It's a good product. It's a busy product. We like it. I wouldn't tell them about the logs or the transaction history because that's my pet peeve that's been around for a long time. But I understand that SYSVIEW already invested a lot of money and time into the product, so we’ve got to come in from the back door. When I talk to other people or tell other people about the product, I actually tell them it's a good product. It does what it's supposed to do. The support’s good and that's the main factor right there. That's what you want out of a product.

I didn’t give it a perfect rating - I'd never do that – because there's some still more work to be done on it. It's a good product. It does what it's supposed to do.

A solution has to be, one, user friendly. It needs to be easy to install and maintain. It does need to interface into the things that we want it to. Really just being able to play nicely in the field that we're working in and along with the other products. Those are some of the biggest things we look for.

I would probably rate it a 9/10. I'll be honest, not a ten because I'm very particular and I would always have difficulty no matter how much I liked a product to give it a ten.

Make sure you set thresholds. The out of the box thresholds are okay, but because each site is different it's really important to be able to get the right kind of reporting and alerts that you do need and want to utilize. It's important that the thresholds are set correctly, otherwise you end up getting a lot of false positives and then you end up tend to ignoring the alerts instead of actually paying attention to them.

If you are looking for a good performance monitoring and system tool, this solution offers it in a very compact product suite.

It is a good product for mainframe management. It is a lot easier to install and maintain than most of the other products that I am familiar with, such as BMC vs CA mainframe management or IBM mainframe management tools.

CA offers technical advice. They'll come in and they'll show you all the bells and whistles. I think that's a really good thing. They'll come in and help you tweak the product to get the most use out of it. You have to ask the sales team, and they'll schedule somebody.

This is probably their best product. I look at this product and I think it is the best in their fleet. It's hard to say what I would want them to do better, other than, as I said, JES3.

I've been using it since the 80s. I've always found it to be very helpful, so anytime I get the chance, I recommend that we implement SYSVIEW.

Just try it. See if you like it or not.

I have to work with other products that are its competition, and so far, SYSVIEW is one of the best out of there. 

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The response from their technical team is the most important for me. Also, a product that is stable and works

Follow the manual and you won’t have any problems. If you do come across any installation issues, instead of spending lots of time trying to resolve it, open up a question with support and they will resolve it very quickly.

I would say first and foremost, understand your business rules and understand what you are trying to accomplish and your requirements to the fullest. Then make sure they are articulated so you can make a good decision. A lot of time, folks look at a product pipeline and not looking at their requirements.

A great deal of the product is definitely suitable for z/OS system specialists with some years of job experience. In other words, z/OS beginners will probably not be able to appreciate all of the product’s features. Thus, it should be evaluated by an experienced systems programmer.

Just take your time and set thresholds and alerts properly.

You need to be partnered with CA. Work alongside of them. It makes it a lot easier because of the amount that goes into installing this product. You will need a little help.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: usability and scalability.

Give it a try. Do not deny it because of other possible influences that may or may not be valid with this particular solution.

Start with a small and easy configuration and get it running. Make yourself familiar with the product, then switch on additional features one at a time and get familiar with it. Otherwise, you may get lost in options, features, and parameters. The product is quite comprehensive.

SYSVIEW has everything you need.

In previous releases, the default setting was consuming too much CPU perhaps, but since 14.1, this was tuned quite well. Still, I would advise checking the interval setting in SCHD* parmlib members in case you want to keep CPU usage by SYSVIEW as low as possible. Using ZIIP is also good thing, where applicable.

It is a very powerful and reliable tool with a relatively easy to follow interface.

I think it is quite good. Absolutely, get it. It is a great tool.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: I'm not sure it is about the vendor. Maybe it is about the product. Of course, you have to coach your support, but it is mostly how the product is. 

When selecting a vendor it comes down to the price.

I would recommend SYSVIEW. Use it.

I can easily and highly recommend it.

I recommend this product to others due to its easy implementation, comprehensive functionality and good organization of documents.

Do not hesitate; it’s invaluable.

It’s definitely better than SDFF and JCL as they are going nowhere. I haven’t used any other products, but if you want to keep looking back and to see historical data and find out about yourself, then this is the product for you.

Do it.

Have a good service contract. We can call on their engineers to come as we paid for a certain amount of time and you need someone to show you.

You should have at least have one person who is up to date with the current release. This can help a lot with setting up the solution and implementation. I also recommend to work hard on becoming familiar with this product, as it is complicated at times.