In a real-time world, batch processing has all the sex appeal of an old grey filing cabinet, but as Gur Steif, a product marketing vice-president for BMC, said, “Almost every Web transaction we execute online actually ends up being processed in batches.” So when you buy your next cell phone with one click, the processes that order kicks off will crank some time later with a barrel full of others.
The need for better management of batch processing drove development of the latest version of Control-M, a batch scheduling solution from BMC announced last month at BMC UserWorld 2006 in San Francisco.
When used in conjunction with BMC Batch Impact Manager, Control-M provides IT with a dashboard view of the business implications of batch processes.
“It looks at everything in the context of what the business service is,” Steif said, so malfunctions in critical batch processes on which multiple applications depend can be identified and remedied promptly.
Control-M’s key technology difference from other batch management solutions is that the new version is agentless, so software doesn’t need to be installed to schedule and manage batch processes, Steif said. This will allow IT to manage more processes and lower the cost of ownership.
According to BMC, the average Web-based transaction involves more than 10 batch processes. However, management of batch processes operates at a layer beneath that of service management. Unless services are operating on properly processed data, the business process could be in complete failure.
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