UK Press Releases

back to Home

SAS Institute Announces Upgrades to its Systems Data Warehouse Software SAS Institute, the market leader in information delivery software, has released new versions of its IT Service Vision™ and IT Charge Manager™ solutions, which enable IT professionals to control information systems by analysing their interaction and usage and to predict future utilisation. IT Service Vision version 2.2 and IT Charge Manager version 2.0 include significant new features that increase the range of data sources available and maximise ease of use and performance, significantly enhancing the power of the only enterprise-wide IT systems data warehouse currently available. A key feature of the new release is support for BMC Patrol, the real-time systems management product. IT Service Vision can now be used to collect resource data from knowledge modules in BMC Patrol and to integrate that data into the data warehousing structure of IT Service Vision. According to Mike Moroz, product manager at SAS Institute UK, "Support for BMC Patrol is a key milestone in our overall objective of adding value to the data generated by real-time systems management products. BMC Patrol’s ability to monitor performance and system alerts from application packages such as Oracle, SAP AG’s system R/3 and Lotus Notes will enable analysis of these performance issues to be included in the enterprise-wide systems data warehouse." IT Service Vision 2.2 now also includes enhanced support for the Window’s monitoring product, NTSMF from Demand Technology and Oracle performance measurement and implementation wizards. Enhanced NTSMF support includes duplicate data checking and data source support on OS/930 platforms, enabling user organisations to store performance data in all IT Service Vision environments. Support for Landmark Performance Works for Oracle data is also provided. Other performance improvements in IT Service Vision include the introduction of "Fast CICS" routines to improve data processing in large CICS environments and "Jump start" wizards to speed up the integration of new data sources in the data warehouse. The wizard automatically creates the performance data warehouse, data collection and extraction routines, and creates new reports and graphs for service level reporting, capacity planning, availability, exception analysis and utilisation. Jump start wizards currently offer support for RMF, HP MeasureWare and NTSMF. IT Charge Manager, the Institute’s solution for IT accounting and chargeback has also been enhanced with a graphical user interface and extended support for the Windows NT IT Service Vision server environment. Version 2.0 enables IT financial management of distributed Windows NT systems, as well as improved reporting and administration features including more detailed breakdowns of IT financial data. "IT Service Vision software’s successful implementation continues because users need to understand a wide range of performance data covering every area of their IT services," says Moroz. "Without IT Service Vision software, the best you can do is look at unrelated snapshots of time. Our customers realise they need to accurately predict future performance and the interactions between systems in order to fulfill service level agreements."