Delivers greater visibility of critical jobs and processes via mobile devices

Halcyon Software, a global leader in systems management software, today announced a series of major enhancements to Advanced Job Scheduler for the IBM i platform. The latest version increases the resilience of IT infrastructures and provides enhanced protection against business disruption as well as enabling organizations to schedule and track complex job streams using web-enabled devices including tablets, laptops, desktops and smartphones.

A major addition is Advanced Forecasting which enables Halcyon Software to set new standards of flexibility and functionality for Advanced Job Scheduler in comparison with traditional solutions. It provides IT staff with total visibility of all existing jobs that are scheduled to run on multiple IBM i platforms over the longer term, enabling additional jobs to be planned without clashing with business critical processes such as month and year-end reporting. It also allows repeating jobs to be viewed, detailing when they are due to run, giving a clearer view of future system requirements.

Advanced Forecasting will also enable IT staff to ensure that jobs can be scheduled to run at the best time for the system and users. It enables organizations to deploy system and manpower resources more effectively and handle out-of-hours processing without incurring overtime costs. It also allows tasks to be scheduled across different logical partitions (LPARs) or networked servers and process interdependent jobs across the entire IT infrastructure, regardless of operating system.

According to Carole Chandler, Sales and Marketing Director of Halcyon Software, “This latest release makes the job scheduling process more efficient, improves visibility and enables IT resources to be deployed more cost-effectively. It also eliminates situations when critical jobs run late or fail to run at all, significantly reducing the risk and cost implications to the business if jobs do not complete successfully.”

Advanced Job Scheduler’s graphical user interface (GUI) has been further enhanced with familiar and intuitive Windows style layouts and drop down menus. It is user configurable with a choice of colour schemes and enables users to quickly and easily navigate and access data. Users also now have the flexibility to view all regular and ad-hoc jobs configured on the IBM i and schedule them directly from the GUI. As the GUI is web-enabled, help desk support staff or IT managers without IBM i skills can see a “live” view of what’s going on, including any amended schedules or job failures that could impact the business.

Butch Nelms, AS/400 Operations Manager, Mizuno, USA Inc. added, “Halcyon’s Advanced Job Scheduler allows us to streamline our processes and working practices. Each morning it provides a visual overview of all the jobs that have run overnight and it highlights and alerts us to any failures. By using Halcyon’s solutions, Mizuno can stay within current IT budgets and also purchase technology that offers added functionality to be more efficient and productive, without having to add additional employees. I would estimate that Mizuno has saved $50,000 by switching to the Halcyon technology.”

The latest version of Advanced Job Scheduler v12 is available immediately, either as a standalone product or as part of Halcyon’s Level 4 Operations Center Suite for the IBM i. Customers currently using Halcyon’s Advanced Job Scheduler can upgrade to this latest release free of charge. For additional information visit: www.halcyonsoftware.com

About Halcyon Software

Halcyon Software is a global leader in multi-platform systems management solutions that reduce the complexity and cost of monitoring critical business systems, core applications and processes. They help companies prevent business disruption, increase the efficiency of their IT services and save costs.  In most cases, Halcyon’s solutions increase IT efficiency by 30 – 40 percent, delivering significant savings and a rapid return on investment – often in less than six months.

Halcyon achieves this in three ways:

Monitoring: Halcyon’s monitoring software keeps a vigilant watch on the most critical IT systems and core applications on which business depends. IT administrators receive early warnings of any potential problems or ‘bottlenecks’ before they affect the organization.

Automating: Halcyon enables IT teams to set up ‘self–corrective actions’ to issues or problems to ensure that they never impact the business again.  IT teams can also automate regular tasks, checks or jobs which would normally be undertaken manually. This frees up valuable resources, saves costs and helps to eliminate human error. 

Reporting: Halcyon’s cloud-based reporting solution proves to management that the IT team is achieving the service levels demanded by the business or flags any issues so they can be quickly resolved. 

Halcyon’s products support IBM Power Systems servers running IBM i, AIX, Linux and Windows. With regional offices in the United States, Australia and UK, Halcyon also has a network of partners and distributors supporting territories world-wide. For further information, please visit www.halcyonsoftware.com