An agent is an adapter, which is is used for the combination of various mechanical or electrical equipment. (see also: Agent for Web Services)
Whether your application and IT landscape grows organically or through merger and acquisition, the ability to rapidly integrate the entire application spectrum – from tightly bound legacy applications, to loosely coupled web services – into a company's automation strategy is business critical. To further smoothen and accelerate the integration of these new applications, databases, and tools UC4 developed the Rapid Automation methodology, which allows for fast, reliable, and stable integrations that reduce costs, improve time to market, and allows for true end to end processing in your business and IT. (see also: Rapid Automation)
Managing the underlying components of the IT infrastructure is not enough to automate a process as long as the various applications are not touched and integrated. To get a more comprehensive picture of the enterprise it became necessary to manage processes also at application layer. Due to the significant integration problems when trying to synchronize processing across the multitude of enterprise applications application program interfaces (APIs) were designed – to allow the scheduler to communicate directly with the packaged application to launch and monitor jobs. Unfortunately job scheduling vendors still felt required to tightly couple their integrations to the ERP versions.
It was UC4, who finally recognized that if it could decouple the base workload automation functionality with application, database, and tool integrations it could deliver both new functionality and agility. The already available object oriented approach allowed UC4 to create standardized, reliable, and scalable integration to any application, database, or tool that had an API set.
Comprehensive auditing ensures all of your processing activities are recorded and all version changes to production controls are logged. In a matter of minutes, reports can be produced detailing performance against service level objectives. Pre-defined templates are available to generate audit reports that support compliance directives such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). Most companies, including all publicly traded companies, must pass audits of their financial statements, including all processes leading to those statements. With the UC4 automation engine you can manage all IT-based business processes, having significant effects on a company’s financial data at no extra cost.
The technique of making a manual process automatic by eliminating human effort and intervention.
At the most basic, job scheduling is the orderly, reliable sequencing of batch program execution. The concept of job scheduling dates back to the mainframe where originally all business activity was driven through batch transactions. The dominant concept was that certain business activities and the software systems that supported those activities operated in sequential, predictable ways. Therefore traditional batch scheduling held that business processes could be mapped out and executed calendar-based within so called ‘batch-windows’ – the nightly opportunities to run large groups of transactions offline. (see also: Job)
Business Intelligence describes methods and processes for systematic analysis (collection, analysis and presentation) of electronic data. The goal is the collection of new findings and insights, which in terms of corporate goals improve operational or strategic decisions. This is done by using analytical concepts and IT systems, which evaluate the data about your company, competitors or market trends in order to gain the desired knowledge. With the lessons learned, companies can make their business processes, customer and supplier relationships more profitable, reduce costs, minimize risks and increase the added value. The term "intelligence" in this context means the acquired knowledge through gathering and processing information. "Business" means the sum of all relevant internal and external economic entities and processes.
Viewing at IT as a cost center is neglecting its business enabling role in dynamic markets. That the relation between business and IT is up for renegotiation, can also be seen in the semantic change transforming the automation business. Job scheduling was always just an IT thing (to run X-process at Y-time), whereas workload automation actually helps running the business. Because it hooks into many different business products, like files, reports, databases, and applications, UC4 is able to see into these disparate IT resources, and can act on them. We have become workload automation because our software is not just for IT, and it’s not just for business. Because systems cross business and IT boundaries and need to interact reliably for the company’s good.
The concept of business performance management (BPM) describes methods, tools and processes to improve the efficiency and profitability of enterprises. Business performance management is seen as further development of business intelligence. In addition to the history-related and present-related processes, analysis and reporting of business intelligence, BPM also covers future-related processes such as planning and forecasting.
Business Process Automation also known as BPA is defined as a process that focus on streamlining and automating key processes in order to lower costs, reduce risk, increase consistency, and raise the overall value of your company. With the UC4 automation engine you can break through the biggest obstacle in business process automation: the dynamic and automated execution across multiple systems, platforms and applications implying seamless communication and information exchange along the entire process. (see also: Business-IT Alignment)
Cloud computing is a term from Information Technology and the Information Technology Management. Simplified the concept can be described as follows: The IT landscape (e.g. data center, storage, mail or collaboration software, but also specialized software such as Customer Relationship Management [CRM] and Business Intelligence [BI]) is no longer operated/provided by the user, but by one or more supplier. The applications and data are no longer on the local computer or in the corporate data center, but rather - metaphorically spoken - in the cloud. Access to the remote systems works via network, now typically via Internet. Access to the applications or the configuration is done via a web browser. Cloud computing provides cost advantages in comparison to conventional systems. For example, if the payment is charged by the use of the service and the service is only occasionally used. Local resources (software / hardware) are saved.
Complex Event Processing (CEP) is primarily an event processing concept that deals with the task of processing multiple events with the goal of identifying the meaningful events within the event cloud. CEP employs techniques such as detection of events patterns, event correlation and abstraction, event hierarchies, and relationships between events such as causality, membership, and timing, and event-driven processes.
Careful mapping of the source data to the target data for strategic business applications and systems - or in data integration initiatives, to ensure consistency, accuracy, timeliness and completeness of data. Data mapping services enable seamless integration into data warehouses.
In Discrete-event simulation, the operation of a system is represented as a chronological sequence of events. A Discrete-event simulation model can be described by a state model, an event calendar (or an event list), event routines, and time. The event calendar contains a list of future events with the name and nature of the event and the date of its occurrence. Certain events can trigger event in the future. Thus, complex behavior can also be simulated. In the technical program implementation, the event list will be sorted by the time of entry and the next occurring event will be processed. The event routines contain instructions for running each type of an event and define the logic of the simulation procedure.
Traditional schedulers completely ignore the application’s data as a source for automating business processes. By doing so, schedulers miss the opportunity to remove processing latency and respond dynamically to the changing needs of the business. As a result, simple job schedulers don’t fulfill today’s increased requirements for automating, integrating, and accelerating complex business processes.
Application data found in flat files, reports, and relational databases represents the current state of the enterprise. Cash fluctuates, inventories rise and fall, and invoices are paid on a day-to-day, hour-by-hour basis. To accelerate application processing, automation products must respond dynamically to the changing state of the business as represented by changes in the corporate data.
In today’s IT environment the only constant is change. That’s why companies constantly have to react to market forces and adapt to new business requirements – 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Considering this, the business cannot just stop for batch processing tasks because there is really no batch window available. So you have to be able to determine the most appropriate time and the best place to run these processes, being aware of service level agreements and making sure that you are going to meet them. To handle these duties properly in a dynamic business environment, a modern job scheduler provides a host of features that allow it to schedule distributed workload efficiently and in a manner consistent with the operational goals of the business. (see also: Dynamic, Data Driven Automation)
Typical business processes are nowadays running across multiple people, departments, applications and servers. To automate parts of these processes produces ‘islands of automation’ that are disconnected from each other and without centralized management view. You overcome these problems by implementing end to end automation across your enterprise – reducing your dependency on manual steps, connecting your islands of automation and gaining clear visibility and control. Through our central automation engine we're able to control the most number of operating systems, the most number of databases and the most number of packaged solutions on the market. (see also: UC4 Automation Engine)
"Event" describes an event that can be triggered external (e.g. user input) as well as by the system itself (e.g. change notification).
Data are sent and stored in the Event-Data-Repository. Agents offer interfaces to different source systems, such as CRM systems, data warehouses or other middleware. The data can either be loaded directly into the data repository (e.g. to load existing, historic data), or it is possible to integrate intelligent Sense & Respond, processing logic and load input data as well as processing results into the data repository. In this way, automated system decisions can be traced with the UC4 Insight.
Event-driven architecture (EDA) is a software architecture pattern promoting the production, detection, consumption of, and reaction to events.
In contrast to traditional Batch Job Schedulers which are time- or calendar-based, dynamic scheduling is also triggered by events, like system changes of property and/or status or business requests. With event automation the importance of such events is automatically evaluated and corresponding measures are initiated. The correlating event processing is performed fully automatically. If manual interventions are necessary, the respective users are notified.
Event Stream Processing (ESP) deals with the task of processing multiple streams of event data with the goal of identifying the meaningful events within those streams, employing techniques such as detection of complex patterns of many events, event correlation and abstraction, event hierarchies, and relationships between events such as causality, membership, and timing, and event-driven processes.
The filtering of relevant data from a myriad of different information requires a lot of time in daily business processes – nobody likes to rummage through long tables and columns of numbers. Business relationships can easily be identified by intelligent visualization of events – operational decisions made based on facts, error sources eliminated at an early stage. The innovative CEP-System UC4 Insight has internationally recognized, advanced visualization features. Relationships between events and event chains as the basis for operational decisions are simply recognized.
IT Housekeeping and other data center activities are defined in the IT Run Book. It describes how the tasks/jobs are executed in the correct order. It is a critical task, and it is also time-consuming and fraught with the possibility of human error. Intelligent IT housekeeping ensures things are kept orderly, increases transparency in the data center, and simultaneously frees up administration personnel for other tasks. The UC4 automation engine facilitates optimization and automation of fundamental infrastructure processes and maintenance tasks so that performance and availability increase. Centralized control via a system-wide, uniform management console largely solves the problems that heterogeneous IT landscapes so often entail. Workloads can be distributed flexibly, errors due to manual efforts are eliminated, and compliance requirements are easier to implement and fulfill.
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of concepts and policies for managing information technology (IT) infrastructure, development and operations. ITIL gives a detailed description of a number of important IT practices with comprehensive checklists, tasks and procedures that any IT organization can tailor to its needs.The ITIL is based on by the IT operation provided economic value for the customer. Hereby the planning, production, support and efficiency optimization of IT services will be examined in terms of their usefulness as relevant factors in order to achieve the business objectives of an enterprise.
In today's business climate, you have to do more than just protect your organization's information assets – you also have to secure access to strategic controls and protect sensitive data. With the UC4 automation engine you can mitigate your IT risk for reliable lights-out operations by removing manual intervention through intelligent job scheduling, providing better visibility, control and reporting of IT processes in heterogeneous IT environments.
IT Service Management (ITSM) describes the totality of measures and methods that are needed to ensure the best possible support of business processes by the IT organization to achieve. ITSM describes the extent of change of information technology to customer and service orientation. The guarantee and supervision of Business Services, the visible IT services for the customer, is very important. This way you can continuously improve the efficiency, quality and efficiency of your IT organization.
An important aim for persons running data centers today is conformity with the established ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) standard. ITIL describes the processes that IT operations are based on and thus indirectly influences the workflows in the software solutions being used as well. Compliance with this standard is a serious challenge when taking the following into consideration: systems are becoming more and more heterogeneous; the necessary integration of ad hoc processes; and frequent changes to infrastructure.
UC4 enables companies to take a decisive step closer toward ITIL compliance. UC4 is capable of integrating external scripts, such as those from Unix (cron) or Windows systems (WinAT). Alongside easier, centralized management via a uniform GUI, this approach also has distinct security-related advantages: In Unix, the cron scripts can be changed at any time by any employee with administrator rights without having to document these changes. UC4, however, requires that every IT employee must log in before making any changes and each of these changes is documented in an audit-compliant fashion – practically speaking, this is the only realistic way of maintaining compliance.
A single executable piece of work. Jobs usually target a particular application or a specific executable program. Historically a job is said to be run in batch (rather than interactive) mode. The operator or job scheduler gives the operating system a 'batch' of jobs to do (payroll, cost analysis, employee file updating, and so forth) and these are performed in 'batch windows' when time-sensitive interactive work is not being done. A series of jobs make up an automated process which usually needs cross-platform execution. (see also: Batch Job Scheduling)
(see also: Batch Job Scheduling)
On the analogy of Just-In-Time Manufacturing we call it Just-In-Time-Processing when a business can balance the workloads across the existing IT infrastructure in such a way that every group of business users get their particular information at the time they need it. At the ‘Just-In-Time’ processing point, the business is receiving maximum value from automating it’s processes at the most effective cost point – to effectively deliver the right business information at the right time at the lowest possible cost.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are financial and non-financial measures which support an organization in defining and evaluating their real success, typically in terms of making progress towards its long-term organizational goals.
Managed File Transfer deliver files from one location to another, in a very secure, predictable manner and makes certain that your business always has accurate information. Embedding file transfers into complex processes safeguards against using outdated data and eliminates the need for extra FTP tools by managing file transfers, all while using secure communication.
Multi Client Availability enables companies to use one job scheduler for any number of customers, business units and departments – simplifying administration and saving licence costs (especially valuable for IT service providers). At the same time the multi-client capability of the UC4 automation engine is key to any reliable change management process. It ensures that you can set up development, Quality Assurance and productive environments in completely separated clients and offers full audit trail for all changes and transport. (see also: Auditability)
This is crucial, because in complex environments a simple change can have effects on many other applications and systems. For example: changing one job in a cross-platform job plan, may affect the runtime of all other jobs, resulting in missing SLAs. Change management for job scheduling is therefore essential. Any change must be evaluated for effects (and possible side effects) before being applied to productive systems. The entire change process must be documented to ensure that it has been performed correctly.
The most innovative automation tools use an object-oriented architecture to reduce the amount of effort it takes to make changes. Jobs, job streams, printers, host and database logins, security roles, etc. should all be represented as objects in the tool. These objects are defined once, and then used many times to build other objects. If an object definition changes, the change is automatically propagated everywhere that object is used. For example, suppose you have a number of jobs that access a database to run reports. You define the database login as an object and assign it to each of the jobs. In a few months, the login changes. In an object-oriented environment, you change the login object definition in one place, and the change will automatically be applied to all the jobs using the login.
Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of techniques from statistics and data mining that analyze current and historical data to make predictions about future events and behaviour patterns.Generally, predictive analytics is used to mean predictive modeling, scoring of predictive models, and forecasting. In business, predictive models exploit relationships and patterns found in historical and transactional data to identify risks and opportunities.
To automate a particular tool or application you will have a number of points with which you could interface – using command lines, Java, web services or JBDC connections. The UC4 rapid automation solution is able to manage the best API that is available for a particular tool or application. With this we are actually able to take that information and display it directly into our user interface which makes the UC4 interface extendable. And you can extend our interface to look very similar to the application interface you are used to. This helps reduce your training costs. So automations are very easy to create and very fast to deploy.
UC4 Rapid Automation is a tightly controlled and easy to deliver methodology for application, database, and tool integration.
Realtime Business means proactive business. The innovative products of UC4 improve the realtime monitoring, simulation and control of business processes.With Realtime Business, the following results are ensured: permanent and automatic monitoring of process performance; errors detection in order of importance, even beyond system boundaries; automatic notification of exceptions and incidents, which require immediate intervention; simultaneous notification of exceptions and defects to all the relevant participants; tracking of the incident until the final solution and centralized documentation.
To fully secure a business, you need an infrastructure better able to adapt in the face of change. A system that is tied to your business — driven by business events. Therefore, you need a process map that can help you to manage your business in milestones. All while maximizing the existing technology environment. The solution path: real-time infrastructure that dynamically changes with events. RTI makes the most of ressources in real time: people, processes, technologies, system events and business events. A “real-time enterprise” monitors its world and quickly acts on key indicators of emerging opportunities and threats.
A formatted and structured data representation. A UC4 report contains detailed information about a job’s run, i.e. what the job has done and the feedback of the systems and applications involved.
With semantic correlation, events from various source systems can be combined for processing.
Many enterprises have an extensive IT landscape with a series of operational and information systems, which must harmoniously interact with each other. Sense and Respond provides for the smooth integration of operational and information systems. As a result, an organization gains new knowledge through recurring data processing tasks and directly feed the knowledge back into the business environment. The proactive management of business processes and the delivery of relevant business information to the appropriate individuals are principal goals. The data and decision making processes are carried out in the UC4 Decision system through "Sense and Respond loops" which can include the following five processing stages: Sense, Interpret, Analyse, Decise, Repond.
With service-oriented architecture (SOA), services of employees and organizations will be structured and optimally utilized. A special role is played by the orientation towards business processes, which levels of abstraction are the basis for concrete service implementations. By assembling (orchestration) of services of a lower abstraction level, services of higher abstraction levels can be created. Simplified, SOA could be viewed as a method, by which existing IT components such as databases, servers and websites will be encapsulated and then coordinated in services to aggregate them to higher services and make them available for departments and or customers. The implementation of Event Driven Archtitcture (EDA) even more can uncouple a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to increase adaptability and ability to reactivity of business applications.
The UC4 automation engine is IT process automation and job scheduling software that can be used to integrate, automate and accelerate enterprise workload across your existing IT landscape. It classical job scheduling, conditional business processing, and an awareness of application data. Including all of these capabilities in the automation effort, and using them to drive processing, allows UC4 users to automatically interrogate, update, process, and check this data as a part of the business process. This in turn improves timeliness, accuracy, and reliability.
In the last couple of years virtualization became a decisive part in the evolution of enterprise IT anticipating scenarios in which computer processing power is seen as a utility that clients can pay for only as needed. The usual goal of virtualization is to centralize administrative tasks while improving efficiency and availability of resources and applications in your company.
The UC4 automation engine can help your business gain new flexibility by managing the physical enterprise assets as logical resources and distributing workloads on demand. By replacing hard-wired settings embedded in job plans and process templates, processing can be dynamically extended to run on additional servers as and when they become available–providing extra capacity to overcome periodic peaks such as month-end. (see also: Virtualization Automation)
The ability to deploy new systems on demand has a catch in system management, as long as these new systems are not brought into your back up strategy, nor into your maintenance strategy, nor into your automation strategy. Virtualization Automation by UC4 means, that we can immediately make new provisioned systems available to our automation tool, we can immediately make them available for processing that’s currently under way, and we can immediately put them into your housekeeping strategy so they are going to be backed up and maintained. And finally guarantee a seamless interaction between the physical and the virtual world.
Application processing today cannot be separated from the notion of workload balancing. Workload balancing ensures that scarce computing resources 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. The UC4 automation engine uses queues to balance the workload on application machines. Workload balancing by UC4 provides not only the ability to easily set, change and assign priorities for processes, but also to create multiple queues so that jobs of similar priorities can be grouped together and run according to a predetermined algorithm. These capabilities optimize application throughput and balance the load across systems and applications.
Because time and resources are limited in data center operations, the scheduler therefore must optimize their usage and not add any latency. When schedulers are busy with themselves, productive servers are idle, and this means expensive waste of time and resources. In today’s supercharged environments latency can make the difference between staying within shrinking batch windows and meeting SLAs, or violating them. By replacing time consuming legacy schedulers with the UC4 automation engine you can optimize the usage of all resources and stay on the save side keeping your SLAs.
