICS program compression problems
Provides a CICS task time-out facility for users who need a task time-out facility, such as those using CICS as a server in a client/server environment,

ENERGIZER for CICS supports all releases of CICS from V2.1 to the current version of CICS Transaction Server. It uses standard CICS parameters and interfaces. Energizer for CICS always saves more CPU resources than it uses, so it has no overhead. No modifications are made to CICS programs, and only in exceptional cases will the ENERGIZER for CICS default parameters have to be modified.

Complements other BMC Software solutions

Since applications frequently use CICS to access data in DB2^®, the combination of Energizer for CICS and OPERTUNE^® for DB2 provides dynamic tuning of two highly used and critical systems.

The same is true for the combination of Energizer for CICS and OPERTUNE for MQ.

Energizer for CICS also complements MAINVIEW^® for CICS. While Energizer for CICS continually monitors and manages key CICS resources and parameters, MAINVIEW for CICS manages a wider variety of resources and provides the assistance needed to solve complex problems.

Integration of Energizer for CICS with BMC Software solutions is planned in a continuing effort to provide application service assurance for your standard and e-business applications.

Helping you maintain advantage

BMC Software Professional Services helps companies maintain their advantage through a comprehensive suite of consulting services and education offerings designed to ensure ongoing business availability of critical applications. Our packaged and custom service offerings maximize product potential, reduce project risk, accelerate the time to value, and improve operations. The Service Assurance Center^™ by BMC Software is our premier custom solution, helping customers achieve service-level management. In addition, our support organization provides the crucial documentation and responsive problem resolution to keep your business on track.