News
Neugents Come to the Mainframe
While the mainframe may be the nerve center of manyorganizations, it has taken until this week for CA’s neural network technologyto come to the platform. On Monday, Computer Associates International Inc. (CA)announced Unicenter Performance Management Predictor for z/OS and OS/390,bringing Neugents to the mainframe.
“We’re just expanding the technology to anotherplatform,” says Nancy Newfield, vice president of product marketing, mainframesolutions at CA. The Neugentstechnology has been available for Windows and Unix environments since lastyear.
Neugents diverge from traditional monitoring programs,which use thresholds to notify administrators of potential problems. Insteadthey take a holistic view of a system, and note when a machine is actingstrangely. If a system is behaving odd, the Neugent sends a signal to amonitoring framework like CA’s NetSpy or SysView, which relates the informationto an administrator.
In addition, Neugents treat each machine as anindividual, cutting down on false alarms. “It really learns about yourcomputing environment,” says George Cusson, divisional vice president,enterprise server solutions, at CA. The software learns what is a normal stateand what is an unstable state overtime, allowing it to better sense when amachine will do something wacky.
Despite the lag in getting Neugents to the mainframe,Cusson and Newfield, say the mainframe is a crucial platform for CA. “Themainframe is a key part of our business,” Cusson says. He notes that it is agrowing part of the business, as well. “We see existing mainframe shops gettingmore MIPS in,” he says. –ChrisMcConnell.