Endevor Reviews

We're using Endevor for application development.

Endevor ensures the source code is deployed to production in an accurate way.

The source integrity is the most valuable feature.

Concurrent development has room for improvement.

The cost of the solution has room for improvement. 

The initial setup can be less complex and has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for thirty-two years.

I give the stability a ten out of ten.

I give the scalability a ten out of ten.

We have 50 people using the solution in our organization.

The initial setup is a bit complex. Two people are required for the deployment.

We have seen a return on investment.

The solution is very expensive.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We use it to control the source code versioning, implementation, generation, automation; pretty much anything that is source code on the mainframe. We manage COBOL assembler, we manage pretty much any mainframe language there is.

On the CA side, where we're doing the mainframe, our automation, our development implementations are all automated, which is a huge amount of time savings. That's a big one.

Even just in the last year or so, we had a need to start using a CICS web services, and mesh them in with some distributed functions on an enterprise service bus. We put the web services into Endevor and we manage that way now. That was a new code, a new code requirement, a new challenge.

I like it because it customizable, and it's rock steady, it's a very robust and mature product. Plus I love the audit trail.

If you had asked me this 10 years ago I would have had some good answers, but they pretty well addressed everything. They've got plug-ins now to run it through Eclipse, they've got a lot of APIs, they handle UNIX files. I can't really think of any serious lack that they haven't addressed. It's a mature product, and its really stable.

Stability is a 10 out of 10.

Scalability is a 10 out of 10. For example, where I'm at now we manage about 15,000 pieces of code. In my previous job, where we actually used Endevor as well, we managed over 200,000 pieces of code. So you can see it's fairly scalable. 

I think we've only had to call them about three times in the last 20 years, and that was really more or less searching for answers, not a product issue. And they're always more than happy to help. They do great work.

Back in the day, it was just hard to manage multiple code streams; concurrent development I guess is what it was really. We needed to be able to manage that in a rational manner and automate it, so that's really why Endevor was picked. Also, CA was the market leader and they had the pretty much best product, after we went through all the due diligence.

We used to use a homegrown, user-friendly, in-house program but Endevor was an industry standard. We didn't use a competing product because this in-house program wasn't a product.

I think it's a pretty simple setup.

It's competitively priced and, as far as I know, it's just an enterprise license. We have found it is worth the money. Right now, I'm really not even involved in the pricing of the product here at this shop, but in previous shops we've always found it was worth the money.

I would say if you want a mainframe - any kind of mainframe - solution, or for software control management go for it. CA has good products. They're an industry standard in a lot of ways.

I use it on a daily basis as an administrator. It performs fairly well and has for 20-plus years.

It is the standardized tool for all of mainframe development. In the past, it is a big improvement over just using standard homegrown utilities. Having something that is out-of-the-box that you can customize to suit your organization's needs is huge.

It standardizes the processing of all the development. Everything gets produced in a constant and consistent manner.

The flexibility, because I know a lot of the competition pigeonholes you into definitions and character limitations, and Endevor is wide open. You can define it as broadly or as narrowly as you want.

I do not know that there is much more that they can do on the mainframe side. They need to ditch the Eclipse plugin and just make the development environment for Z the standard Eclipse interface.

It is still kind of behind the times. It needs to catch up with all the millennials that want a distributed look and feel.

No downtime, and it has been around for 30 years. I think it has got another 30 to go. So, it is doing really well.

It is very scalable. You can use it in a small shop. I have hundreds of thousands of users, and you can tailor it to suit anyone's needs.

When I was with technical support, it was outstanding. Now, they are okay. They are doing their best without me. 

The CA Community: We are one big, happy family. The development team support, all the customers around the world, and myself: We are one big Endevor family. We have known each other for decades. It is an awesome environment. A really good, tight community.

I was not involved with the initial setup. It was installed when I started working for this company. 

I do not do the upgrades. Somebody else does that. The whole separation of duties thing. The system programmer has to do one thing, and I do the rest.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: From my company's point of view, cost because it is only installed on the Windows part for Sysplex, and they are too cheap to pay for the multi-LPAR license.

Software configuration management.

It has ensured that we can prove that what someone put into production is exactly what's in there. 

It also puts all our source in one product. We know where to go to gather all our source code and which source is associated with which executable. It's a one-stop-shop, one place to go for everything.

The developers can very easily see what has changed on a particular piece of source code or a program, and others can look at that as well so they can coordinate their changes. It makes it much easier to promote a piece of code up to production.

Before implementing this solution, nobody knew where all the source code was. It was kept in individuals' own libraries. We couldn't know for sure that a piece of source was the same source that was the executable running in production. There was no real way to tell which source created which executable, and that was the case for all the executables in production. When we went to Endevor, it was very easy to say, "Okay, this piece of code created that executable." It made it much easier to know for sure what we had in production.

The biggest feature is that it protects the source and it associates the source with the executable. 

Endevor footprinting and ship are also big features.

One feature of Endevor is its Backout feature. If there is a problem, it can back out the executables. The only problem with that is that it will not back out the source in Endevor. For example, you can do a back out and it will back out the executable to the previous version, but it doesn't back out the source version in Endevor. It would make it much better if when you did a back out of Endevor, it would back out both the source and the executable and keep them in sync. Right now, if you do a back out and you leave it out, you have to sync the source code back in Endevor. That can be a challenge.

I'd rate the stability a nine out of 10. Obviously, every software product has issues from time to time, but whenever we've had issues, we've been able to work with CA to resolve them. I haven't found an occasion where we had problems with the product and we couldn't rectify them, working with CA.

I'd would say scalability is, again, a nine out of 10. I haven't found that Endevor couldn't handle large amounts of software or large amounts of activity going through it. The scalability with Endevor has always been very good.

Tech support rates a nine out of 10. Any time we've had issues with Endevor, no matter which place I worked at, tech support has always been very knowledgeable, very helpful and, most of the time, we've been able to resolve problems very quickly.

I've used other products in the past, but they weren't as feature-rich as Endevor. They didn't have all the advantages that Endevor has for source code management. I haven't found a product yet that could compete with Endevor, as far as source code management is concerned.

The initial setup depends on the shop. Some instances it can be very straightforward to set up, while in another shop, depending on what type of source code they have or what type of procedures they have to get code into production, it can get complicated. I haven't seen anything that Endevor couldn't handle. I haven't found an issue anywhere where Endevor couldn't handle a piece of source code or the way a piece of source code is built.

When we did purchase Endevor, which was quite awhile ago, there were products such as Pandalay and Librarian, but they really didn't compare, apples to apples, with Endevor. Endevor could do so much more. Currently, there are other products out there, but I haven't been involved recently in comparing Endevor with these other tools. But back when we did get Endevor, it was by far the better tool, so it was an easy choice.

Keep it as simple as possible. When you're implementing the product, any errors you make are only magnified as you go further down the line and keep on adding more and more applications to Endevor. My main advice would be, don't overthink the implementation. Try to make the implementation as simple and straightforward as possible and then build on that.

I've been using Endevor for many years, in many different shops, in many different situations. I've found Computer Associates to be very supportive. Their tech support is excellent. They constantly improve the product, which is great. They didn't just throw the product out there and then let it sit. They are constantly upgrading the product and making sure it is top-notch.

We use it to move our mainframe code through development to production. From a release perspective, my team oversees it, and we help manage that. 

It helps us control what changes we are putting into production. From an audit perspective, just making sure everything is all in one place.

With the newer version, you can do a lot of the automation that you could not do in the past where you had to do manual stuff. Now, we are getting into automation, which makes my life a whole lot easier.

It is interesting because we are just starting to employ some of the new features. We just put a new version in last weekend. 

I would like to see more of automation pieces. I think that is going to be where we need to go to make things faster to get to our customers.

It is the Cadillac of that tool. There is no other tool that matches it on the market today. It is the best, and it is very stable. It has never gone down.

It is very easy to work with, depending on how much you want to employ and how little you want to employ the product. As far as what you run through it, it can be little to huge, no problem. It can manage it.

I have not used the technical support.

There was nothing else on the market and we had to start managing our mainframe applications. This was the best way to do it.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

IBM. We chose CA because it was the Cadillac tool.

CA is the one that sets the pace for everybody else to follow. We have never had any problems with the tool.

Definitely take a look at it. You can look at the other tools that are out there, but I do not think you are going to find anything better. Also CA's reputation, they back their product 100%.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The fact that they are there when I need them. CA is definitely that.

It has performed very well. We use it for our CSS mainframe development.

It was really done because of an audit issue, which has since been cleared. It works very well for the organization and does what it needs to do. The developers do not have any complaints at the moment.

It was an easy install. 

I do most of the work with the processors now. Since it was all set up, it pretty much runs itself now. 

I know there is capabilities for web enablement to use with Eclipse, but we have not gone down that road any at all.

Stability has been really good. I have actually never had to open an issue or report an issue since I have been running it.

The scalability is real good. Our environment is not real large, but it works well for what we do. 

It has been awhile since I used the technical support. I have no problems at all with them.

The initial setup was easily understood as far as the concept. The setup was difficult. We did need technical services initially, but I spent very little time in having to do anything with it. 

We had help from CA Services. They were a great help. We have not needed their services since. 

It does exactly what it needs to do. Just make sure if you are going to license, ensure you license the right features.

My understanding is that Endever is one of the better software exchange management systems out there. I don't think people should really look at anything else. 

It does exactly what we need it to do. It has worked well for us because we've had it now for about five years. 

• We utilize the security associated behind Endevor.
• The external security interface that we use.
• The application lifecycles, to allow developers to do their own work at lower stages, and then turn it over to our production control area for subsequent installs, eventually into production.

It helps us manage homegrown and vendor-purchased software, where we maintain the source.

As a matter of fact, I am involved with end-of-sprint reviews. The product is being managed by the Agile development process. I've been invited as an owner of the product from outside to actually participate in the end-of-sprint reviews. I'm able to ask questions about features they're representing, as well as to request updates through the CA Community site.

There's always room for improvement. It's just a matter of what that improvement would be. I actually attended a recent CA conference to try to better understand how to utilize Endevor at our own shop, in an Agile development methodology. Currently, I'm pretty much all waterfall-type progression, so I’m not very agile at all. But more and more areas of our company are turning to Agile management.

Stability is very solid.

We have an IT department of around 600 employees. About a third of those manage software on the mainframe. So, 200 to 300 employees use Endevor Software Control Manager.

We use technical support on occasion. I've had questions, but no real issues. I've had questions about usage of the product, which have been answered by CA Support; not actually installing fixes to the product, but better understanding how to use the product. They were very helpful.

I was not involved in the initial setup, which happened back in 1993.

I've been in this role for the last eight years. Lately, I've actually installed and upgraded the last two releases of the software. It's gone very well.

The only other vendor I could possibly think of would be Compuware.

It's not a perfect solution. I never rate anything perfect.

Valuable features of Endevor include the ability to see all code modifications and a smooth transition into production.

Our organization now has standardized change management processes for implementation into production. With our old process, any number of people could have put code into production, but now Endevor is the only user who can touch production.

The parts of Endevor which we use do not need improving as they work very well.

Endevor offers many flexible processing options, but our organization does not use the product’s capabilities to their fullest potential. The processing options in our shop work quite well and are easy to understand.

Conversion to Endevor began about nine years ago.

I have not encountered any stability issues. Each version upgrade of Endevor has been stable.

As Endevor moves through the stages toward production, disk space can become an issue. PDSE structures resolve space issues.

Endevor technical support is definitely a 10/10. I have few issues with Endevor which require technical support. However, when I do submit an issue or question, response is immediate.

Our previous solution was an in-house developed system. The switch to Endevor was made because the in-house developed system was cumbersome to use and was lacking accountability.

The initial Endevor setup was very straightforward. After setting up the system and subsystem information within Endevor, source code is ported into Endevor through a batch process. Endevor keeps track of components for each element, so one part does not move into production without the other parts.

I’m not sure if other options were evaluated. Endevor had already been selected by the time I joined the team.

Do not bring the current process into Endevor. Consider moving forward using standard methodology, and make the move to Endevor a priority project.

It’s a very nice product and runs without errors.