Partner Corner: Software & Management Associates
By Michael W. Taylor, President & Chief Executive Officer, Software & Management Associates
Currently celebrating our 30th anniversary, Software & Management Associates (SMA) enjoys a long history of providing complementary technologies to the ClearPath user base. Since day one, SMA has delivered innovative data center automation solutions to ClearPath customers – and over one quarter of our current customer base runs ClearPath mainframes.
Founded by a group of forward-thinking Unisys automation experts, SMA collaborates with Unisys to develop tools and technologies that supplement the native capabilities of ClearPath OS 2200 and MCP environments and help data center managers respond to today's dynamic business requirements.
You’re Probably Familiar with SMA, But Do You Really KNOW Us?
You’re probably familiar with SMA, but “batch scheduling” represents just a fraction of our technology’s far-reaching functionality. Today, SMA’s OpCon/xps event-driven enterprise automation solution is all that and so much more.
In data center environments where a single scheduling error or mismanaged system resource can result in costly consequences, the need for automation that minimizes risk – while promoting agility and responsiveness – is essential. SMA’s OpCon/xps is a "universal remote control" of IT automation – a true cross-platform, event-driven solution that delivers comprehensive, flexible control over many of the IT and business processes that once required manual intervention.
SMA designed OpCon/xps to learn and, ultimately, understand how businesses work. As such, the solution can anticipate certain situations and execute processes accordingly. For example, processing can be programmed to automatically commence on a fixed schedule, such as week or month end, or trigger a response to a specific event, such as the arrival of a file or loss of connectivity. OpCon/xps runs all jobs in a logical, user-defined sequence, and gives you the flexibility to dynamically modify workflows and alerts based on evolving conditions that are specific to your environment.
One of many innovations in OpCon/xps is its ability to capture and leverage the expertise of your experienced staff – providing process automation capabilities that reflect the unique ways your organization manages IT resources. By doing so, OpCon/xps streamlines data center operations while freeing senior IT personnel to work on more critical and professionally satisfying projects.
“SMA’s OpCon/xps helps us maintain quality, consistency, and speed of production in a heterogeneous environment. The solution has improved our efficiency fivefold – we haven’t had to add new operators or hardware to keep up with growth. SMA OpCon/xps enables our existing staff to handle the workload.”
– Doug Eney, Vice President, Information Systems Engineering, Carnival Cruise Lines
OpCon/xps does the work of many, eliminating the need to purchase, train people on, and support multiple products throughout your ClearPath environment. In addition, OpCon/xps is compatible with other operating systems, including Microsoft® Windows®, Linux®, UNIX®, and IBM. This flexibility allows you to deploy a common set of tools across your entire IT infrastructure – enabling you to easily and effectively incorporate management of your ClearPath servers into a larger data center operation.
What’s more, OpCon/xps eliminates the lag time that's normally built in as a safety cushion between jobs with cross-platform dependencies and compresses the gaps from minutes to milliseconds. These features have resulted in an impressive 25 to 45 percent reduction in overhead for many ClearPath customers, and in certain cases, delivered dependable “repeatable perfection,” leading to the elimination of the third shift.
To learn more about SMA and its products, solutions, and services, visit smausa.com. If you have any questions about how OpCon/xps can help your organization, please contact SMA at sales@smausa.com.