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EZ Source for CA Endevor
CA Endevor provides users with proven capability to manage all aspects of the software development and release lifecycle, addressing the three core demands of coordination/control, risk mitigation and quality management. By applying the EZ Source complementary solution, automation of complex and challenging application management processes adds extra value to both the IT development and management organisations through increased accuracy and efficiency of applying control.
EZ Legacy is a CA technology partner providing solutions to increase the business value of mainframe applications deployed using either/both CA Endevor and CA IDMS environments. Designed as a 'plug-in' to both environments, EZ Source is rapidly deployed and facilitates immediate improvements in development and support activities by automating all aspects of application analysis.
CA Endevor's core strength is in the facilities it provides to manage complex applications, particularly those which have matured over time into critical business assets. These are typified by some common characteristics :
- high volume of application components
- multiple platforms and technical environments
- high level of interdependency to service end to end business processes
- multiple IT teams working on separate applications (in-house, external, on-shore, off-shore)
Maintaining an acceptable level of business service and continuity whilst addressing the core challenges of containing application development and maintenance costs with a high level of quality is one of the biggest challenges faced by the IT function under significant business pressure.
One of the key barriers to the IT function is often the level and quality of application and component information available on which to plan and deliver new development and maintenance activity and the degree of analysis automation potential to deliver fast and accurate data. This often results in project timeline and cost overruns. For example, a recent KPMG survey of 600 organisations' IT delivery portfolios found that 49% of respondents experienced at least one major programme failure, primarily due to inadequate understanding of the key drivers and interdependencies of project components coupled with insufficient management of the costs, benefits and timelines.
EZ Source is a business process oriented Configuration Management environment (CMDB) which automates application understanding, impact analysis and interactive technical documentation for use in all Application Management activities. Synchronised with CA Endevor, it contains a full inventory of your application components and key information about their functionality, interdependencies and complexity. EZ Source "visualises" this information in an easy to use front end and is an indispensable tool for planning and managing application development, enhancement and maintenance. It is designed for use by disparate and physically remote development/technical teams with the added advantage of application metric and measurement data for senior IT management. |
| Solution Overview |
The combination of CA Endevor and EZ Source using the CA Endevor Connector provide full process automation. From initial discovery, through to automated retrieval into the EZ Source Applications CMDB and subsequent analysis, organisations can use the advantages of CA Endevor for a wider range of users.
Manual application analysis is both costly and error prone due to the difficulties in accurately analysing all the components, understanding complex inter-dependencies and ensuring all is accurately documented. EZ Source is populated via automated processes with information on all application components and their relationships, allowing precise, user-driven navigation and impact analysis according to the task in hand. Key to its success is the ability of EZ Source to provide an integrated, common repository with user/activity tailored tools all running from the same information - a "single version of the truth" of the functional and technical environments.
Analysis is the critical first step in the vast majority of all application management activity; common "use cases" include :
- application support; fault diagnosis
- application enhancement; complexity, cost, timeline estimation
- application integration/SOA enablement; interdependency analysis
- application replacement; functional analysis
EZ Source's automated approach speeds up these key analysis activities, shares consistent and common "expert" knowledge across all IT and business teams involved which ensures delivery accuracy, quality and mitigates risk. |
| Solution Benefits |
Fast to deploy and use, EZ Source delivers proven business benefits to development organisations faced with the real world challenges of maintaining and enhancing their portfolio of applications.
Some of the key benefits are:
- A reduction of overall delivery costs of between 10 - 18%
- Improved Application quality and performance
- Improved Application flexibility and business value
- Extended Application longevity
- Improved Management understanding
- Improved planning and predictability
- Enhances IT skills
Given that analysis normally consumes 30% of all Application Management resources and even then is often incomplete when performed manually, EZ Source's ability to fully automate this activity allows teams to perform the required activity based on an accurate understanding. When used in combination with CA Endevor, the EZ Source also verifies there are no missing components and can analyse multi language applications as well as understanding the interdependencies between application, database and interfaces. |
| The EZ Legacy edge |
| Only EZ Source provides Enterprise-wide, cross platform coverage and enables the depth of functionality to support the detailed understanding needed for development activities. Its ability to meet the challenges of many different users in many scenarios in addition to extremely rapid implementation and ease of use, satisfy both the demands of technical staff and management alike. EZ Source analyses a wide variety of application environments, including COBOL, PL/1, ADS/O, Natural, CICS, JCL, IDMS, DB2, IMS, VSAM, Adabas, MQ Series, Java and SAP ABAP. |
| EZ Source: Underpinning Enterprise Application Management |
EZ Source fully automates Application analysis, documentation and measurement, helping organisations with the real world problem of managing their existing Application portfolio.
EZ Source correlates the relationships between the different application components and automates the production of technical documentation. It operates across multiple languages and environments, producing consistent understanding and measurement. Through its ability to parse the different application components (for example, source code, OS scripts, include files, screen maps, transactions, messaging system data, application servers data, etc) and then visualise the internal application structure and dependencies, users can select their starting point and navigate across or drill down as required in order to precisely determine the scope and level of analysis. This Applications CMDB functionality is complemented by a rich choice of visualisation and reporting options so users can precisely define the scope and depth.
Many different options are provided to visualise the analysis according to requirements and results. For example, a particular analysis may reveal complex interdependencies with different types of components, so EZ Source has user definable dependency levels, filtering and different visualisation layouts in order to achieve optimum understanding. At all stages in the analysis, EZ Source synchronises with the source code so developers can understand exactly how functions have been performed. |
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| Analysis showing high level cross application components |
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| MQ applications interfacing |
In addition to this internal program analysis, EZ Source also includes database and interface components so that the understanding can both include these vital aspects as well as starting from these points of view. Conducted manually, it is difficult to identify even straightforward questions such as "where is this database table used", or "where is MQ integrated into my application" as well as more complex issues like field expansion and impact analysis. EZ Source provides the comprehensive results in seconds.
An additional comprehensive reporting portal used to measure different aspects of the application. EZ Reports includes both industry standard metrics (eg McCabe, Halstead, Function Point) and user definable parameters. Invaluable for Management and Architecture requirements, it allows quality and code standards to be instutionalised into the development and review process. In addition, it also gives developers valuable insights by documenting aspects such as "where used" and "dead code" occurrences. |
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| EZ Report examples |
| EZ Source integration |
Many organisations will have existing infrastructure that is complementary to the EZ Source analysis capabilities. The product therefore provides a wide range of integration options so that as appropriate EZ Source can be loaded, or provide data to be both current in its analysis and add value to other products.
Some examples are:
- CA Endevor - automatically loading and propagating changes into the EZ Source Repository
- Planning - export of applications metrics to Excel for work planning and estimation
- EZ Source API - exporting data from the EZ Source repository to other systems such as Enterprise CMDB
- External Documentation - export from different views into a wide variety of "office" formats
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