Vision Director automates maintenance of company's complex music and royalty management system.
Vision Solutions today revealed that Carlin Music, one of the world’s largest independent music publishers, has been relying on Vision Director for years to automate the administration of its music and royalty management system.
With operations in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France and Germany, Carlin Music boasts a rich catalog of popular music spanning more than 100 years. The list of tunes ranges from vintage ballads to classics, to rock ‘n’ roll, through today's latest hits.
“Carlin Music has used Vision Director for nearly a decade and it’s saved us significant time compared to manual archiving and systems management,” says Steve Phillips, Carlin Music’s IT director. “It’s wonderful not having to worry about the history of our data because Vision Solutions helps us keep all the journals tidied, and system optimization is spot on.”
Vision Director is a highly integrated set of utilities for proactively monitoring, managing and optimizing IBM i servers, databases and application environments to maintain peak efficiency. Vision recently released V8.0 of Vision Director.
Correct processing of financial data for clients—and doing so on time—is critical for Carlin Music as for any business. The company's database must be up-to-date, and its applications must operate at optimum capacity, according to Philips. If the system were to get bogged down with years of inactive records and historical reports, processing undoubtedly would drag, and the chance or reporting errors and any number of application problems would increase.
Vision Director also ensures that Carlin's batch processing is quicker and allows IT to meet every processing deadline on time. “Before Vision Director, our IT team worked overtime, but now we can manage the entire process during normal business hours,” notes Phillips. “Another unexpected benefit is how the software (has) extended the life of our IBM System i 525 by saving loads of disk space and effectively optimizing our DASD.”
Mark Scanlon is Vision Solutions regional director who interprets Carlin's success with Vision Director as representative of how a number of companies have achieved significant returns on investment by installing Vision Director. “We value our clients’ continued support,” says Scanlon. “Carlin Music shows how companies enjoy healthy ROI year after year with our ever-evolving software.”
The latest release of Vision Director is available in two different versions. The base Vision Director product offers the key utilities and automation required for most mid-market customers. Vision Director Enterprise is available to meet the unique needs of larger, more complex environments.
“There is a strong opportunity in the marketplace for two versions,” says Alan Arnold, Vision Solutions’ executive vice president and chief technology officer. “Mid-market customers want a solution to complete the bulk of the work for them and relieve administrative burden; however, we also have many large customers who need the full flexibility and power included in our new Director Enterprise version.”
Whenever a server, database, or application is not fully optimized, it requires more resources such as memory, disk, and processing capacity to handle the workload. Vision Director V8.0 delivers an economical approach to efficient processing, the company says. Included is a new Health Dashboard offering real-time graphical views of the system’s status with important optimization attributes. In addition to accessing Director’s flexible functionality through its intuitive Web-based GUI, administrators also have the option to use the traditional command line interface if they prefer.
Companies interested in finding out just how well Director can help optimize their systems are invited to download iSCORE, a free utility that quickly performs a series of health checks on their IBM i environments. This no-license tool highlights opportunities to optimize performance and disk utilization by generating a graphical report, including a numeric summary, showing a system’s state of optimization.
Of note to those interested in system optimization, Vision Solutions on Jan. 21 will host a webinar titled “Availability Trends 2010” that will feature Dr. Frank Soltis, widely considered the originator of the AS/400 when he worked for IBM. To learn more about Vision's high availability, disaster recovery and data management solutions, visit www.visionsolutions.com or call 800-957-4511.
About Vision Solutions
Vision Solutions, Inc. is the world’s leading provider of high availability, disaster recovery, and systems/data management solutions for IBM Power Systems. With a portfolio spanning industry’s most innovative and trusted HA technologies from iTERA, MIMIX, and ORION Solutions, Vision keeps critical business information continuously protected and available. Affordable and easy-to-use, Vision products ensure business continuity, increase productivity, reduce operating costs, and satisfy compliance requirements. Vision also offers advanced cluster management and systems management solutions along with support for IBM i, Windows, and AIX operating environments. As IBM’s largest high availability Premier Business Partner (NYSE: IBM), Vision Solutions oversees a global network of partners and professionals to help customers achieve business goals. Vision Solutions publishes the quarterly e-book Business Continuity Today outlining current issues and best practices. Privately held by Thoma Bravo, Inc., Vision Solutions has its headquarters in Irvine, California, with offices worldwide. For more information, visit www.visionsolutions.com or call 800-957-4511.
Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.
IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn:
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