We've been asked plenty of times about other vendors, but for us, we've had it so many years. We don't see anything out there that actually meets up to what OPS/MVS is doing for us, so we're comfortable with it.

When selecting a vendor, we look for a vendor that's stable; that’s one of the criteria. A vendor that's been around for a little while that has the future, vision. As far as OPS/MVS is concerned, they have that. They've been working on solutions, different solutions for OPS/MVS, promoting it to the customers, and even getting feedback. That's very important for me, as well: feedback from the customers; having the ability to communicate and say, "Okay. I like that idea. Let's implement that in the next release." So, that's been good.

OPS was already in place here when I became administrator.

At the time, IBM and Tivoli (a separate company at the time) were the two other options we considered. We chose CA because of the flexibility and the way the product worked. CA was easier to interface with and they knew our systems.

When selecting a vendor, the stability of the vendor, as well as the stability of the product, is very important to us. We want to make sure that the vendor will be around to support us. We also want the flexibility of the product to make sure that it will handle our unique situations.

- NetView

We wrote out a list of requirements and sent it out to about 10 vendors. Those which most closely matched our needs made it onto the shortlist, namely OPSMVS and AUTOMATE/MVS. We were then instructed to include IBM's product (now known as SA/390) because it's IBM. We visited three other UK sites, one with each product, saw them at work and asked for opinions. The IBM user said it was "crap". The other two were equally good, but the vendors revealed they were about to merge products and we should go with OPSMVS. We have never looked back.

No.

Just IBM, in addition to CA.

I have been working with system automation since 1986. I have used or evaluated probably six different automation tools. When we made the decision to switch, OPS/MVS was the only option that was considered.

I don't know which vendors that we were looking at. I was before my time at the company.

I do believe we selected the solution because it was the most robust at the time and the easiest to maintain.

Before choosing this product, I evaluated BMC Control products, IBM.

NetView, Candle products, ASG-Zack.

We have looked at BMC's AutoOPERATOR.

We evaluated basically all available options, narrowed it down to CA, BMC and one other (now absorbed) company.