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SupportConnect - Unicenter NeuMICS Resource Management Newsletter, Version 07.01

NOTE: E-News technical information is dynamic and links in archived copies of these technical newsletters may eventually become invalid as the products evolve. Please check the support web page for your product to get the latest technical information.

Unicenter® NeuMICS® Resource Management Newsletter
Version 07.01
March 14, 2007

In This Newsletter

Product News

	>	CA Simplifies Product Names
	>	Improving Your On-line Support Experience: CA's New Technical Support Initiatives
	>	The CA Mainframe Resource Management Team Scores a Hat Trick!
	>	CA MICS® r12, Formerly Known as Unicenter® NeuMICS®, Provides Integration With CA SMF Director r11

General Information

	>	New Documentation on SupportConnect^SM
	>	Wanted: Beta Candidates

Special Events

	>	Webcasts
	>	Personal Invitation to CA WORLD®

CA Simplifies Product Names
Beginning January 30, 2007, CA is simplifying its product names. Our intention is to describe our products by what they enable you and your business to accomplish. Some names have already changed; others will change over the next 12-18 months as part of the planned development cycle. There is nothing you need to do. We have established a dedicated site at ca.com/productnames as a resource center where you'll find additional information such as frequently asked questions, customer service numbers, and a list of current product names and former names.

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Improving Your On-line Support Experience: CA's New Technical Support Initiatives
You talked. We listened. We hope you've noticed some of the changes. In response to your feedback, we've been upgrading the CA support site. We're implementing a series of initiatives, with the aim of providing you, our valued customer, with world-class information and support.
Read the full story.

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CA Mainframe Resource Management Product Team Scores a Hat Trick!
The CA mainframe resource management team scores a Hat Trick! Three of our new product releases went GA in January.

Unicenter® NeuMICS® r11 SP4
Unicenter NeuMICS Resource Management r11 SP4 has been sent to all North American customers. Here are some of the new capabilities that we hope you will find useful:

CA SMF Director Integration
Support for zIIP Processors
Capacity Planning for zAAP Processors
Enhanced Support for PDSE Data Sets
Optimized UNITGEN Maintenance Process
Accounting Support for WebSphere Message Broker
DB2 ACCUMACC Support
Accounting Support for zIIP Processors
Enhanced Unicenter NeuMICS Health Check Utility
zAAP Performance Reporting

Details about all of these capabilities are located at Unicenter NeuMICS r11 SP4.

You might find a recent webcast helpful in which we discuss the changes we have made to enable Unicenter NeuMICS to process large volumes of data while keeping overhead to a minimum. To view the webcast, click Efficiently Process Your Growing Volume of Historical IT Performance Data with Unicenter NeuMICS Resource Management Solution Webcast.

Unicenter NeuMICS Resource Management Query and Reporting Workstation Component
We recently completed our conversion efforts, and Query and Reporting (Q&R) Workstation r11 is now a standard feature of the Unicenter NeuMICS base product. The Q&R component for NeuMICS is a workstation facility for performing on-demand reporting on the valuable data in the NeuMICS database. It delivers the following key features:

Support for on-demand analytical requests
Dynamic charting
Web reporting
Production reporting
On-demand reporting

For more information, click Q&R feature.

Q&R may be obtained by contacting Technical Support, or from SupportConnect^SM by selecting Download Product and choosing the product, NeuMICS Resource Management 11.0 0610, which includes an .ISO file with the Q&R component.

CA SMF Director r11
Our third goal was the GA release of CA SMF Director r11. With the threat of losing or mishandling valuable information, your organization needs a tool that ensures that data is safe, valid, and efficiently managed. This tool ensures that your critical SMF data is reliable, organized, valid, and efficiently managed. CA SMF Director is a natural companion product to Unicenter NeuMICS to ensure your SMF data is efficiently managed and processed. This new release of CA SMF Director delivers the following features:

Automatic archiving and cataloging of SMF data

For more information, click CA SMF Director r11.

Improve Information Availability While Reducing SMF Processing Overhead With CA SMF Director - Webcast
We discussed the integration of CA SMF Director with Unicenter NeuMICS during a recent webcast that also described how CA SMF Director can be implemented and how to ensure that your system log files are processed automatically without any operator intervention. We invite you to view the webcast replay.

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CA MICS® r12, Formerly Known as Unicenter® NeuMICS®, Provides Integration
With CA SMF Director r11
CA SMF Director r11 completed the beta testing cycle and became generally available in January 2007. CA SMF Director is an SMF data management tool that delivers improved system reliability by automating manual processes, improving data integrity, and simplifying data access, while simultaneously reducing overall system overhead. This solution can automatically capture SMF data at dump time and maintain a catalog of the historical archive, allowing easy access to the data through simple selection criteria that does not require knowledge of where or how the SMF data was stored.

SMF Director r11 provides enhancements that include the ability to create SPLIT files at the time of an SMF dump, the contents of which can be tailored to match the requirements of applications that process SMF data. In addition, SPLIT files can have INDEX files associated with them that contain catalog information about SPLIT files and can be used by applications as a way to automate the process of inputting the proper SMF data to applications.

CA MICS r12 is being enhanced to allow customers to optionally use SPLIT and INDEX files created by CA SMF Director. These files automate the capturing, filtering, and delivery of the right SMF data to the right CA MICS component at the right time, with the minimum amount of overhead. The integration allows for a phased approach where individual components within a unit can be converted one at a time with support provided for both daily and incremental type processing.

With the ability to track multiple SPLIT data sets with shared INDEX files, great flexibility is provided. CA MICS customers can aggregate all required SMF data coming from various z/OS systems and subsystems within a SYSPLEX, through the use of a single INDEX file that tracks multiple SPLIT data sets, and deliver that data to a specific CA MICS component. Integration with CA SMF Director can significantly reduce the amount of I/O required to complete these processes, reduce operational overhead, and simplify the administration of CA MICS.

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New Documentation on SupportConnect^SM
The documentation for Q&R Workstation r11 has been rewritten to reflect the new packaging of Q&R Workstation as a feature available to all NeuMICS users rather than as a separately-priced component. You can find the new Q&R Workstation guides on SupportConnect by selecting Documentation under Downloads on the left pane (after logging on to SupportConnect); then select Unicenter® NeuMICS® Resource Management r11 SP4, and click Go.

Directions for downloading all PDFs to your PC with a searchable index are given in Download Instructions under r11 SP4. Click PDF to open and read the download instructions before clicking ZIP.

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Wanted: Beta Candidates
Beta Program - CA MICS® Resource Management r12

The CA MICS Resource Management team is currently seeking beta candidates for r12. Candidates should be willing to communicate any concerns with the installation process, product documentation, or new product features.

Direct feedback from the CA MICS development team is provided to help answer any questions. This is a great opportunity for you to get early support for new or updated product releases and to try new features. For more information about the beta program, contact George Cusson at George.Cusson@ca.com or call 1-800-645-3042 (U.S. and Canada) / (1) 631-342-4683 (International), and open a support issue.

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Webcasts:
Click the link for information about upcoming webcasts:
ca.com/events/EventList.aspx?id=All&evTP=467&cou=&st=.

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Personal Invitation to CA WORLD®
Just a personal note from me, George Cusson, to let you know about some of the activities at CA WORLD that our CA MICS customers will find relevant.

First of all, with the reference to CA MICS®, you may be wondering what happened to Unicenter® NeuMICS®. On January 30, we began simplifying our product names to CA followed by a description of what the product does. As a result, we have dropped the Unicenter brand and abbreviated NeuMICS to MICS. We have retained the MICS moniker to ensure customers can easily recognize this industry leading solution. The official name will now be CA MICS Resource Management. The abbreviated name will be CA MICS. The name change should start appearing in the product itself in December of this year. If you have any questions or comments about the name change, send me an email.

Many sessions are planned at CA WORLD that I am sure you will find interesting. My objective was to have a sufficient number of CA MICS-related sessions to fill a significant amount of your time and help you justify your attendance. For more information regarding registration, sessions, and special events, visit the CA WORLD 2007 site.

The big news this year is that the Q&R workstation is now part of the CA MICS base product and no longer a separately sold option. As a result, we thought a focus on Q&R would be appropriate to make sure everyone knows what is new with the latest r11 release and be able to put it to good use when they return.

The week will start with some pre-conference training, which will be a one day hands-on abbreviated version of our brand new fee-based CA MICS Q&R course. The training will be free to CA WORLD attendees and is scheduled for Sunday, April 22, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Attendees must register for CA WORLD before signing up for the session. Try to register early - the training room seats only 40 people.

After the general opening sessions on Monday, April 23, Tim Hofmann, CA Vice President, Product Line Manager, will open the CA MICS track at 1:15 p.m. with CA MICS Fulfilling the Promise of IT Resource Management. Tim will let you know what we have done for you lately and where we are heading.

On Tuesday, April 24, we start at 9:45 a.m. with Eric Stewart's address, Have it Your Way: Meeting the Needs of Your CA MICS Information Consumers. Eric will deliver an update on the overall reporting capabilities of CA MICS and help you decide which tool is best for you. Eric will be followed by Ceil Daniels hosting the session, Now That CA MICS Q&R Workstation Is Part of the Base Product, Let's Get Started. This session focuses on the Q&R Workstation basics, walks you through how to get started, and reinforces the training Nedra will cover on Sunday at the pre-conference training - so if you miss the session on Sunday, you will still be able to put Q&R to work for you.

We will also have a couple of Q&R labs. More on these later in this E-News.

Scott Barry will start Tuesday afternoon with Getting to the Point: Communicating Enterprise-wide IT Status Effectively on the Mainframe. Scott is an independent consultant from SBBWorks, Inc., and has extensive real-world CA MICS experience. He is going to share some performance reporting that he has found to be beneficial in getting your point across.

Our next guest speaker at 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday is Alan Rainsdon from IBM. We have found that IBM's new specialty processors generate growing interest from a resource management perspective. We have asked Alan to give us an update and share more information on IBM's most recent zIIP processor. IBM System zSpecialty Engines - Overview and Management Implications.

We wrap up Tuesday with our first Q&R lab: Hands On with CA MICS Q&R Workstation for Administrators.

Don't miss our special event on Tuesday evening. The Blue Man Group will provide the entertainment. I saw them a couple of years ago and really enjoyed the show. But don't stay up too late because we get started early the next morning!

Charlie Waselewski, CA Director of Development, starts off Wednesday, April 24, at 8:30 a.m. by presenting Improving SMF Information Availability While Dramatically Reducing Your Processing Overhead. He will cover CA SMF Director capabilities. You will hear more about the integration with CA MICS from Tim Hofmann and others. Charlie will mention the integration, but the session is open to all customers using z/OS and focuses on effectively managing the growing volumes of SMF data.

At 9:45 a.m. on Wednesday, be sure to join Greg Smith from Mutual of Omaha, Barton Robinson of Velocity Software, Inc., and Darrell Faulkner from CA for an informative session, An Under-the-Covers Look at Monitoring Linux Under VM. Linux under VM on the mainframe is considered a best practice, but there are some challenges in getting the utilization information you need for performance and accounting. These guys have looked long and hard and want to share what they have learned.

Darrell Faulkner, CA Director of Development, will not have much of a break because his solo session is next: CA MICS New Technology Integration. Darrell's development team is responsible for maintaining our data integration analyzers. Like Tim Hofmann, he will share information on recent enhancements.

It is our pleasure to have Klaudia Guenther from GAD eG in Germany join us again as a speaker. She will start after lunch and share some of the experiences they have had with zAAP processors: zAAP IT! Reporting on zSeries JAVA Workloads with CA MICS.

Last year, Janet Johnson was in the audience and, this year, will join us on stage with two of her colleagues from Bank of America, Murali Dharan and Sharon Kelley. Bank of America is a world class organization, and you can just imagine what their challenges are for IT infrastructure management. They actually represent different data centers with unique challenges. Listen in as they share their experiences on Wednesday, April 25, at 2:45 p.m., Meeting Service Level Agreements at Bank of America with CA MICS.

Following the Bank of America presentation, we will have our second Q&R lab: Hands On with CA MICS Q&R Workstation for Web Publishing.

When the lab concludes, we are almost finished for the day and you might be a bit tired; however, I invite you to join us for an organizational discussion at the CA MICS User group meeting. This meeting is typically an open forum where you share information with each other and CA. It is also a good opportunity to tell us what you liked or did not like about CA WORLD. Help us make the next event even better.

Our final session at 9:45 a.m. on Thursday morning is always a favorite: Optimizing Your CA MICS Implementation - Tips for Reducing Overhead. This year Mike Melia, a CA senior technologist, will share information you can take back home and use to take a second look at your implementation and ensure it is running on all eight cylinders.

I know this email has been long, and I have not even touched on the Exhibition Center or the Technical Campground where you can meet one-on-one with our development staff.

If you have any questions or need more information, send me an email or feel free to call me at my office at (703) 708-3929.

Hope to see you at CA WORLD!

George Cusson
Director, Product Management
703 708 3929
George.Cusson@ca.com

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