TechValidate Research on CA Mainframe

Introduction

This case study of a Global 500 computer services company is based on a May 2013 survey of CA Technologies Testing Solutions customers by TechValidate, a 3rd-party research service. The profiled company asked to have their name blinded to protect their confidentiality.

Challenges

• Purchased CA Testing Tools for the following reasons:
  • Reduce high software costs
  • Improve testing of mainframe applications
  • Improve productivity of application developers
  • Reduce length of time it takes to update a mainframe application and move it to production
  • Quickly identify reasons why applications don’t perform as expected in production

Use Case

• Using the following CA Testing Tools:
  • CA SymDump® Batch
  • CA RC/Update® for DB2 for z/OS
• Applying CA Testing Tools in the following ways:
  • To debug / step through Batch programs
  • To identify the root cause of a performance problem in test or production
  • To browse or update DB2 databases

Results

• Replaced the following vendors with CA Testing Tools:
  • Compuware
  • IBM
• Their application developers are satisfied with the ease of use of the CA Testing Tools.
• Saw improvement in the following areas since implementing CA Testing Tools:
  • Reduced costs: 40%-60%
  • Improved productivity: 40%-60%
  • Achieved a return on investment: 40%-60%
• Rated the following CA Testing Tools capabilities in terms of how valuable they are to their organization:
  • Ease of use: valuable
  • Depth of functionality: valuable
  • Integration among the tools: valuable
  • Lower cost of ownership: extremely valuable

Introduction

This case study of a large enterprise health care company is based on a August 2013 survey of CA Technologies Testing Solutions and CA Endevor® Software Change Manager customers by TechValidate, a 3rd-party research service. The profiled company asked to have their name blinded to protect their confidentiality.

Challenges

• Experienced the following challenges when there was little or no integration between their testing tools and their software change management solution:
  • Manual errors
  • Too many manual procedures
• Integrated their software change management solution with their testing tools to achieve the following business objective:
  • Speed turnover of applications to production

Use Case

• Integrated their software change management solution with their testing tools to achieve the following technical objectives:
  • Spend less time managing their processors
  • Simplify and automate test case setup
  • Reduce the number of manual errors
  • Conserve DASD
• Replaced the following vendors with their CA Testing Tools and/or their CA Software Change Management solution:
  • Compuware
  • Viasoft

Results

• Found automatic integration between their software change management solution and their testing tools had a very significant impact and greatly influenced the decision to purchase and/or eliminated most other competitors.
• Made improvements in the following areas by integrating their software change management solution and their testing tools:
  • Increased productivity: > 100%
  • Reduced costs: 75-100%
  • Increased ROI: > 100%
  • Reduced manual errors: > 100%
  • Accelerated delivery of apps: > 100%
• Finds the integration of their software change management solution and their testing tools solution to be extremely important to their development teams.
• Rates the following integrated software change management solution and testing tools capabilities in terms of how valuable they are:
  • Ease of use: extremely valuable
  • Depth of functionality: extremely valuable
  • Lower cost of ownership: very valuable
  • Ability to quickly produce quality apps: extremely valuable
• Achieved the following benefits from the integration of their software change management solution and their testing tools:
  • Can test earlier and/or more often in the software development life cycle
  • Can accomplish more testing in less time
  • Decreased errors associated with insufficient testing coverage
  • Improved application performance in production