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Summary of z/OS services provided by eventACTION and ussACTION
eventACTION and ussACTION have been recognised by many users as being the „Best of Breed“ in providing z/OS Services for interactive real-time Change Management that cannot be bypassed, accurate and complete Auditing, improvements in Availability, speedier Problem Resolution, enhanced Security down to the member level, help in Cleaning-Up your internal datasets that are potentially full of elements that are no longer being used and finally many aids for Merging disparate systems in a company merger or takeover.
These tried and truly accurate and interactive products that have been developed for the z/OS systems over the last 20 years, provide the following functions and enhancements, that in the present climate of Sarbanes Oxley (SOX), CobIT and ITIL cannot and should not be ignored.
System and application failures can lead to loss of vital information and in the worst case lead to monetary losses, a damaged reputation or even penalties under SOX.
The areas covered in this document are:
Real-Time Change Management in z/OS with eventACTION and ussACTION
Other Change Management products are mainly electronic paper and have no capability to prevent unauthorised and undocumented changes from being made. This leads to huge delays and use of resources when trying to locate the cause of a problem that resulted from an undocumented change.
eventACTION and ussACTION provide:
- Direct real-time multi-level control over MVS Datasets/Members and USS Directories/Files
- Change Request required,
- and single or multiple Authorisation required,
- and Scheduling Window for the change to be made
- Changes can no longer be made unless the requirements governing the Dataset/Member have been fulfilled
- The event tracking process cannot be bypassed, even if the eventACTION Started Task is stopped
- A Scan function that quickly shows what changes have been made to selected resources over a defined period
- Statistics showing who changed what, when and how
- Backups for the critical and/or important resources
- Recovery of Datasets/Members to the point of loss, whether due to damage or deletion
- Prevents unauthorised users and/or programs from making undocumented changes
- Documents all changes including Change Requests and Authorisations
- Improves security by advancing the level of control to the dataset member level
- Provides an easy vertical compare function for previous versions
- Has full reporting suite for Operations, Production and IT Management
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Change Management issues are primarily of interest to the following groups:
Change Control, Quality Assurance, Auditing, Production and Systems Programming Groups
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z/OS Auditing made easy with eventACTION and ussACTION
Auditing failures and system exposures can lead to loss of vital information and in the worst case lead to monetary losses, a damaged reputation or even penalties under SOX.
eventACTION and ussACTION provide:
- A complete audit trail for MVS Datasets/Members and USS Directories/Files
- Statistics showing who changed what, when and how
- Backups for the critical and/or important resources
- Prevents unauthorised users and/or programs from making undocumented changes
- Documents all changes including Change Requests and Authorisations
- Improves security by advancing the level of control to the dataset member level
- Provides the Product Execution Control function to prevent licensed products from executing on non-licensed systems/LPARs
- Provides an easy vertical compare function for previous versions
- Has full reporting suite for auditors
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Auditing issues are primarily of interest to the following groups:
Quality Assurance, Auditing Financial, Compliance and Security Groups
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z/OS Availability improved with eventACTION and ussACTION
System and application failures can lead to loss of vital information and in the worst case lead to monetary losses, a damaged reputation or even penalties under SOX.
eventACTION and ussACTION provide:
- Dynamic event tracking for MVS Datasets/Members and USS Directories/Files
- A Scan function that quickly shows what changes have been made to selected resources over a defined period
- Statistics showing who changed what, when and how
- Backups for the critical and/or important resources
- Reference Tracking functions can identify programs running from an incorrect Load-Library
- Recovery of Datasets/Members to the point of loss, whether due to damage or deletion
- Prevents unauthorised users and/or programs from making undocumented changes
- Documents all changes including Change Requests and Authorisations
- Improves security by advancing the level of control to the dataset member level
- Provides an easy vertical compare function for previous versions
- Has full reporting suite for Operations, Production and IT Management
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Availability issues are primarily of interest to the following groups:
Quality Assurance, Auditing, Compliance and Security Groups, plus members of the Board
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Identifying/resolving problems on your z/OS systems using eventACTION and ussACTION
Finding the cause of problems quickly, restoring the previous environment and getting the application or system back up and running is of critical importance when running 24/7 processes.
eventACTION and ussACTION provide:
- Details of all changes that have been made including statistical information and backups. The information shows who changed what, when, where and how.
- The unique SCAN Function allows the customer to quickly identify the cause of the problem. This is done by displaying the changes made over a specific period in a defined area of the system.
- Once the problem has been identified a previous version of the dataset or member can quickly and easily be restored.
- Due to the fact that all changes are tracked even the undocumented changes (i.e. those bypassing the normal Change Management implementation) no changes are missed.
- If the customer uses the eventACTION and ussACTION Change Manager options, then changes cannot be made unless they satisfy the given requirements.
- The Command tracking and control facility allows quick and easy retrieval of all commands issued on the system. This saves scanning through millions of lines of SYSLOG.
- Datasets can be restored to the point of impact, rather than to the last official backup. This saves huge amounts of time in trying to identify and resolve changes made to a damaged dataset.
- As a result of these features and functions time to resolve a problem is reduced by up to 95%, and the number of people working on the problem is usually reduced to a single person.
- In summary the availability is improved, the recovery times and costs are reduced dramatically.
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Problem Resolution issues are primarily of interest to the following groups:
Quality Assurance, Production, Operations and System Programming Groups
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Improving the Security on your z/OS systems with eventACTION and ussACTION
eventACTION and ussACTION lock down your systems against unwanted, unauthorised and undocumented changes, thereby improving the overall security down to the member level.
eventACTION and ussACTION provide:
- Active Change Management functions that prevent unauthorised and undocumented changes from being made.
- The security of the system is improved by protecting resources relative to their importance. For example:
- Critical Datasets can be protected by requiring a Change Request, Multi-Level Authorisation and implementation scheduling,
- Very Important Datasets can be protected by requiring a Change Request and Authorisation,
- mportant Datasets can be protected by requiring a Change Request,
- Relatively Important Datasets can be protected by tracking changes and taking backups,
- Normal Datasets can be protected by tracking the changes, and
- Unimportant Datasets need not be tracked at all.
- The control capabilities reach down to the member level.
- Even though a User has RACF UPDATE Authority for a Dataset he/she still lies under the control of our active Change Management controls.
- Due to the fact that all changes are tracked even the undocumented changes (i.e. those bypassing the non- eventACTION Change Management implementation), no changes are missed.
- Even when the Started Task has been stopped, changes continue to be recorded.
- The Command tracking and control facility allows quick and easy retrieval of all commands issued on the system. This saves scanning through millions of lines of SYSLOG.
- Datasets can be restored to the point of impact, rather than to the last official backup. This saves huge amounts of time in trying to identify and resolve changes made to a damaged dataset
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Security issues are primarily of interest to the following groups:
Quality Assurance, Auditing and Security Groups
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Cleaning up your z/OS systems with eventACTION and ussACTION
eventACTION and ussACTION have the ability to track the usage of Load Modules, CLISTs, REXX EXECs, JCL, Parameter files, Source, Objects etc. in a z/OS environment. Huge datasets that frequently contain a large percentage of obsolete elements cause unwanted CPU overhead, increased use of disk space, delays in loading the elements and usually result in cupboards full of documentation that could easily be archived.
eventACTION and ussACTION provide:
- Reference Tracking by Dataset identifies old product versions that are no longer being used, or are only being used by a small group of persons. These datasets can subsequently be deleted.
- Reference Tracking tracks members of PDS or PDS/E datasets to identify elements that are no longer being used or referenced. After 1 year all elements such as Load-Modules, JCL, REXX, CLIST, Objects, Source etc. can be extracted from the production datasets and archived.
- This Clean-Up process frees up disk space, reduces dataset and directory sizes both of which lead to faster access and slightly reduced CPU resources.
- The Clean-up process also allows the customer to archive the paperwork associated with the various elements that have been archived. In the real world this can amount to several cupboards filled with documentation.
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Clean-up issues are primarily of interest to the following groups:
Quality Assurance, Production and Auditing Groups
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Merging disparate z/OS systems made easy with eventACTION and ussACTION
Due to the power and simplicity of the products, they are ideal to help merge disparate systems that need to be consolidated as a result of a takeover or merger.
eventACTION and ussACTION provide:
- Tracking and control of various events and changes in the systems area, including:
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- Statistics showing who changed what, when and how
- Backups for the critical and/or important resources
- Prevents unauthorised users and/or programs from making undocumented changes
- Documents all changes including Change Requests and Authorisations
- Improves security by advancing the level of control to the dataset member level
- Enhances the ability to merge disparate systems and working methodologies
- Provides the Product Execution Control function to prevent licensed products from executing on non-licensed systems/LPARs
- Provides an easy vertical compare function for previous versions
- A complete audit trail for MVS Datasets/Members and USS Directories/Files
- Has full reporting suite for auditors, systems, operations, change control etc.
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Merger/Takeover issues are primarily of interest to the following groups:
Strategic Planning, Quality Assurance, Production, Operations and System Programming Groups
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Speeding up Program or OEM Product Testing and Implementation with testACTION
testACTION, a Feature of eventACTION, has the ability to automatically and transparently modify the source of Objects, REXX, JCL etc. to simplify the testing and implantation process for new version of IBM Program or OEM Products.
testACTION provides:
- Dynamic replacement of the source of Objects, REXX, JCL etc. to point to the new version of the product, thus ensuring that the users test with the new rather than the old version.
- Improved testing cycles
- Faster implementation of the new version
- Shortened cycles for removing the old versions
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Product Testing/Implementation issues are primarily of interest to the following groups:
Quality Assurance, Production and System Programming Groups
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Please E-mail us if you would like the General Information Guide for eventACTION and/or the Summary for ussACTION.
Please do not hesitate to contact us via telephone or e-mail for further information, a test installation, Presentation and/or Demonstration (also available in German).
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