BEYOND JOB : THE ROAD TO ENTERPRISE PROCESS AUTOMATION

Introduction ...... 2 Job Scheduling Defined...... 3 The Evolution of Job Scheduling ...... 3 UNIX CRONtab ...... 3 Distributed Scheduling Products ...... 4 Distributed RDBMS-based Scheduling ...... 4 Application API’s ...... 5 Enterprise process automation ...... 5 Dynamic, Data-Driven Automation ...... 5 Conditional Business Rules ...... 7 Workload Balancing...... 7 End-user involvement...... 8 Fast Flexible Implementations...... 8 Accelerated Information Delivery...... 9 Java-Enabled Client...... 10 Interactive Graphical Management ...... 10 Security and Auditability ...... 10 Conclusion ...... 10 Evaluation Matrix ...... 11 About UC4 Software ...... 12

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INTRODUCTION For example, accounting might be scheduled on a The relentless pace of today’s business environ- calendar year basis and the emphasis would be on ment and its enormous pressures on IT staff has months, quarters, and fiscal year end. Alterna- made it critical for corporate business systems to tively, manufacturing might place all of its become more responsive and reliable. End-user emphasis on weekly periods for purposes of plan- expectations for reliability and speed grow dra- ning, inventory analysis, and production. matically as more and more users have come in Manufacturing would also be forced to deal with contact with a wider array of software applica- plant shutdowns and holiday periods that impact tions. Expectations now approach that of the production cycles, but may have little relevance telephone, with users demanding business sys- for accounting purposes. tems to be available instantly and operate flawlessly. Today’s supercharged environment requires com- panies to respond much more swiftly to changing Coincident with these rising user expectations are business conditions. Referring to the discussion the increasing complications of enterprise comput- above, it might still be viable for a company’s fis- ing. IT personnel have been forced to come to cal operations to run on a fairly routine basis. grips with the accelerating rates of change, and However, the realities of increased global competi- the demands of corporations everywhere to tiveness dictate a manufacturer to be linked quickly respond to the competitive threats and electronically with its business partners in an ex- opportunities brought about by e-business. tended “just in time” enterprise. To exploit the extended enterprise, the manufacturer must re- The rise of the web has proven to be the ultimate place or automate its manufacturing, ordering and nemesis for the so-called “batch window” - that inventory processing systems to respond dynami- nightly opportunity to run large groups of transac- cally to changing business requirements and tions offline. Instead we have seen the rise of the competitive pressures. “real-time organization” that needs to respond to changing business conditions quickly and effort- Improving business responsiveness through lessly in a 24 / 7 fashion. This creates significant automation requires a comprehensive approach challenges for corporations as they try to respond build in from the start. The selected solution must to the demands of near real-time processing with automate processing across a wide spectrum of their traditional batch-oriented back end systems. software, computing platforms, and business processes. Implementing a solution that moves In traditional enterprise computing, the availability beyond mere scheduling and fulfills the promise of of the batch window meant that a significant pe- enterprise process automation can mean the dif- riod of time could be set aside to launch, monitor ference between corporate success and failure. and manage a variety of batch/sequential activi- Traditional batch job scheduling products cannot ties that were necessary for the proper running of meet today’s enterprise automation needs, lead- the business. The new global business environ- ing to the creation of a new breed of software to ment, and in particular the Internet with its handle this increasingly complex and demanding implied on-line, real-time, 24x7 operation has role. dramatically altered this rigid notion of scheduling. The idea of having batch processes with a multi- Implied in this accelerated business climate is the tude of similar transactions that are processed requirement that IT staffs must build computing night is still relevant in many cases, but there are infrastructures that create responsive platforms many other examples where traditional time- for change. Job scheduling tools with their rigid based, operations centric ‘scheduling” is wholly adherence to the limitations of automating tasks inadequate. Instead, companies require near or based on day, date and time don't meet this re- real-time processing. quirement. New solutions are required that can automate and accelerate existing business proc- Traditional batch scheduling held that business esses and adapt to new processes and systems as processes could be mapped out and executed in they arise. predictable ways that followed one or more busi- ness calendars. The dominant concept was that This white paper demonstrates the ever-increasing certain business activities and the software sys- value of adding enterprise process automation tems that supported those activities operated in software to the IT infrastructure. It traces the sequential, predictable ways. Scheduling tools evolution of traditional batch scheduling, illus- were only required to support notions of day, trates where leading edge products are today, and date, time and multiple business calendars to outlines a set of requirements for moving beyond support corporate and/or departmental needs. and into the realm of true enter- prise process automation. The paper concludes by 2 illustrating how UC4 Workload Automation Suite and shortcomings of various approaches. In the addresses these advanced product requirements. following section, we outline the additional re- quirements necessary for moving beyond job JOB SCHEDULING DEFINED scheduling and into the realm of true enterprise At the most basic, job scheduling is the orderly, process automation. reliable sequencing of batch program execution. To handle these duties properly, a modern job When beginning to manage batch workload, most scheduler provides a host of features that allow it firms inevitably launch their jobs manually. This is to schedule distributed workload efficiently and in understandable and even appropriate, but it is a manner consistent with the operational goals of also easy to see how quickly this approach breaks the business. down as the number of machines, jobs, and scheduling dependencies increase. For instance, all businesses rely on one or more business calendars. Calendars govern such things Most operating systems provide a command line as when payroll is run, when corporate reports are interface for launching tasks in a manual fashion. generated, and when fiscal months and quarters As an example, UNIX provides the BATCH and AT are closed. The key issues with calendars and commands that allow users to launch background other important scheduling features are flexibility tasks immediately (BATCH) or AT a specific time. and reliability: Can the scheduler adapt to the These commands represent the “bare bones” of changing needs of the business, and deliver pre- scheduling and are in no way adequate for com- dictable results time after time? plex scheduling requirements.

Additionally, programs and applications need to Surprisingly, many modern enterprise applications run on a variety of platforms, at specified times, in still require a great deal of manual intervention. specified orders, and with varying levels of re- Often a required business process will span sev- source demands and prioritization. Schedulers eral batch processes with each batch process need to be flexible enough to accommodate these being preceded by a manual process to set up new varying technology, business and resource de- batch runs, review program output, gather addi- mands. If the job scheduler is able to sequence tional input data, initiate subsequent processes, processes and manage resource contentions, ap- etc. Standard scheduling tools cannot automate plications will execute faster and more predictably, many of these processes due to inherit limitations and scheduling throughput will increase. Unfortu- in their design. nately, most scheduling products only focus on sequential activities and ignore other opportunities UNIX CRONTAB to balance and prioritize workload. If the manual approach is not the answer for dis- tributed scheduling, the next logical step is to look Simple scheduling to UNIX or other distributed platforms to supply some of the necessary tools. In the world of UNIX the tool is CRONtab. CRONtab is a positional, character-based tool designed to facilitate repetitive ‘scheduling”. To use CRONtab, a user enters the required positional characters in a text file that in turn is read by CRONtab. An example of CRONtab is:

10 5 * * 1-6 /usr/lib/myprog

Translated, this statement runs a job at 10 minutes after 5:00 A.M. six days a week (the week starts on Sunday,

which is day zero).

THE EVOLUTION OF JOB SCHEDULING CRONtab is in very wide use despite a number of The concept of job scheduling has been around for serious limitations including: decades and dates back to the mainframe where originally all business activity was driven through • No business calendars. batch transactions. In this section, we outline the • No dependency checking between tasks. evolution of job scheduling and discuss the value 3

• No centralized management functions from tectural. Specifically, how do you implement which to control and monitor the overall work- secure job scheduling across a potentially large load across the network of CPUs. number of diverse platforms? • No cross platform dependencies are allowed. CRONtab only manages workload on the spe- When the batch workload is widely distributed, the cific machine where it resides and it cannot scheduling becomes increasingly complicated. manage dependencies on other machines. Specific distributed scheduling issues include: • No audit trail of jobs that have executed. • No automated restart/recovery of scheduled In the event of a failure, how will the machines tasks. resynchronize with one another when the network is restored? • No recovery is possible from machine failure. If the machine where CRONtab is executing • How can I manage and monitor the workload crashes, there is no mechanism to move proc- from these broadly distributed systems? essing to a backup machine to continue the • How can I keep my activities secure from un- scheduling. authorized users? • The scheduling rules are rigid and not easily • High-end distributed scheduling solutions ad- changed. dress these issues. Moreover, improvements in • No dependencies are possible on the arrival of the reliability of networking, security and a file. hardware have made the underlying environ- ments stable and secure. If we extend our CRONtab example to other envi- ronments, similar parallels exist between MVS/JES In recent years, hardware and and DOS/Windows BAT files. vendors have concentrated on building fail-over mechanisms into their systems, which have dra- DISTRIBUTED SCHEDULING PRODUCTS matically improved reliability of the underlying IT infrastructure. This has the additional benefit of allowing a single fail-over approach to be imple- mented across the enterprise instead of needing to create and document dissimilar fault tolerance and recovery routines for each application or tool in the environment.

Despite these architectural advances, most sched- ulers are actually updated versions of CRONtab: they simply schedule a script written around the core program that needs to execute. With tradi- tional job schedulers, scheduling involves not only the creation of scheduling rules within the sched- uler, but the creation of a script for each program to be executed.

DISTRIBUTED RDBMS-BASED SCHEDULING Early distributed scheduling solutions relied on “flat” or index files for their implementations. This made sense at the time given the lack of reliable, high performance distributed database software to manage the scheduling repository. The flat file State-of-the-art schedulers use a relational structure was highly portable and fast, but lacked database and eliminate scripting. standards for data access, which limited interop- erability and reporting capabilities. When mainframe-centric computing began to give way to distributed computing, job schedulers were Modern scheduling solutions rely on relational da- created for this new environment. Conceptually, tabase technology to store their scheduling data. the requirements for distributed job scheduling Today’s relational database technology is portable, were thought to be no different than they were for fast, efficient, and easily accessed using SQL que- the mainframe: time-based sequencing and de- ries or third party reporting tools. Given the pendencies. With mainframe scheduling tools dramatic improvements and wide availability of providing the conceptual model for how job relational technology today, it is the right choice. scheduling worked, the implementation challenges in the distributed environment were mainly archi- 4

APPLICATION API’S ENTERPRISE PROCESS AUTOMATION The rise of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) The previously discussed features are the mini- and other packaged applications in the late 1990’s mum core selection criteria for any job-scheduling created another force for change in distributed job product. However, the market requirements for scheduling. Historically, job scheduling and sys- automating system and business processes have tems management emphasized the management moved beyond job scheduling and its rigid para- of the various components in the IT infrastructure. digm of scheduling “jobs” based on day, date, and Networks, CPU’s, , controllers, pro- time. Today’s enterprise process automation solu- grams, disks, and more require management and tions use day, date, and time as pieces of the monitoring. Specific tools appeared for each of automation puzzle, but also incorporate additional these areas to monitor each component in the in- features designed to address the dynamics of the frastructure. business and improve the responsiveness of en- terprise computing. Over time, IT personnel realized that focusing strictly on a given component without regard to Enterprise process automation goes beyond job the applications that these components supported scheduling in the following areas: was missing the big picture: monitoring and man- • Dynamic, data-driven automation aging the enterprise. Therefore the notion of • Conditional business rules application management became popular and large systems management frameworks became • Workload balancing available. • End-user involvement • Fast, flexible implementations One-size-fits-all frameworks have been discredited • Accelerated information delivery as costly, difficult to implement, and lacking “best of breed” functionality. But the goal of managing • Interactive graphical management applications and not just the underlying compo- • Security and auditability nents has prevailed. For many IT organizations, managing and monitoring core business applica- The following section describes how UC4 Workload tions, and maintaining service level agreements Automation Suite implements the above require- based on those applications, is the essential ser- ments to provide unprecedented levels of vice they provide to the rest of the organization. automation, ease-of-use, reliability, and security.

Interestingly, most packaged applications have DYNAMIC, DATA-DRIVEN AUTOMATION some type of rudimentary scheduling and man- Traditional schedulers completely ignore the appli- agement capability. This built-in scheduling cation’s data as a source for automating business capability creates its own challenge as each appli- processes. By doing so, schedulers miss the op- cation becomes its own “island of automation”, portunity to remove processing latency and isolated from other applications in the enterprise. respond dynamically to the changing needs of the This creates significant integration problems when business. As a result, simple job schedulers don’t trying to synchronize processing across the multi- fulfill today’s increased requirements for automat- tude of enterprise applications. Enterprise ing, integrating, and accelerating complex application vendors responded to this challenge business processes. and created the application program interfaces

(APIs). Application data found in flat files, reports, and relational databases represents the current state APIs, designed for use by programmers and other of the enterprise. Cash fluctuates, inventories rise technical personnel, allow the scheduler to com- and fall, and invoices are paid on a day-to-day, municate directly with the packaged application to hour-by-hour basis. To accelerate application launch and monitor jobs. Sometimes these API’s processing, automation products must respond work in conjunction with the application’s own dynamically to the changing state of the business scheduling or automation tool. In other implemen- as represented by changes in the corporate data. tations the application’s scheduling tool is completely bypassed with the external scheduler Take the case where the inventory of a part has controlling all batch activity. The scheduling ven- dropped below its reorder level. A typical schedul- dor writes an interface to the application’s API, ing approach would run a job at some interval – which then allows the scheduler to perform some daily or weekly – to determine inventories. If the minimum subset of commands necessary to corporation wanted to accelerate this process it launch and monitor the application’s batch jobs. would need to write a program to check this reor- As discussed later, this is an important, yet still der quantity and take some subsequent action – incomplete, approach to automating packaged order more parts. Depending on the nature of the application processing. 5 application, several programs might need modifi- essing, allows UC4 users to automatically cation, which could potentially take significant interrogate, update, process, and check this data time and money. as a part of the business process. This in turn im- proves timeliness, accuracy, and reliability. UC4 Workload Automation Suite can accelerate this application process with a completely different Let’s imagine a process that looked like this: approach. With minimal effort, process flows can be configured to analyze changing application data and trigger events based on that data. Advanced Business Process X design tools allow data values to be interrogated, Begin its status to be checked and initiating of events Start task 1 immediately or at some future time. IT personnel Manually review results are then in a position to accelerate business proc- Manually start task 2 using data from task 1 essing without making expensive modifications to Manually review the results program source code. As we will see later, UC4 Manually start task 3 using data from task 2 Workload Automation Suite is also capable of in- Etc. corporating complex conditional processing into its … automation rules to create custom solutions that Step “n” further automate and integrate corporate business End processes.

The entire business process “X” runs from Step 1 Dynamic application automation contrasts with the to Step “n”, but is broken up by a series of man- capabilities of typical job scheduling tools that rig- ual reviews and job submissions. Eliminating the idly schedule system events or scripts. As manual steps of gathering input data, reviewing discussed above, true enterprise automation re- output, and launching tasks changes the nature of quires the ability to interact with the application the business process as shown below: and its underlying data to achieve a complete so- lution. UC4 Workload Automation Suite is Business Process X with UC4 Suite designed to manage applications, and can lever- Begin age information stored in multiple application Start task 1 databases to accelerate application processing. UC4 Suite validates data from task 1, passes it to task 2 It is important in this discussion to define a “busi- Start task 2 ness process”. For purposes of this document, a UC4 Suite validates data from task 2, passes it to business process is a series of interrelated steps task 3 to achieve some stated goal. Frequently, the busi- Start task 3 ness process, while conceptually simple – “close the books” – is very complex when broken down Step “n” into its individual tasks. A process is not a single End task or a job; it is more likely a collection of tasks.

Surprisingly, many packaged applications still rely on extensive manual effort to complete a business process. This manual intervention typically in- volves supplying data necessary for processing and validating the results of each step in the busi- ness process - checking date ranges, generating additional reports, validating file arrival and file contents, etc. There are numerous examples UC4 where the application vendor simply did not pro- Suite vide all of the necessary facilities to automate a given business process. The result is that critical processes are labor intensive, error prone, and consume inordinate amounts of time.

Using UC4 Workload Automation Suite, organiza- tions can automate these previously manual processes by combining scheduling, conditional business processing, and an awareness of applica- The decision to run a job is based on calendars, system tion data. Including all of these capabilities in the events, application events, and user requests. automation effort, and using them to drive proc-

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Eliminating manual process accomplishes two very Simple examples of the use of conditional logic important goals. First, the processing latency in- include: herent in manual efforts is removed and processing is accelerated. Second, errors are re- “If the value in row x of table y is greater than duced or eliminated by removing or reducing end- 100, start process A.” users involvement in the process. Error reduction “If there are more than 50 transactions in table y, is very important. Recovering from the effects of start process A.” bad data or incorrectly managed processes can be costly and time consuming. Additionally, in today’s accelerated business environment, there is very With the ability to add additional logical operators little time available to recover from processing like AND and OR, it is easy to see how complex errors. business rules can be constructed to model the dynamics of the business. UC4 Workload Automation Suite uses application data to provide superior automation, and in so doing, improves business responsiveness, elimi- UC4 Workload Automation Suite also provides the nates errors, and frees up staff time. ability to apply this conditional logic before, during and after task execution. This provides tremen- CONDITIONAL BUSINESS RULES dous flexibility when attempting to model complex business processes. With this capability, any proc- Another important requirement for enterprise ess can be checked to ensure that all precedent process automation is the ability to implement conditions, execution conditions, or successor conditional business rules. These rules can be conditions are valid. Often this conditional logic based on the underlying application data as de- will eliminate required manual intervention or scribed above, or may be based on other factors. writing of program code. A simple example of this UC4 provides powerful tools for modeling these would be to check to see if a task or requirement conditional business rules. has completed prior to starting a process, or pos- sibly checking to see how long the current job has When implementing business rules with UC4 run and canceling it if it has run in excess of some Workload Automation Suite, logical operators are predetermined time. used to check for a variety of business conditions including greater than, less than, equal to, is like, More complex processes can be constructed etc. A wide variety of conditional operators for around a variety of inputs, temporal conditions querying data values and making decisions based and events. An example of one of these more on the results of those queries are provided. Crea- complex conditionals would be: tion of these conditional operations is straightforward and supported through a natural language interface–meaning non-programmers Number of rows in Table A > 100, AND can create business rules without coding. Tradi- Inventory_Quantity in Table B < 1000, AND tional schedulers only provide conditional Time is > 22:00, AND processing for return codes, if they are provided Files A, B and C are all present, THEN at all. Start Task(s) X, Y, Z

Traditional job scheduling products don’t provide UC4 Suite the advanced functionality required to model con- ditional business logic.

WORKLOAD BALANCING Application processing today cannot be separated from the notion of workload balancing. Workload balancing ensures that scarce computing re- sources are allocated appropriately among competing tasks and applications. Ignoring the effects of these resource contentions can severely impact processing, with the result that service levels can suffer. Efficient automation products need to provide technology for managing these resource contentions. Queues balance the workload on application machines. UC4 Workload Automation Suite uses queues to balance the workload on application machines.

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more dependencies) and monitor and manage Workload balancing provides not only the ability to them to completion. Upon completion, users have set priorities for processes, but also to create mul- the ability to view output online and redirect out- tiple queues so that jobs of similar priorities can put to a desired printer. be grouped together and run according to a pre- determined algorithm. Additionally, priorities and The key to making this all work in the enterprise is queues must be easily changed to accommodate being able to set the correct processing and priori- the changing needs of the business. tization policies for managing user requested jobs. Operations personnel can create and maintain Creating and managing queues, changing queue process queues, priorities and end-user profiles. priorities, and assigning priorities to processes and These parameters can be tuned to eliminate un- schedules are all features provided by UC4. These due system load and resource contention. Queues capabilities optimize application throughput and can be established that only handle certain classes balance the load across systems and applications. of requests and/or operate only during certain times of the day, which in turn allows users the END-USER INVOLVEMENT flexibility to submit jobs for execution at any time Many of today’s enterprise applications are de- without IT staff needing to worry about unman- signed to empower the end user. Empowered ageable processing loads. users submit their own requests, generate their own reports, and are free to make demands on From an end-user’s perspective, he or she has the system round the clock. As organizations have gained an unprecedented level of control and visi- implemented these large applications and their bility. Launching, monitoring, and canceling companion reporting products, they have realized requests at will, no longer requires intervention some additional challenges. from IT staff. This eliminates an unnecessary bur- den from IT staff in terms of handling ad hoc user The users, enticed by the promise of more control requests via phone or email. Moreover, since end- and better data access, want to submit requests users control the submission, the chance for costly and reports 24/7. This poses a problem for the errors to be introduced when the user passes the operations staff as these user requests create fluc- request to the IT group is eliminated. Additionally, tuations in system load that impact overall system because input data sources can be validated at the performance. These fluctuations are often severe time of the user’s request, the simple but poten- enough that operations personnel can no longer tially costly errors associated with running ad hoc meet their service level objectives. Some user re- submissions with incorrect data can be avoided. quests also collide with other mission critical business processes. The challenge is to continue In some cases, IT departments have found it de- to allow end-users the freedom to maximize their sirable to have UC4 Workload Automation Suite in use of the system while maintaining a reasonable the background, intercepting user requests after system load and managing resource contentions. they have been submitted through some other means. With this approach, it is not necessary for The answer to this problem lies with the unique users to learn a new interface to submit their re- end-user capability available from UC4. By com- quests. They’re often not even aware that bining the automation of end-user interaction with automation software is involved in processing the the workload balancing and security capabilities, request. UC4 Workload Automation Suite can still both operations and end-users receive the control be configured to control the requested tasks and and responsiveness they need. operations personnel can capitalize on queue management and prioritization schemes to meet their service objectives. Like the enterprise applications themselves, an enterprise process automation product must be flexible and easy to use so that an end-user can However, involving the end-users in the managing exploit the product’s features. The end-users often and monitoring of their requests increases user have the best grasp of the business and know how satisfaction and cuts down on help-desk calls. Us- their business processes can be accelerated or ers feel empowered and more involved when they streamlined. UC4 Workload Automation Suite are able to actively participate in managing the gives them that chance. application. UC4 Workload Automation Suite pro- vides the necessary facilities to allow this type of user participation. A Request window provides a mechanism to safely manage conflicting user requests and gives end- FAST FLEXIBLE IMPLEMENTATIONS users the ability to request jobs on an ad-hoc ba- sis. Additionally, authorized users can submit As stated above, most schedulers are nothing chains (groups of jobs linked together with one or more than updated versions of CRONtab: they

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actually schedule a script written around the core Another benefit of the modular approach is that it program that needs to execute. With traditional speeds migration of programs from development job schedulers, scheduling involves not only the to production. Because the automation rules are creation of scheduling rules within the scheduler, stored in a database, objects can be freely ex- but also the creation of a script for each program ported and imported across environments. A to be executed. This reliance on scripts, rigid mapping utility replaces fields unique to a given scheduling rules, and complex API’s slows imple- environment (i.e. database logins/passwords) with mentations and limits flexibility. The reliance on ease. Unique import/export functions allow quick scripts, and the technical knowledge required to migration of automation rules through the entire write them, precludes most job schedulers from application lifecycle - development, quality assur- being used by end-users. ance, user acceptance testing and production.

UC4 Workload Automation Suite provides a unique This approach speeds deployment and creates a and much more efficient method for managing flexible platform for rapid changes in the environ- classes of programs: an object-oriented approach ment. Dozens of standard templates are available to automation. This method is based on the for UC4 Workload Automation Suite, with new “module” concept. A module is a template that templates being added as new opportunities arise. describes a given set of inputs, outputs and error handling for an entire class of programs. Once a ACCELERATED INFORMATION DELIVERY module or template is developed for a class of To further accelerate business processes, it is im- programs, then it’s simply a matter of pointing perative that the data and reports move swiftly and clicking to automate additional programs of through the system and get delivered to the right that type. This saves time not only by eliminating systems and personnel. The prevailing “Internet the error-prone development of scripts, but also time” is pervasive across all industries, which in by improving future maintainability and flexibility. turn places a premium on accelerating processing For example, if a database login or a parameter and making fast, informed decisions using accu- value changes, then the administrator makes a rate data. Unlike many other schedulers, UC4 single change that propagates through all applica- Workload Automation Suite offers output distribu- ble modules. A traditional job scheduler could tion capabilities. require modifications to tens or hundreds of scripts using commands such as “grep” and “find”, You can create a definition for each output device, with no assurance that all required modifications and then assign the definition to one or more jobs were made. (modules). In this way, an output definition can be created once and reused for multiple tasks. Note that there is nothing that precludes UC4 us- Output device definitions can specify a single de- ers from scheduling the typical UNIX, OpenVMS, vice, or a distribution list of multiple output or OS/400 script or Windows batch file, but effi- devices. Supported output device definitions in- ciency and cost-savings is gained when the clude devices such as laser printers, plotters, object-oriented approach is implemented for an faxes, pagers and e-mail. This ability to drive out- application. put to a number of different media has become increasingly important and is now an expected part of the information delivery chain.

Output retrieved An additional feature allows administrative per- sonnel to create retention strategies for output files. Administrators create policies to determine UC4 Suite how long output should remain on the system and how many copies of a given piece of output should be retained. System Administrators can manage available disk space by combining business needs with hardware and software limitations. Essen- tially, important files are stored and less important ones can by systematically removed. This allevi- ates users and administrators from housekeeping duties and ensures that identical reports aren’t re- run time and time again if they are lost.

UC4 Workload Automation Suite provides its own Distribute output to any type of output device. built-in FTP capability. This built-in function allows programmers, systems personnel, and end-users

9 to transfer files without the need for coding. Files used by the widest number of users without jeop- may be moved between servers and applications ardizing security. Security has a minimum of two or even sent to the desktop. Conditions can be dimensions: user and network. designed to check for the arrival of an FTP file be- fore executing a business process. This function is User security prevents individual users from tak- extremely convenient when consolidating data ing unauthorized actions with the tool. These transferred from different locations. include creating and modifying modules and The easy-to-use FTP feature improves developer, chains, launching processes, viewing output, etc. administrator, and end-user efficiency by saving User-level security must provide enough granular- time during setup and maintenance that would ity to allow or deny access to the complete range otherwise have been spent developing scripts. of functions within the product. For instance, per- UC4 Workload Automation Suite provides inte- sonnel might be assigned to creating scheduling grated online-viewing for standard job output objects, but other personnel might be chartered (stdout), and report output. Operations personnel, with managing the production systems. UC4 as well as end-users, can use this viewing func- Workload Automation Suite provides control over tion. On-line viewing results in significant cost major functions and every managed object. savings over printed output since it allows users to either skip the printing process entirely, validate Network security focuses on the distributed nature report contents prior to printing, and/or print only of today’s computing environment. It is well selected parts of desired reports. documented that standard UNIX security has some holes -- many products are already on the JAVA-ENABLED CLIENT market to improve distributed security. UC4 Work- To take advantage of the widespread use of the load Automation Suite uses standard system Internet in corporate computing, UC4 Workload interfaces and data encryption and does not open Automation Suite offers a fully enabled Java client. up holes that allow unauthorized network access. It can be accessed from any standard browser, and it automatically installed when the user enters Compared to typical script-based scheduling solu- the correct URL. Maintenance demands on IT staff tions security is significantly improved with UC4 are significantly reduced as updating to the latest Workload Automation Suite. Database and host release of the Java client happens the next time user logins and passwords required to access sys- the users log in. tems are securely stored in a central repository, This removes the risk of security breaches created INTERACTIVE GRAPHICAL MANAGEMENT when passwords are embedded directly in scripts or given directly to end-users requesting jobs. Graphical monitoring component provides a tree view of the current scheduling activity and an in- tuitive point and click management console. For Optional logging capability is available that keeps instance, if the graphical display indicated that a track of user activity. If this feature is enabled, all process had abnormally terminated, a user simply modifications to the UC4 Workload Automation right-clicks on the object and elects to retrieve job Suite repository are logged, including which user information. This instant action gets the job back made the modification, date, time, and before and up and running quickly. after images of the data that was changed. Many graphical displays provide forecasting infor- mation, but UC4 Workload Automation Suite This feature improves systems integrity and en- displays job streams in a real-time, interactive sures compliance with various regulatory statutes. environment, and allows users to interact with the Financial and governmental institutions have his- display to take actions. torically been the most security conscious, but any organization that holds sensitive personnel, finan- SECURITY AND AUDITABILITY cial, or trade-secret data in their network should In the post Sarbanes-Oxley world, enterprise se- closely investigate the security issues surrounding curity and corporate accountability become their distributed applications environment. increasingly important as the automation solution expands to include additional users, applications, CONCLUSION and data. The rapid pace of today’s business environment has created demand for a new breed of tool to A distributed environment is inherently more automate business processes. This new breed of prone to security intrusions. The widely distributed tool must go beyond the world of scripting and machines, networks, and end-users present multi- simple time-based events, venturing into a new ple opportunities for unauthorized access. An realm where applications and events can be driven enterprise process automation solution must be dynamically in response to constantly changing flexible enough to allow the product to be safely business conditions. 10

To achieve these new levels of automation, the data and use that data to drive the dynamics of tool selected needs to reach out across a wide ar- the business. ray of platforms and applications to offer UC4 Workload Automation Suite provides all these maximum functionality and flexibility. Additionally capabilities and more in a straightforward and the tool must be easy to use and responsive to easy to implement solution. The product has change. Users need to be able to interact with the proven itself in hundreds of corporations world- new breed of tools so that the corporation can wide as the right solution for enterprises seeking a leverage their skills and free IT resources that can state of the art solution to their automation needs. be better utilized on profitable initiatives like e- By adopting UC4 Workload Automation Suite early business. Finally, this new breed of tool needs to in a development cycle, organizations can maxi- be much more application and data aware, with mize their ROI, and build in a comprehensive facilities to access the underlying application’s automation philosophy from the ground up.

EVALUATION MATRIX To assist in comparing UC4 Workload Automation Suite with other schedulers, a checklist is included below. It highlights the key features in UC4 Workload Automation Suite.

Enterprise Automation Evaluation Matrix UC4 Workload Automation Other Suite

General Multi-platform support: UNIX, Linux, Windows, OpenVMS, 9 OS/400 Web services and JMS support 9 Single point-of-control for entire network 9 Import/Export Utility for migrating test to production 9 Fault tolerant architecture 9 Resynchronization of schedules after network failure 9 Use RDBMS for data storage and reporting 9 Built in FTP and sFTP capability 9 Schedule Creation Schedule processes using day, date, time, interval 9 Schedule processes using business calendars 9 Schedule processes based on file arrival, size and stability 9 Initiate processing via application events, data or conditions 9 Create business processes in drag-and-drop environment 9 Balance workload across machines based on CPU utilization 9 Allow static and dynamic parameter passing 9 Evaluate conditions before, during, and after job execution 9 Event Management Centralized management console 9 SNMP capability for communicating events 9 Insert job information in alert messages 9 Notification via fax, email, pager, etc. 9 Job Execution/Recovery Set environment variables for each job 9 Step restart 9 Automated recovery from failed tasks or schedules 9 Prioritize jobs via queues, roles, and load balancing 9 Customizable on-line documentation 9

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Enterprise Automation Evaluation Matrix UC4 Workload Automation Other Suite

Retention parameters for archiving job output 9

Scan output for error codes and other text to determine true job 9 status

Graphical User Interface Support remote access 9 Light-weight, web browser enabled 9 Display current schedules, real-time events, and history 9 End user component 9 Output management Allow on-line viewing, text searching and local printing 9 Allow printing of just selected pages 9 Control output distribution 9 Send output to multiple output devices 9

Retention parameters for archiving application output 9

Auditing Capture before and after images of all modifications 9 Track automated and manual activities. 9 Security Role-based security for all UC4 Suite objects 9 Role-based security for all UC4 Suite users 9 Encrypted database, hose, and application passwords 9 Use secure network protocols 9 Application Integration Extensions to major applications 9 Automate non-standard jobs 9 Scriptless approach for application integration 9

eBay, Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Mattel, ABOUT UC4 SOFTWARE McGraw Hill, Panasonic, Robert Bosch, Sun Micro- systems, Symantec, T-Systems and Verizon. For UC4 Software is a leading provider of workload more information, please visit WWW.UC4.COM. automation and IT process optimization solutions that ensure core business processes and enter- CONTACT UC4 SOFTWARE prise information systems run faster, more In the US at (877) 464-7300 (toll-free) accurately and without interruption. More than In Europe at +43 2233 77880 1,500 companies worldwide have successfully en- hanced application processing performance and improved IT efficiency using UC4’s business accel- www.uc4.com eration solutions. Customers include American [email protected] Suzuki Motor Corporation, Cadbury Schweppes,

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