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Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

Stuart Weenig

Stuart WeenigNov 11, 2014 03:33 PM

Anon Anon

Anon AnonNov 11, 2014 03:39 PM

  • 1.  Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 27, 2014 03:43 PM

    Hey everybody, I need some help gathering some information. We're in the process of evaluating whether or not we should go back to NetVoyant and abandon our CAPC/IM2.0/PM2.0 efforts. I've got 34 reasons of my own, but I'd like to make sure I haven't missed anything.

     

    The Question:


    If you have moved to IM2.0 (CAPC & PM2.0), what have you given up that you could do in your previous product?


    If you haven't moved to IM2.0, but are in a position to, why haven't you? Is it because a feature is missing? If so, what feature?

     

    How you can help:

    If your feature isn't present in the comments already, add it. Please be specific and if there is an idea already in the system for the feature you're looking for, please link to it. Don't post more than feature per comment (that way people can like individual features).

    If your feature is already in the comments and you have nothing to add but a 'me too', just like the comment.

     

    What's going to happen:

    As a member of the board, as a large CA customer, and as someone with a lot of experience with the CA tools I'll be meeting with Dan_Holmes at CAWorld this year and I'll be bring this list up with him. I plan on releasing the final list along with any feedback CA has on these features after CAW.

     

    Thanks for your help everyone! Feel free to reach out to me via PM with any questions.



  • 2.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 27, 2014 05:32 PM

    I am a huge fan of customers self organization and collaborating - its the new and improved world of software - thanks for doing this and sharing with me your thoughts -  I look forward to meeting up with you @ CAW this year!



  • 3.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 27, 2014 06:57 PM

    I am on the fence between sticking with the devil I know, IM2.0 or moving to the devil I don't, UIM.


    CA, please have one product or one suite  that works and is accepted by everyone for infrastructure management 



  • 4.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 27, 2014 07:18 PM
    Understood. The message around Nimsoft is much better this time: "We won't make you move until you're ready."  


    You have nothing to go back to, right? I do, so I'm wondering if anyone knows reasons I don't. I don't want to bias anyone, so I haven't listed my reasons. I'll probably list them tomorrow. 




  • 5.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 27, 2014 07:27 PM

    If we go back per say, it is to SolarWinds. 



  • 6.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 27, 2014 07:34 PM

    Ah. I understand your frustration now: you actually paid for IM2.0. Most of us inherited it because we bought their predecessors. 


    What from SolarWinds have you lost by going to IM2.0?



  • 7.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 27, 2014 07:52 PM

    Actually we were a netvoyent and NetQos user before IM2.0 in addition to also using Orion. Do you see the potential issues already here? I know we would not toss IM and go back to Orion as too much money and my time have been invested in CA. 

     

    To be truthful, IM2.0 including Spectrum is much more exhaustive in its capabilities but Orion is much easier for easier for the level l help-desk types.


    My biggest pain with CA is too many products all trying to do just about the same thing  



  • 8.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 27, 2014 08:48 PM

    I mean if I have Spectrum and IM 2.0 why would I need eHealth? And why aren't the capabilities of eHealth built into IM2.0? This is an example of just some of my frustration with CA



  • 9.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 27, 2014 10:03 PM

    I would really prefer to stay with NetVoyant and NPC, but I get the distinct impression from CA that it's CAPC/IM/PM or nothing.  The only choice is to either migrate or switch vendors.  I understand that IM2.0 brings with it some really good features (device inventory sharing with Spectrum being right at the top of the list), but I'm really struggling with the loss of customization that NV/NPC bring to the table.  I'd have a lot less heartburn going on if more features had been brought over as part of the rewrite.  I could name a few here, but I'm sure Stuart's list will cover them.  It can be summed up by saying though that IM2.0 just appears to be a little bit under-baked compared to the other products in the CA portfolio.  We are moving forward full steam with it though, having faith that the features will come with time. 



  • 10.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)
    Best Answer

    Posted Oct 28, 2014 09:40 AM

    I hear you Josh. Here's how I feel about it: once CA acquired NetQoS, they now had two products that overlapped (NV and eHealth). It only made sense to consolidate them into one product. CA decided that neither one could handle the capabilities of the other so they decided to build a new product that could replace those two. There actually isn't a problem with this thinking and it's the same thinking behind Nimsoft becoming the uber performance management tool. CA decided that the new tool should do SNMP for performance, NetFlow for performance, and SNMP for fault. The idea was a single product that could replace eHealth, NetVoyant, ReporterAnalyzer, and Spectrum. Again, still good thinking.

     

    The problem came when CA made a few poor decisions. First, they decided to sell a 'product' called IM2.0, which was nothing more than a bundle of PM2.0, Spectrum, and NFA. Since the integration was (and still is) pretty loose, calling this a 'product' was a bad idea. They also had other 'products' which were simply bundles of those same three products taken two at a time. This added confusion to the pile.

     

    Second, they decided that customers should start using the replacement product (IM2.0) before it was ready. There were internal disputes about this as evidenced by the confusing and contradictory messaging during that time. PM2.0 was nowhere close to feature parity, but sales was encouraged to sell IM2.0 (and it's various flavor combinations). This messaging bled over into account management teams positioning IM2.0 as the 'replacement' for customers currently running NetVoyant, eHealth, and ReporterAnalyzer (or any combination thereof).

     

    The final major bad decision was to announce, without much clarity, that older versions of eHealth and NetVoyant would no longer be supported. This furthered the misunderstanding that IM2.0 was in a position to replace anything.

     

    Fast forward to the present and CA has acquired another company that had another competing product, Nimsoft. Now CA finds themselves with 4 competing products that they currently support: eHealth, NetVoyant, PM2.0, and Nimsoft. Here's how I understand the future of each of these products:

    Nimsoft: Now called UIM (or UIMs?). Development resources dedicated to reaching feature parity with current products (ideally NetVoyant, eHealth, and PM2.0). The promise is that the customers will decide when feature parity is reached.

    eHealth and NetVoyant: Not being sold anymore. Still supported by CA support if you have an active contract. Active development has halted (unless, of course, you have a ton of money and you can grab sales by the balls).

    PM2.0: Now destined for ultra/mega carriers. When I'm told this, I hear "not for enterprise".

     

     

    Ok, now that that's out of the way, here is my list. There are some capabilities that are possible through REST services. Since I run a team of Network Engineers not software developers, I consider those features as 'unavailable' until the developers at CA build an interface for those services. These are in no particular order:

    1. ODBC Connector - allows any MySQL query to populate a view in performance center. There are at least 11 queries/views that I use on a regular basis.
    2. Custom View Wizard - Jailbreaking NPC or using the NV Web GUI and the NQWebTool allows major customization of the built in views and new views.
    3. Group List View - a view which shows a list of groups under the current group context. This allows easy sub-group drill in (especially when combined with the default group customization)
    4. Can't add NFA views to Site pages - no 'site top interfaces by flow' NFA views should be available to be displayed in CA PCCA PC should be able to show stacked-protocol-trends for (Site-)Groups
    5. Can't add ADA views to Site pages - no 'subnets at a site with the worst response time'
    6. Can't add NFA views to Router pages - no 'router top interfaces by flow'
    7. No ADA Application Performance Dashboard - http://www.mcg-software.dk/en/images/pdf/netqos/sa-datasheet.pdf
    8. Can't copy dashboards - Copy CAPC Dashboards
    9. Can't copy views - makes it more difficult to build reports on existing data Copy view
    10. My dashboards not present when empty - misleads users into thinking it's not available
    11. Can't role proxy - can't verify role permissions have intended effect
    12. An Admin can't apply view suppression to all users - this may be possible?
    13. Can't edit multiple user accounts - Edit of multiple users at the same time
    14. Right clicking items in the admin section doesn't select before activating the right click menu
    15. Admin user privilege is role based - this should be user based. Currently, giving a user the power to edit roles won't keep him from administering users (he can give his own role 'administer users')
    16. Data source links on Inventory and Admin are tied - remove one and you remove the other
    17. Auto-enable rules - Filter out unwanted Interfaces
    18. Discovery rules - Filter out unwanted Interfaces
    19. Command line device management - delete device, add device, delete scope, add scope, delete community string, add community string, resync poller, enable discovery, disable discovery, run full discovery, run partial discovery, terminate discovery, enable dataset, disable dataset, enable poll group, disable poll group, enable alarm profile, disable alarm profile, create group, delete group, etc.
    20. Groups can't be moved - Group Editing
    21. Symbolic links to groups can't be removed without going to the original group - this may be fixed?
    22. ADA data requires all three combination members - this wasn't necessary in NPC and the necessity of doing it restricts report flexibility and requires more complicated grouping
    23. Add group dialog box - resizing the window with this dialog open refreshes the page, losing all changes in the dialog box and refreshing the page
    24. Inability to load and display custom properties - Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: Creating Properties for sysName, sysDescr, and sysObjectID, Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: How to Use Poll Instance Properties in a View
    25. Inability to switch device type contexts on the fly - allows the user to switch to the right device type when CAPC has the device type wrong (displaying a switch as a router) Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: Device level context switching easily doable if this were added to the product
    26. Page retirement notification and management - allows admins to display a dynamic banner on a report page that is being retired and track those pages Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: Page Retirement Methods
    27. Can't use sysContact as a field for group rules - Use sysContact as rule-condition filter for CAPC groups  Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: Creating Properties for sysName, sysDescr, and sysObjectID
    28. Device retirement/maintenance mode not possible - retire device in IM 2.x
    29. Default group for dashboard - Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: Setting a default group for an NPC report page easily doable if this were added to the product
    30. Default timeframe for dashboard - Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: Setting a default group for an NPC report page easily doable if this were added to the product
    31. Default IP SLA type for dashboard - Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: Setting a default group for an NPC report page easily doable if this were added to the product
    32. Custom auto-refresh rate - Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: Setting a default group for an NPC report page easily doable if this were added to the product
    33. Bulk group management/bacup/restore via XML in the Web GUI - Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: NPC and NetVoyant Web Services Gadgets
    34. Initiate device rediscovery from GUI (with or without password protection - Stuart's Semi-Professional Blog: NPC and NetVoyant Web Services Gadgets
    35. Interface availability - Interface Availability as default in Interface Metric Family for Data Aggregator
    36. Global Search Revision not as easy - When searching in PC, the search textbox is cleared when the search results are displayed. In NPC, when you search using the main search textbox, the search criteria are still displayed on the search results. So, if i fat fingered it, i can fix it without having to retype my entire search string.


  • 11.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 28, 2014 09:55 AM

    You have captured every one of my concerns, as well as quite a few that I wasn't even aware of.  Thank you for compiling this list, and for those of us who are already committed to the IM 2.0 path I sincerely hope a significant number of these are addressed in the near future.



  • 12.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 28, 2014 10:00 AM

    I get the feeling that if we would have known then when we were NetQos and NetVoyent users we would have never went with CA after they messed up what was probably a very good product.  I never had a chance to really use these products as they were already on CA when I began my new position. I really don't mind CA but I wonder if I am wasting my time on a product, IM2.0 that our company had no business being sold. I've already told our CA sales rep if UIM has any chance with our company, CA will have to give it to us after all the money we've spent on IM2.0



  • 13.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 11:44 AM

    Holy cow! I left of interface availability!

    36. Interface availability - monitors the up/down status of individual interfaces.



  • 14.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 29, 2014 12:13 PM

    Found another one:

    35. When searching in PC, the search textbox is cleared when the search results are displayed. In NPC, when you search using the main search textbox, the search criteria are still displayed on the search results. So, if i fat fingered it, i can fix it without having to retype my entire search string.



  • 15.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 29, 2014 02:15 PM

    Stuart - I am not sure if this is new (I'll have to check) but check out this behavior and see if this meets your requirement. In this example I typed Test as a global search and Search Results view opened up and Test was entered in the search by the system - now if I don't like that I  can change that value to just Tes and the search results update - its not exactly the same behavior of NPC but I think it covers your use case - let us know - thanks!

     

    stuart.png



  • 16.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 29, 2014 02:23 PM

    Yes, it does that now, but it's not what i'm looking for and not as convenient as it was in NPC. In NPC, the 'Search All' in your picture would actually say 'Test'. That way, i could rerun the global search with 'Tes' instead of having to re-filter each result table on the search results page.

     

    Perhaps search works differently in the version you're showing, but in our version the search 'Test' resulted in 9 different results tables. Having to refilter those 9 tables is not fun. Having to type in my search query again is also not fun because our naming standard is long, complex (and has some seemingly random characters). I fat finger my searches all the time.



  • 17.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 29, 2014 03:43 PM

    my test system just had the one table but I see what you mean. I just verified the three most popular search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) on the web retain the search string so what you are suggesting is probably aligned with good design on this - I will bring this up with our UI team and see if there is any reason we are clearing this field and if not make the change the next window they have  - in the mean time drink a little less coffee see if that reduces mistakes



  • 18.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 29, 2014 04:05 PM

    Haha, i don't drink coffee: most of my stress comes with having to deal with IM2.0.

     

    On a side note, I wish your statement had been that you checked in NPC and saw that it worked that way and decided to go along with it because the current behavior is removed functionality. Checking what other people have done is a good thing, but please first check what you've already done. It's a mind shift we'll talk about more at CAW. One thing you may notice from my list is that I didn't list anything that can't be done in NPC today. That means I'm only focused on functionality that I've lost; something that used to be there, that I used, that wasn't built into the 'replacement'. In my opinion, you guys should drop most of your effort around building new features and just focus on feature parity. It's probably the number one pain point with every PM2.0 customer is that they were influenced into moving to PM2.0 before it had (will have? had will have had?) feature parity.



  • 19.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 29, 2014 06:08 PM

    That's Passion not Stress

     

    Look forward to our conversation in LV.



  • 20.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 11:58 AM

    I couldn't tell whether this issue is closed or not but I'd like to add my 4.

                   

                    1.) no interface availability -- still running ehealth in parallel to get this data.

                    2.) no summary statistics in pdf reports -- available in ehealth. You can show someone a monthly graph ( of multiple instances) but they want to know "what is the number(s)?"

                    3.) no granularity with event notification. -- I spend a lot of time emptying my mailbox. Supposedly this will be enhanced in 2.4

                    4.) cpu's are not treated as components. -- in ehealth I could create a group of any cpu's that I wanted and report on that group, or any individual instance as well.

     

    Thanks for your efforts Stuart.



  • 21.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 01:14 PM

    Generally speaking, I like CAPC, but I’ll add something that has popped up quite a bit lately:

     

     

    -          Inability to modify column headings on dashboards/reports – they are ridiculously long and I end up creating two or three, when just one should do.



  • 22.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 11:24 AM

    and even no health Reports at all...



  • 23.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 11:38 AM
    SteveWeinert can you clarify a bit? I want to bring specific actionable info to my meeting with Dan. 




  • 24.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 11:47 AM

    jepp. In eHealth many our customers used the so called Health Reports, which analyze the polled Data and create a pretty good picture what might happen in the near future. e.g the famous "Situations to watch table"  and also the Table with the Health Index points which are a great thing for capacity planning.

     

    Hope that helps...

     

    rgds Steve



  • 25.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 12:01 PM

    Ok, so more around predictive analysis. Trying to find out when/if certain elements/metrics will meet/exceed a threshold. Right?



  • 26.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 12:15 PM

    exactly!



  • 27.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 12:47 PM

    Just to name a couple other specifics…

     

    Don’t forget about the Change Leaders sections!  Those are very useful for finding or catching stuff that happened in your environment that you either 1) expected due to change management or 2) didn’t know about and need to investigate.

     

    The Exceptions sections of the daily health reports also has dynamic content charts based on primary exception contributors … those have also saved folks a lot of work clicking around trying to find things.



  • 28.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 12:31 PM

    1. Steve stole one of my primary contributions to this list...  no Health reports!  It's hard to believe that one of the most fundamental features of eHealth - the Health reporting - is not anywhere to be found in the new stuff!  How many services have been created in the world that rely on this for their delivery??  And, how many users rely on these to help identify chronic or unusual behavior??  Or populate portal integrations and displays?

     

    2. And... DCI... ??

     

    Ok, I get that there may be a new way to add/change/delete/group things with the new way.  But, there needs to be some kind of mechanism to translate the zillions of DCI rules and rules files automations (provisioning system integrations!) that exist in the world's implementations of eHealth.  Who wants to go through and recreate all these things just to be able to migrate to the new platforms?

     

    3. I was also going to add Trend reports and potentially AAG reports, but I was on the last webcast for UIM and they seem to have added this in somewhat...  kudos for that!  But, we still need our health reports!  There are whole worlds that still make use of data (and methodologies!) that comes out of those reports.

     

    4. Live Health ??  Alerts on deviation from normal and dynamic thresholds from baselines?  This is a must have... but I understand this may be coming...  Spectrum doesn't really do this and many overall solutions rely on this functionality.

     

    5. I will add my soap box plug for scalability...  but in the opposite direction of the way it goes in IM 2.0...  I don't need to poll the world.  Me and my trusty team of multiple server admins (aka myself and I who happen to report to me!) prefer not to have to manage 42 servers dedicated to "one" product to fit the smaller enterprises!  You could literally do most of this stuff with one Spectrum server and one eHealth server for small enterprise implementations and cover just about everything you needed in the infrastructure. (yeah, HA, I know that doubles it, but you get the point!)  Make a version that will still fit in a smaller footprint.  At the last CA World when Oleg asked how many people had more than 5000 devices, half the room raised their hands...  How 'bout we not leave the other half of the room hanging out there??  I don't have 42 servers to throw at this...

     

    Stuart/Dan, can we get tickets to watch your conversation??  It should probably be its own session at CA World... where the PMs come in with lots of notepads and listen to what we're telling them in person.  THAT would be a session I would enjoy participating in!  Not that you guys aren't listening today, in fact you do a very good job of it...  the community is also gaining traction very well...  but for the most part this is the only time we are all going to be together IN PERSON to be able to share this stuff directly.  Jason held one kinda like this, but not exactly, at the last CA World... poor guy, but he took it well!  (Maybe that's why we don't have a session like this??)   

     

    That's my first $.02 worth.... and that's just eHealth stuff off the top of my head.

     

    Sorry for the rant... but did I mention no Health reports??

     

    Chris




  • 29.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 01:00 PM

    Thanks Chris_Knowles. Maybe I'll setup a kickstarter to see if we can raise the funds for a hidden camera and microphone. Anybody good at flying a drone covertly?

     

    2. Help me understand DCI rules (I'm not an eHealth guy so I've never used them). Migration path is already going to be one of the margin items I'll be bringing up.

    5. Let me sum up: You would like to not have to dedicate oodles of RAM, CPU, and HDD for smaller installations (or a lab, development, or a staging environment). You'd like to manage a similar sized environment with a similar number of NMS servers required for the old solution.

     

    Dan_Holmes, I too enjoyed when Jason did this at the last CAW. It was a chance to ask some very direct answers and we got some very good answers. We didn't like all of the answers but we got clear direct answers. Any thoughts on grabbing a larger room and opening up attendance to a larger group? I'm actually on the fence about it since I'd like to be selfish and make sure all my points are addressed, but I'm clearly not the only one who has input (especially since I can't talk to eHealth features that were lost).



  • 30.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 01:29 PM

    DCI stands for Database Configuration Interface (or Information, I forget exactly)…  it’s a powerful way you can programmatically alter the element (CI) attributes.  Basically, it is a rules engine that you could use to make changes to element configuration info… including, but not limited to grouping, naming, changing speed info, etc, etc…  If you were good at DCI, you could do some very complex tasks with it.  And, it has a rules file extension that allows you to effectively create rule templates that you can feed attribute data into and accomplish even more complex operations.  If you have eHealth integrated with any provisioning systems, this is what you used to do it well.  In fact, DCI is the only way to make some config changes that you can’t make with the CLI utilities.

     

    As for the number of servers involved with eHealth… at its core, a single eHealth server consists of a DB server, a web server, and a polling server.  IM 2.0 splits these components onto separate servers (and I get why).  It is required to have at least 4 servers to install IM 2.0 now:  DR (your DB server), PC (your web server), DC (your poller) and the DA.  Support does not support an implementation on less than 4 systems.  CPU, RAM and HDD space are not negligible, either.

     

    If you are doing anything else in your environment (ADA, NFA, Spectrum, etc) the number of servers needed to run CA products can quickly get out of hand!  Do you want this all to be HA???



  • 31.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 01:31 PM

    I will be presenting the CA Performance Management roadmap at 2PM on Monday but I like the idea you are suggesting and have sent a note to marketing to share your request for additional group Q&A session – at a min both Jason and I would be happy to meet up for breakfast and to gather informally on tues/wed

     

     

    Daniel Holmes

    Sr. Advisor, Product Management

     

    CA Technologies | 273 Corporate Dr Suite 200 | Portsmouth, NH 03801

    Office: +1 603 334 2130 | Mobile: +1 603 502 5004 | Daniel.Holmes@ca.com

     

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  • 32.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 02:22 PM

    As a large MSP thankfully we have not fully moved all customers over, just a handful.

     

    The more I have used it, the more I am unhappy with it, a good extensive list you have there!

     

    - Data Aggregator/NFA-  No ADSL/ variable speed reporting

    - Tenancy  - From CAPC not able to give users ability to drill down into NFA console for own devices

    - Interface Latency as in eHealth standard

    - Not being able to selectively modify/delete/retire components in Data Aggregator as you can with eHealth

    - Not being able to discover a device fully then select what is to be saved in config

    - PDF saves of dashboards are not great

    - Not being able to use different types of rolled up data per dashboard

    - line colors are quite thin and you cannot use stacked charts for all custom views

    - some sort of display to show good/bad polls as in eHealth

     

    Bal



  • 33.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Oct 30, 2014 03:48 PM

    - PDF saves of dashboards are not great

    - Not being able to use different types of rolled up data per dashboard

    - line colors are quite thin and you cannot use stacked charts for all custom views

     

    Hello Baljit!

     

    These there items are targeted for our next release. Our end of sprint 2 demo showed the PDF improvements and the other two are in active development.



  • 34.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 31, 2014 03:35 AM

    - line colors are quite thin and you cannot use stacked charts for all custom views

    - some sort of display to show good/bad polls as in eHealth

     

    those two we have also on our list - heard there will be something upcoming in rel. 2.4.x



  • 35.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Oct 30, 2014 03:16 PM
    1. Group List View - a view which shows a list of groups under the current group context. This allows easy sub-group drill in (especially when combined with the default group customization)

     

    Hey Stuart! Check out the end of sprint 2 demo video as we showed some significant improvements to our site group navigation as well as the site views themselves. The navigation is now pretty easy and contextual and the views have awesome flexibility to provide any type of view into site group structures that you would like to see.

     

    If there are any more gaps, please shoot me a note so I can take a look and see what else we can do in this area.



  • 36.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Oct 30, 2014 03:19 PM
    Inability to switch device type contexts on the fly - allows the user to switch to the right device type when CAPC has the device type wrong (displaying a switch as a router)

     

    Hey Stuart - We are working on a project related to Dynamic Context Views and a concept of "tagged" metrics. Let's catch up at CA World and I can share with you some of our ideas and our overall approach. It should help tremendously with the "context" pages and the information that is easily available and customizable.



  • 37.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Oct 30, 2014 03:20 PM
    1. ODBC Connector - allows any MySQL query to populate a view in performance center. There are at least 11 queries/views that I use on a regular basis.
    2. Custom View Wizard - Jailbreaking NPC or using the NV Web GUI and the NQWebTool allows major customization of the built in views and new views.

     

    Check out our end of sprint 2 demo - I think you might like what you hear/see in regards to our OpenAPI and how we are enabling the creation of custom/contextual content through an easy but powerful API.



  • 38.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 03:26 PM

    Yes, we need to catch up. These type of responses are 2 years too late. We'll talk about it at CAW, but feature parity should have been the number 1 priority; it clearly wasn't but you and Dan seem to be turning that around. The fact that we're only getting to it now (or in the not so distant future) is related to two main points: 1) customers have been and are frustrated with PM2.0 because feature parity wasn't there and 2) any trust that CA had mostly got blown by PM2.0, which is going to make Nimsoft a much harder sell. There's nothing to do about these except be aware of them. They're the consequences of the mistakes made so far with PM2.0.

     

    Link to the sprint demo? There shouldn't be a problem posting the link since the group is restricted anyway.



  • 39.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Broadcom Employee


  • 40.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 03:50 PM

    How can I view the Sprint demo?



  • 41.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Oct 30, 2014 04:22 PM

    The link should bring you to Dan’s posting in the Pre-Release community. Ulla responded to Dan’s comment with the link.

     

     

    Jason Normandin | ca Technologies | Sr. Principal Product Manager

    Office: (508) 628-8978 |Mobile: (508) 282-6471

    Social: Twitter<https://twitter.com/PM_JasonNorm> | LinkedIn<http://lnkd.in/bGvvcJp> | YouTube<http://www.youtube.com/user/jasonnorm>



  • 42.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 10:34 PM

    I appreciate all that you have been doing on this. I guess my biggest question is do I stay with IM2.0 and hope to see SIGNIFICANT changes and improvements or do I just begin a slow migration to over to UIM?  CA, what can you tell me??



  • 43.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 11:14 PM

    CA should tell you to transition when you're ready. The problem they had last time is that they pressured people into transitioning before anything was ready. We're not ready for for it, but we have something to fall back on.


    Are you doing server monitoring, network monitoring, or both?  



  • 44.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 11:28 PM

    The intentions when we purchased IM 2.0 was to have the "Single Pane of Glass" to have true end to end visibility into our network from the user to the application. Yes, we bought the farm. 

    I literally have 10 Linux/windows servers just dedicated to IM2.0. 


    A brief bit of trivia. Our VP spoke at CA World 2013



  • 45.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 11:39 PM

    Interesting. Did they even mention ADA? It's the key whenever you talk about end to end. Without it you are looking at symptoms of symptoms. With it you see the true effect and can narrow down the domain (network vs. server). Then you use infrastructure management systems to figure out why those symptoms are there. 



  • 46.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 11:46 PM
    Oh we have ADA, MPC, Anue Ixia, the whole IM 2.0 suite. We'd love to get SOI and executive insight going so we could start getting info to mobile devices. I don't mind the CA products but some of the CA sales reps will over promise and under deliver 




  • 47.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 30, 2014 11:53 PM

    The problem is that CA sold us a set of products that are designed to be maintained by a team of individuals not one or two people on a good day.


    Of course I'm to far down the road with IM to throw it all away



  • 48.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 31, 2014 12:05 AM

    I am totally biased as I work for CA but I will share that I believe we  have great teams focused on both UIM and CA Performance Management right now. The portfolio is under new management and part of our new operating system is that both products have documented engineering backed roadmaps that we will be sharing with our customers at CA World in just over a week. These roadmaps are updated quarterly and we share with our customers any changes we make and why. For example our next release we increased investment to respond to customer ideas and enhancement requests and as a result we pushed out delivering a new OAM configuration service and the ability to edit OOB metric families. In addition to an improved look and feel with the UI (Yes its our goal that you actually see those trend lines) but we also improve our threshold configuration workflows, subcomponent filtering, allow you to change the layout of dashboard w/out removing your views, we improve site navigation, dashboard pinning, add variable support to browser views,  pdf rendering, and event notification configuration (we are building off of the NPC design for this) - most of this was demo'd in our EOS review last week. Please keep this dialog going - we want to make sure that in addition to innovating new features like DC LoadBalancing, OpenAPI, and SDN/NFV support that we also pull forward those key features in both eHeath and NetQoS that have proven their value to multiple customers.

     

    I am going to reach out to your sales team and have them organize a meeting to discuss your situation. While both products have strong capabilities and aggressive roadmaps they will each take a slightly different journey to get to a truly unified infrastructure management platform. My colleagues and I on the Boston team have responsibility for CA Performance Management and our focus is to invent how to scale up Unified Performance for the largest IT Infrastructures. This will not only help us serve the communication service provider and mega enterprise market today but as the future of IT unfolds through the internet of things and beyond you can rely on CA Technologies to support your requirements with our solutions. This will also include innovating our performance management tools to function in more dynamic Software Defined Networks (SDN) and NFV Infrastructures.

     

    But lets look closely at your situation. We have been involved with a lot of conversations with customers this year and you will find that we will remain consistent in our approach to helping you answer this question. We are advising customers to take a close look at the latest versions of both products today, look at our velocity this past year to extend and improve the solution, and then look at the roadmap for both products and talk with your sales team about your situation. CA is investing far more than any other company I have studied on infrastructure management right now.  A large part of that investment is focused on helping customers have a path forward from products that are more than a decade old and have a lot of features you've come to rely on.

     

    We won't succeed simply porting all those features - but as the real users of these products you are the best source of information to help make sure we maintain the right balance between retaining the wisdom of what worked well in the past with opportunities to do it better.

     

    After approx. 575 words I am sure I didn't answer your question fully - so let me follow-up with your sales team to setup a meeting to discuss. It will probably happen after CAW unless you are attending and if so Jason, Tim, and I (3 of the Product Managers on CA Performance Management) would appreciate the chance to meet you.

     

    Have a good night!

     

    P.s. - you will probably notice a bit more activity by our team in the community - after this last quarters roadmap planning session we decided we wanted to invest more time updating the status of your ideas and collaborating with the community. We take your input very serious and while we want to be respectful of customers self organizing we also want to be part of the conversation if that's ok. I am personally new to these community sites so please feel free to advise on the best way for our team to participate (Up the volume, Lower the volume, Mute, etc.)



  • 49.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 31, 2014 04:11 AM

    Hello all,

    I started to work with eHealth and Spectrum in 2002 - so I followed the full story of CA and aquisitions. As we operate around 30 Servers with more than 500 external customer monitored the platform is very crucial for us as ISP.

    We are in the phase to migrate first customers using eHealth / Netscout (Netflow based reports) to IM2.0 and NFA. As we already struggled with this and the new tools last year we started a very intensive discussion with CA Product Management (Dan, Kathy, Joel) how to go forward.

    What I can say is, that from a list of 70 items raised last year, there are 100% of the Priority 1 issues solved already and others (~50%) will come up till next 2.4 release.

    So we really made good progress, CA listens to their customers (what they didn't sometime in the past) and it's possible to bring "enhancement requests" in to the Road!

    Thanks to Dan and Kathy, but also all the guys behind the IM development, I know it's not easy and I really appreciate your personal engagement on this topic!

    Hope to see you soon in Europe!



  • 50.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 31, 2014 10:20 AM

    I just watched the 2.4 EOS demo video and I have to say that a lot of my current heartburn will go away with 2.4.  Not all of it mind you, but quite a bit.  The threshold profile feature and the granular filtering capabilities for monitoring are huge.  I'd still like to have the ability to define separate durations for alarm raised vs. alarm clear (send raised alert after down for 10 minutes, send alarm cleared alert after up for 5 minutes) within a single event rule, but this is definitely big progress.  That being said, do we have an ETA on GA for 2.4 yet?  Or will that be announced at CAW?



  • 51.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Oct 31, 2014 10:36 AM

    Does this mean I should just continue on with IM2.0 albeit slow at times and forget about moving to UIM.  CA, exactly who is IM designed for and who is UIM for?  I'd like to see a side-by-side comparison  for us to better evaluate the two products.

     

    The holy grail of IM2.0 in our environment is to be able to publish the metrics to dashboards on mobile devices. However, with all the changes in IM and the pain standing up SOI is this a wasted effort with IM?



  • 52.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 01:09 PM

    I hope when everyone gets back from CA World we have exciting and well needed news concerning CAPC and all the other components of IM that we've been begging for. 




  • 53.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 03, 2014 02:17 PM

    Thanks Stuart for compiling this list. 

    We use eHealth extensively for both systems and networking and use most of its capabilities including DCI rules, SA, Reports (all of them) and for some customers we still use the LiveStatus (fishbone) though we are not so attached to it however it gave a quick glance of the overall health for certain subsets of the organization. 

     

     

    to you comment about going back to Netvoyant/NetQoS, we have considered that as well.  CAPC does not appear to accurate data coming from NFA (ticket opened), it shows different speeds and different data from RA when we drill down to it and our customers are losing confidence in CAPC and ultimately losing confidence in the NFA product resulting from the discrepancies.

     

    I'm looking forward to the conversation also with Dan to understand whats coming out, currently in the roadmaps we hear 'ehealth like' which does not provide enough details.

     

    regards,

    Jaccquie



  • 54.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 05, 2014 07:19 PM

    Hi Everyone -

     

    There was a request to setup a meeting place to discuss this thread as a community at CAW. I asked and Steve Guthrie (marketing) was able to get us a room

     

    • Tuesday, Nov. 11, 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Breakers E

     

    It won't be listed as an official session - too much paperwork - but I am going to post another note at the community level as well - please help spread the word.

     

    Please also join our PM Roadmap session Monday at 2PM where I will cover what we are doing in good detail and you are all welcome to setup 1 on 1 sessions with myself and Jason Normandin in the HVNC to at least drill down into one or two of your key requirements.

     

    Look forward to seeing you all there - I spoke with Kathy Hickey and we are going to work to have all the PMs join to spend time with you guys.

     

    it was a great idea thanks!

     

    -Dan H



  • 55.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 06, 2014 11:39 AM

    Great! I'll be there! It will be a good opportunity to put faces to names!



  • 56.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 07, 2014 01:37 PM

    Daniel,

     

    Thanks for getting this extra session together on this important topic!  I will definitely be there.  We aren't trying to steal Stuart's thunder... rather we are trying to echo it and figure out how we all move forward with these products.  It's been a very exasperating rollercoaster ride for those of us who have put forth the investments of time and resources trying to implement some kind of useable end to end solution out of all these pieces.  Functional overlaps and feature (non)parity gaps create such an unclear path forward.  We all understand that product evolution is important and trying to create a best of breed solution for the world is a daunting - even impossible - task.  Those of us who have used these products for years (ok, maybe it's just me!) often wonder why so much time is spent reinventing one product into another instead of continuing the improvement of those things that are solid and have stood the tests of time in the industry.

     

    I am going to show my age a bit here, but... Concord (original creators of eHealth) purchased Empire (SystemEDGE),  Aprisma (Spectrum), and NetViz in the late 90's - early 2000's and began creating a lot of what is being recreated (reinvented?) by CA today.  When CA purchased Concord in 2005 and NetQos in 2009 a lot of work was basically stopped on the original products and redirected into creating IM2.0.  The end result seems to have been created in a vacuum by a relatively small group of decision makers who either didn't know the all the capabilities of all the products or never actually used them.  Then CA purchased Nimsoft in 2010 which was largely left out of the mix until recently (2012-13??)... and now it's next best thing - a la UIM - the new wave of the future??  (not knocking it, it's pretty cool, but geez another product to learn!) (and to the chagrin of my team, more servers to run!)

     

    Has anyone at CA actually gone into the garage and looked at all the tools they have laying around and taken inventory?  Has CA ever done an internal product shootout?  You know, where everyone gets in a room with a bunch of sticky notes and stick every feature of each product up on the walls... then figure out who cares most about what... argue about them for a while... label those stickies with priorities... then get feedback from the people who care the most (that would be us customers who bought them all!).  Before CA bought up all these products, that's the process we followed as customers having to choose which of these products we were going to buy.  As CA acquired all these products, they also bought all of their customers, thereby inheriting all of our investments in these products.  We customers lost something in this mix... our choices.  Yes, we always have the choice to go with competitors, but the scope and reinvestment involved in switching gears is not a realistic option for many of us.

     

    I'm glad to see that we're getting some feedback - some voice in the community that is gaining traction with CA.  In particular, this thread seems to be the first consolidated attempt to actually make the overall point - which is to say (for me, anyway) we have a ton of features and capabilities available across the products we have purchased, how about we just make them all actually work together!  Let's stop trying to reinvent the wheels and build the bus! 

     

    Sorry for the rant (again),

    Chris

     

    "There's a fine line between passion and frustration... but that line was way back there somewhere!" - unknown (but it applies here!)



  • 57.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 07, 2014 03:55 PM

    Chris -

     

    You do not need to apologize and i don't believe you are ranting.  These tools are very important and its critical we get it right!

     

    Our team is very appreciative of the feedback on the community and in this thread  your feedback is critical to helping us understand those highest value features (big and small) that help you do your jobs efficiently and effectively. Please make sure in addition to this mail that ideas are being created and more importantly voted on by the community - this is how we help make sure we focus on the highest value features across the greatest number of customers.

     

    As I am writing this post - i just got notified that another customer enhancement (improve scaling of y axis in trend views) just made the build - that was the 2nd stretch goal for the team. I am just as excited about delivering on this request as i am the new OpenAPI work as well as the SDN research and prototypes.

     

    Look forward to sharing it all with you next week!

     

    Safe travels!!!

     

    -DH



  • 58.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 07, 2014 03:58 PM

    Where’s the sprint?! !! 



  • 59.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 07, 2014 04:33 PM

    We’ve downloaded Sprint 2 from Polaris Community already:

     

    https://communities.ca.com/groups/ca-polaris



  • 60.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 07, 2014 04:31 AM

    Hi Stuart,

     

    I think it's difficult to get the 'all singing and dancing' solution. I think CA should have a core component, and then have 'modules' which utilise that. Trying to build something that does everything will always be difficult.

     

    When I was involved with IM2,x it seems some really obvious things were overlooked (things like having to have a seperate IM2 poller for each branch office on a seperate machine - you couldn't share a poller - so in effect making IM2.x useless for an ISP).

     

    Also, one thing that let us down was the fact the documentation was so bad at the start. It is now much better. I find documentation on API's are often just smacked together as a last effort which is really bad.

     

    Even in Spectrum the documentation for RESTFul is really not good enough. There is a lot of 'hidden' info which you only find out about when you log a ticket with CA - things like RESTFul action codes to do various things and how to update multiple attributes for multiple models for example.

     

    I also didn't get some choices that were made for IM2.x, for example why have a configuration file to configure alias names and not put this in the UI or the DB? This is counter productive as now you end up going to how eHealth used to work, in that you used to have to back up the DB as well as the poller config, etc.

     

    We are still using Spectrum 9 and are happy with how and what it does. The foundation is solid and proven, and now that CA has completed the Internationalisation, we are seeing a lot of good updates for it. I'd personally prefer it if they just converted OneClick to a web based app and that they improved on the reporting and the API (more RESTFul commands to do more things!).

     

    I guess we all have different asks so it's really difficult for CA to keep 100% of the people happy - all in all I think IM2.x had some really impressive features, but some of the detail was overlooked and to be fair I haven't dealt with Nimsoft recently so I'm not able to comment on my thoughts on it.

     

    One last thing I can ask is that CA don't lock everything down. They should make the underlying data in the database available to customers, and allow as much customisation as possible. The 'CA way' of doing something might not be what a customer wants and if there is an easy way to allow customers to have something their way then effort should be made to allow that. E.g. some products we have contain databases or components that are encrypted and if we are not happy with the reporting or other component, we can't write our own - and end up ditching the product because of it. We are happy with 95% of the product but this 1 important components lets the product down.



  • 61.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 07, 2014 06:59 AM

    Stuart, I believe you have awaken CA as to where they and most importantly, their reputation stand with the IM2.0 suite.


    We have all spent many hours working with IM and we probably have as many good things as bad to say about it. Was it ready to replace the NetQos products? I don't think so. CA just simply rushed a product to market that was simply not ready.


    CA is making improvements and I applaud them. I just want to see consistency and predictability in their products.


    My company is growing and going through many changes that having a set of tools to monitor our network, servers, applications down to the user experience that work the first time, every time is paramount.


    CA you have an opportunity to really shine here. Not only for my company but to all the others who have invested in you



  • 62.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 11, 2014 03:24 PM

    is there any good news from CA World concerning IM2.0 and it's future?



  • 63.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 11, 2014 03:33 PM

    Are you not here? Our meeting is today at 5pm. 



  • 64.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 11, 2014 03:39 PM

    Nope.  Stuck back in Charlotte.



  • 65.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 11, 2014 04:21 PM

    Ok. Everybody: Breakers E at 5pm. Probably first come, first served, so you might want to be early. Any volunteers for audio/video recording? 



  • 66.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 12, 2014 09:11 AM

    So how was the outcome?  Are we all singing kumbaya now or are blood pressures elevated?



  • 67.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 14, 2014 11:43 AM

    Ok everybody, here goes. We had a very good meeting with the Product Managers during our off-the-agenda session. I wish we all could have been there because hearing it after the fact is never as good. Here's my best stab at how things went. Remember, i'm a customer and not a PM, so none of this is a promise.

     

    We had a good showing from the community board (all of us were there). We had all the IM product managers, particularly Dan_Holmes (IM2.0), Kathy.Hickey (Dan's boss), Martin Kowalewski (All NetQoS products), jason_normandin (works with Dan), kiran_diwakar (Spectrum), the new eHealth PM (sorry forgot her name), and Tim Deep (sp?) from Dan's team. Several of you were also present and I am personally grateful for your contributions to the conversation. Direct Nimsoft representation was lamentably absent, but it didn't hinder the conversation much.

     

    Since my list was too long to go into detail and the engineers who needed to hear the detailed feedback weren't there, we focused instead on the larger problem that these symptoms and frustrations came out of: product direction and strategy. Too many of us are asking a two main questions: 1) Should I continue with PM2.0 given Nimsoft is coming out soon and is being positioned as the new master-of-all-infrastructure-management products from CA and 2) is Nimsoft going to be like PM2.0, because if so, I'm going to look (or continue to look) at other vendors?

     

    We got some clear answers from the product management team. In fact, the strategy and vision information provided during a particular 10 minute answer from Kathy was more informative and useful than the majority of the roadmap presentations.

     

    Product Management learned from the IM2.0 mistakes. They understand that they have to do a stellar job with their customers, providing a way to leverage existing work and investment. They also learned that they can't be the ones to determine when a customer is going to move to a new solution. They are committed to making Nimsoft something we'll want to move to and they're working diligently at it. On that note, Nimsoft (now called UIM or Unified Infrastructure Management) is going to be the place we should all get eventually. At some point in the future, we will need to start using Nimsoft as our only IM product. That is the direction, however it doesn't mean that PM2.0 isn't going to play into it. I'll need Kathy and/or Dan to clarify this for me, but we heard two important points: 1) PM2.0 will act as a data source for Nimsoft and 2) The same functionality that is currently being built into PM2.0 is being shown to the Nimsoft team so they can also build that same functionality. The conversation mentioned scalability specifically, so I'm not sure what else that might extend to (reporting, administration, deployment, etc.).

     

    Given this point, we now can start to get a picture of the complete journey from where we are now to Nimsoft. Conceptually, we'll be able to continue to push forward with PM2.0 knowing that the work we put into it will either connect to Nimsoft as a data source or have some sort of migration engine to move all of it into Nimsoft natively.

     

    For me, this connection is the most valuable takeaway from the meeting because I now know that the only thing keeping me from going to PM2.0 is feature parity. As a customer I am going to be continuing to work with Dan's team to get feature parity. The speed with which that happens will determine what I can do in the short run. In the long run, I can start championing Nimsoft as our solution for 5-7 years out, with a level of assurance that Nimsoft will reach the maturity we need by the time we get there. If we can get enough feature parity in PM2.0 quickly enough, we'll go that way and we'll have the above two options when we eventually move to Nimsoft. If we can't get enough feature parity quickly enough, we'll drop PM2.0 and revert back to NetVoyant and hold onto it until Nimsoft is mature enough for us to move to.

     

    Some other important stuff came out at the meeting:

    • ADA collectors will eventually be able to tie into Nimsoft as a data source
    • NFA harvesters will eventually be able to tie into Nimsoft as a data source
    • UCMonitor will eventually be able to tie into Nimsoft as a data source

     

    Our response to this information was that having a data source point to our existing CAPC and also point to Nimsoft will be important in order for us to be able to make the transition. Kathy described a fairly complex integration with eHealth that should allow for easy migration (new data after a cutover date would be collected by Nimsoft while all data, whether in the Nimsoft database or the eHealth database, would be displayable transparently in the Nimsoft portal (one graph covering time before and after the cutover date would pull from both the Nimsoft collected data and the eHealth data). Our hope would be that the same would apply to other data sources. I didn't bring it up at the time, but I would ask that the database(s) be migrated over to the new infrastructure so the old infrastructure could be torn down without losing the data.

     

    That's the highlights. I'd like to propose that that session be repeated as one of our monthly webcasts and hopefully have it as a regularly scheduled meeting open to the entire community. I haven't brought it up with anyone yet, but I will be. Our next webcast will be a repeat of some of the roadmap presentations (what I now refer to as the what's-coming-out-in-the-very-next-releases-only presentations). Honestly, I think kiran's and Dan's deep dive presentations could be presented individually and I'll bring that up with the board.

     

    I'm working with Dan's team to get some answers about feature parity and I'll probably start a document with all the features and their status. I'll post here when I have any updates on that end.



  • 68.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 14, 2014 11:57 AM

    One very important question. For those of us committed to IM2.0 for the foreseeable future will CA offer UIM as an upgrade aka FREE as long as our support is current or will we have to pay and start all over?



  • 69.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 14, 2014 12:10 PM

    I think if you are a current PM2.0 customer, you will be entitled to Nimsoft. You'll have to get confirmation from CA though. 



  • 70.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 14, 2014 11:59 AM

    Thanks Stuart for the update, I am sure it answers many concerns and problems, especially for me with NFA connectivity into UIM.



  • 71.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 17, 2014 10:22 PM

    Thanks for all this an interesting read .. can you clarify where spectrum stands in relation to Nimsoft .. is it still the plan that they work side by side .. or is spectrum to be assimilated? into Nimsoft also ?



  • 72.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 18, 2014 08:20 AM

    Where it stands now is different than where it will stand eventually. Eventually (years away) UIM will have feature parity with Spectrum and CA would hope that that would encourage all Spectrum users to switch to UIM.



  • 73.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 18, 2014 01:49 PM

    Stuart posted a very nice recap.  I hope the other folks who attended will also share their impressions and takeaways as well.  Here is mine.

     

    I also attended this session and I am extremely appreciative of the attendance by Kathy's PM team - which also included natma01 (Margaret Natario), the PM for eHealth.  After witnessing the crucifixion that jason_normandin twice endured during the last CA World by rooms full of partners and carrier-class customers, I was happy (and maybe a little surprised!) to see him step back in front of the firing line!!! 

     

    Unfortunately, I missed the first 5-10 minutes, but I assume that's when everyone was checking their weapons at the door.  Passions were distilled into productive discussions with some very informative output.  While the lack of showing by anyone from the UIM team was unfortunate, this conversation was requested of the IM team specifically, so that's not really surprising.  Kathy assured us that she will be communicating all the goodies from this session openly with Ken.Adamson (Ken Adamson), her peer for the UIM team.  I would enjoy the opportunity to sit in a room with all of us and the PMs from both Kathy's AND Ken's teams together since they are all creating one unified product eventually. 

     

    One thing that stuck with me the most is that Kathy vehemently dislikes "the P word" - that's P for Parity... as in feature parity...  That probably explains why her team cringes at the mere mention of it and likely added it to their list of unacceptable office terminology.  So, to help out with this particular affliction I would like to propose a new phrase - Deliverable Equivalence.

     

    Deliverable Equivalence ... perhaps this more accurately describes what I believe we are all looking for in the new products.  Many of CA's customers and partners (and CA themselves!) have very specific contractual deliverables that are based on existing features of the original products.  What we aren't seeing clearly, or at all, is how we are going to meet our contractual obligations using either of the new products.  If my contract states that I have to deliver a set of health reports to my customers by 8am every Monday morning, how do I deliver an equivalent of that same thing using the new products?  This premise alone leads us to some scary doors we will have to go through:  Architectural (a whole other topic), Educational, Legal, etc.  For example, will I have to go through our legal department to rework contracts to reflect the new report delivery format?  Scheduled health report delivery from eHealth is an easy example of this, but there are many others I heard while I was asking my own questions at the meet-the-expert stations. 

     

    This is a good place for my new car analogy...  some of you may have heard it last week, so you can skip ahead... 

     

    We're all here because we all bought the "CA car" ...  we've been driving around in it for years doing our thing.  It goes where we need it to go.  It's proven trustworthy and reliable.  But now CA is making their NEW "CA car" ... it's new and improved and has lots of new blinkies that look cool and exciting!  It's the way of the future!  (but the new car doesn't back up or turn left)      ?????  That's ok though... you're going to want the new "CA car" because it's awesome!  And, make no mistake, I do want it... it's really sweet!  Heck, I can even deal with not taking any left turns (UPS did it!) But it's parked in the parking spot up next to my building... how am I going to get it out of the parking space so I can even drive it down the road???!!!  

     

    That's the question everyone is asking!  How are we going to deliver the equivalent to what we have today in the new car?

     

    When I get a new car, it has to do at least what my old car does.  If it doesn't, then I can't get it.  Also, if I do have to switch to a whole new car, it's hard to argue that this doesn't open the door to go look at all the OTHER new cars that are out there before switching.     

    On the positive side, the Performance Manager (formerly known as IM2.0) team is building one heck of a new car... I've followed its development... I test drove it last week... It's more like a semi truck than a car, but I have faith that it will eventually do what my old car does.  And, who knows, maybe one day it will even transform into a super kick-*** autonomous robot that will lay waste to all my network and systems issues, too!  (ok... now, I'm just dreaming... but who doesn't want that car!!!) 

     

    I also get Kathy's aversion to "the P word" in "feature parity" ... It implies that we are looking backwards or standing still.  So, I will go with Kathy on this and I will stop clamoring for "feature parity."  But, I do need to know how I will use the new tools to meet my current delivery obligations and perform my daily job function.  Until CA can show us how we are going to achieve this, it's going to be difficult to move forward with the new car.

     

    The one clear message that came from the meeting is that we can keep using our existing products.  CA has departed from the messages of the past couple years and they are not going to force us to move any time soon.  Both product teams (PM and UIM) are consistently saying that we can stay as long as we need until WE are ready to move.  When we feel like we are ready to hop in the new car, they will be there to help us do that.  I'm looking forward to it... eventually.



  • 74.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Nov 20, 2014 10:27 AM

    Thanks for this thread, and for summarizing the outcome of the session.

     

    I'm curious if there was any discussion regarding the QA cycle?  I'll admit it's significantly improved since the earlier versions, but I'm still often surprised by the types of bugs that make it into GA releases.



  • 75.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Jan 14, 2015 08:49 AM

    Stuart -

     

    Have you had a chance to take a look at PM 2.4?  For my uses, the addition of the threshold profiles and the enhancements to the REST interface and the OpenAPI have settled quite a few of my concerns.  I'm interested in your feedback on the release as well.



  • 76.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Jan 14, 2015 09:06 AM

    I haven't really had a chance. I've heard about some of the features being added. I can't give my blessing yet because our IM2.0 problems are so big that we're going back to NV. That means we'll not likely install 2.4 and I won't get a chance to look at it. Dan_Holmes, didn't you say you had a sandbox I could play with?



  • 77.  Re: Top reasons you have thought about leaving CAPC (to go back to whatever you had)

    Posted Jan 14, 2015 07:33 PM

    Sorry for the delay - I am in Europe this week.

     

    I don't have a solution yet to provide you a sandbox - we have some new software we are learning to improve our customer validation activities and I am hoping it will enable this

     

    Dan H

     

    Sent from my mobile