Halcyon Software today announced the launch of its low-cost iSeries monitoring and automation software, Message Management Suite V3.0. This is part of Halcyon's two-year technology development strategy to increase functionality, flexibility and continue to deliver added value solutions across all its software suites.

Using smart automation commands, Message Management Suite V3.0 effectively automates an organizations' response to a given situation whilst monitoring for application error messages and system critical messages in real time. Halcyon's new software, which replaces their previous offering Monitor Suite, now enables the monitoring of any TCP/IP device such as another server, partition, hub, switch, router or hand-held device. All message queues including system message, user message and device message, can now be monitored along with QHST--in real-time. This makes Message Management Suite V3.0 ideal for monitoring multiple systems, freeing up valuable resource time, and minimizing risk of human error.

Designed to appeal to outsourcers and systems operators at all levels, this cost-effective and feature-rich systems management software is designed to addresses real business needs, particularly in today's price-sensitive marketplace where many of us have to do more with less or more with nothing at all.  From business continuity and automatically highlighting events that occur, increased flexibility in scheduling event monitors to reflect working patterns and escalation policies through to enhanced audit trails and security journaling to maintain application integrity.

Unlike the basic system reply list, currently shipped with System i servers, Halcyon's Message Management Suite V3.0 addresses the fact that system critical information messages often go unnoticed on a busy system. They quickly disappear from the operator's screen amongst other routine messages, or their significance is lost on an inexperienced operator. Yet the effect of missing or ignoring a system critical event could prove disastrous for the operator, the department and the company.

Donnie MacColl, Halcyon's head of Technical Services said "it's much more than a system reply list Message Management Suite V3.0 takes a different action dependent on the occurrence of the message received. For example, if you had a VPN line failing you could retry it three times. If it still failed you could cancel it, vary it off, wait 30 seconds and vary it back on again automatically. If it failed again you could then be notified via SMS or email or via our graphical user interface (GUI); the Enterprise Console."

Whether it's alerting systems operators to impending disaster, such as suspension of disk mirroring or imminent disk failure, or informing you that a time-critical job has not yet finished, with smart automation, systems operators can "teach" Message Management Suite V3.0 how to respond to situations, even complex ones, as the software will automatically emulate precisely the actions of a very experienced IT operator.

Significant features of Message Management Suite V3.0 are its GUI and the ability to consolidate existing tools and have a single dashboard view of an entire infrastructure, regardless of location, which is ideal for high level management reporting. A comprehensive SLA reporting tool and system uptime tool that generates subsystem availability allowing outsourcers and systems operators to monitor multiple subsystems, at regular intervals. These, combined with "out-of-the-box" monitoring and alerting templates, which are shipped as standard, makes software automated operations possible within hours.

MacColl added, "The software is designed so that systems operators can install the software and test the configuration and PTFs without affecting their live environment. Plus our enhanced scheduling of resources allows systems operators to emulate on-call rotas and company working schedules, across multiple time zones making Message Management Suite V3.0 an efficient and robust operations tool."

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