BMC Case Studies Software Company Consolidates and Modernizes SCM with ISPW

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	Software Company Consolidates and Modernizes SCM with ISPW BMC

Software Company Consolidates and Modernizes SCM with ISPW

BMC

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries	Software
Applicable Functions	Discrete Manufacturing Product Research & Development
Use Cases	Manufacturing System Automation
Services	Software Design & Engineering Services System Integration
Challenge	A software company faced a challenge when the only employee who knew the intricate details of the company’s mainframe SCM solution—a homegrown Assembler application built around IBM Source Configuration and Library Management (SCLM) for z/OS—announced his retirement. The company's development occurs on the mainframe, requiring a team with decades of niche technical knowledge and skills. However, the software development team is small, and the loss of even one developer significantly impacts productivity. The company planned to hire a replacement for the retiring developer, but it quickly realized it would be unreasonable to train someone new to support an antiquated Assembler-SCLM tool that wasn’t core to the company’s business. The Assembler-SCLM tool impeded the acceleration of application development and delivery, a crippling disadvantage in a digital age where the pace of a “dinosaur” has long been superseded by industry-disrupting Agile “unicorns.” Read More
About Customer	The customer is a software company that develops business applications and operating system utilities on the mainframe. The company has a small team of developers with decades of niche technical knowledge and skills. The company's mainframe SCM solution was a homegrown Assembler application built around IBM Source Configuration and Library Management (SCLM) for z/OS. The company was facing a challenge when the only employee who knew the intricate details of the company’s mainframe SCM solution announced his retirement. The company planned to hire a replacement for the retiring developer, but it quickly realized it would be unreasonable to train someone new to support an antiquated Assembler-SCLM tool that wasn’t core to the company’s business. Read More
Solution	The company scoured the SCM market for a singular tool before finding ISPW, an Agile SCM, release automation, and deployment automation solution. The company was enthusiastic about the features ISPW offered, but the decision to implement ISPW came after Compuware’s acquisition of the tool in January 2016. ISPW’s multiple development areas enable concurrent development. The company’s programmers would be able to work in parallel and improve collaboration through features like lifecycle management that shows multiple versions of code in flight, end-to-end tracking of every action that affects code running at any level, and an audit trail of all activities throughout the development lifecycle. With ISPW, developers can rollback some or all code changes at once and replace a current production program with a valid previous program version, something their Assembler-SCLM tool was limited in. In ISPW, production source is synchronized with rollback so versions always match. ISPW’s modern, intuitive web interface would make it easier for developers to view the status of all deploy requests and the environments into which code was deployed. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management

Applicable Industries

Software

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing

Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Manufacturing System Automation

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services

System Integration

Challenge

A software company faced a challenge when the only employee who knew the intricate details of the company’s mainframe SCM solution—a homegrown Assembler application built around IBM Source Configuration and Library Management (SCLM) for z/OS—announced his retirement. The company's development occurs on the mainframe, requiring a team with decades of niche technical knowledge and skills. However, the software development team is small, and the loss of even one developer significantly impacts productivity. The company planned to hire a replacement for the retiring developer, but it quickly realized it would be unreasonable to train someone new to support an antiquated Assembler-SCLM tool that wasn’t core to the company’s business. The Assembler-SCLM tool impeded the acceleration of application development and delivery, a crippling disadvantage in a digital age where the pace of a “dinosaur” has long been superseded by industry-disrupting Agile “unicorns.”

About Customer

The customer is a software company that develops business applications and operating system utilities on the mainframe. The company has a small team of developers with decades of niche technical knowledge and skills. The company's mainframe SCM solution was a homegrown Assembler application built around IBM Source Configuration and Library Management (SCLM) for z/OS. The company was facing a challenge when the only employee who knew the intricate details of the company’s mainframe SCM solution announced his retirement. The company planned to hire a replacement for the retiring developer, but it quickly realized it would be unreasonable to train someone new to support an antiquated Assembler-SCLM tool that wasn’t core to the company’s business.

Solution

The company scoured the SCM market for a singular tool before finding ISPW, an Agile SCM, release automation, and deployment automation solution. The company was enthusiastic about the features ISPW offered, but the decision to implement ISPW came after Compuware’s acquisition of the tool in January 2016. ISPW’s multiple development areas enable concurrent development. The company’s programmers would be able to work in parallel and improve collaboration through features like lifecycle management that shows multiple versions of code in flight, end-to-end tracking of every action that affects code running at any level, and an audit trail of all activities throughout the development lifecycle. With ISPW, developers can rollback some or all code changes at once and replace a current production program with a valid previous program version, something their Assembler-SCLM tool was limited in. In ISPW, production source is synchronized with rollback so versions always match. ISPW’s modern, intuitive web interface would make it easier for developers to view the status of all deploy requests and the environments into which code was deployed.

Impact #1	Consolidated DevOps lifecycle management
Impact #2	Standardized SCM on a single, modern, Agile tool
Impact #3	Made it easy for developers to oscillate between applications

Impact #1

Consolidated DevOps lifecycle management

Impact #2

Standardized SCM on a single, modern, Agile tool

Impact #3

Made it easy for developers to oscillate between applications

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Overview

Software Company Consolidates and Modernizes SCM with ISPW

Operational Impact