eventACTION™

• track, control, backup, and restore changes to z/OS system data sets or members
• track references to z/OS system data sets or members
• track and control system commands
• ensure that program products execute only on licensed systems
• propagate changed data to other systems

These capabilities, augmented by a comprehensive suite of supporting functions, allow you to achieve superior results in areas such as change management, compliance, software asset management, and deployment management, all with minimal effort and without altering the way systems programmers perform their work.

Change Tracking

eventACTION™ transparently detects and records information about all changes to defined data sets or members. Powerful resource definition options utilize masking to allow all important data sets to be defined with minimal effort. The change statistics provide detailed information identifying how, when, and by whom each change was made. This information is useful for problem determination, audit documentation, and compliance.

eventACTION™ provides flexible and powerful facilities that can transparently back up data sets or members whenever a change is made. Unique resource profile values can be defined that allow individual data sets or members to have varying numbers of backup copies available. These backup copies can exist on either disk or tape storage media, or any combination of both. eventACTION’s powerful compare facility can be used to examine the details of changes, either between the live member and any backup or between any two backups. Changed items can be quickly restored from any backup, providing easy backout of changes.

Change Management

Systems programmers must use a wide variety of tools as required by the vendors of the products they install and maintain. To be truly effective, change management must not depend on the use of specific tools to make system changes. eventACTION™’s unique event-driven approach allows it to synchronously intercept changes as they are attempted, regardless of what tool is used.

eventACTION™ includes a simple, yet powerful, change request facility. Flexible change control options allow an installation to easily define what data sets and members should be under change request control. Coupled with its synchronous change interception ability, change requests allow eventACTION™ to ensure that resources defined to controls are only changed with the appropriate approval. All changes permitted by a change request are automatically associated with that change request.

Effective change management provides systems assurance for audit and Sarbanes-Oxley(SOX),ITIL, COBIT and EU-GDPR compliance. Unauthorized changes are prevented, and authorized changes are automatically cross-referenced with the change requests that authorized them.

eventACTION™ can monitor and control changes across multiple systems (either local or geographically separate), and can coordinate and centralize change statistic and change request information. Data sets, members, files, or entire DASD volumes can be instantly compared across systems or sites, providing detailed information on any differences.

For installations using IBM’s Tivoli Information Management product for change requests, eventACTION™ provides an Information Management interface which allows the data center to continue using existing change request and approval processes. This interface enhances Information Management change requests by ensuring that the resources that are specified in the change requests are the resources that are actually changed.

Software Asset Management

It is important for today’s IT organizations to minimize software and maintenance costs while ensuring that all software usage is covered by a valid license. eventACTION™ provides a family of tools that allow interested parties to determine which data sets or members are or are not being used, thereby allowing managers to determine which data sets, libraries, or members are either redundant or inactive. These tools can be used to identify users of obsolete versions of products, clean up in-house system libraries, identify products that are seldom or never used, and for many other purposes. eventACTION™ includes several varieties of reference tracking, including:

• RT – references are tracked for all members of specified partitioned data sets
• RTM – references are tracked for specified member names for any partitioned data set
• RTP – references are tracked for groups of member names within groups of data sets
• RTDS – references are tracked at the data set level for specified data sets
• PET – executions of specified programs, JCL procedures, TSO CLISTs and REXX execs are tracked

eventACTION™’s Reference Tracker component also includes the product execution control (PXC) facility, which allows you to prevent program products from executing on systems where they are not licensed.

Change Distribution

eventACTION™’s Change Distribution Manager allows you to propagate, distribute, and communicate changes among multiple systems or sites that use eventACTION™. Larger installations and data centers will appreciate the automated distribution functions and features, as well as the ability to distribute changes bidirectionally if desired between multiple testing systems or production sites.

Supporting Components

eventACTION™ provides a comprehensive set of reports that provide either summarized or highly detailed information about any system changes, change requests, references, and options.

The product has a powerful and user friendly ISPF interface, with rich features such as field sensitive help, standardized primary and line commands, and an extensive field masking function, which makes the product very quick to learn and easy to use.

The product also provides support utilities such as a powerful side-by-side compare utility, automatic batch job scheduling, extensive reporting, and a multi-user update control (check-in/check-out) facility which management and support staff will find extremely valuable.

All of eventACTION™’s components are seamlessly integrated, and provide dynamic change tracking, control, and distribution for single or multiple site z/OS configurations.