APS|Advisor allows business and IT users to understand and manage the batch service delivery commitments.
APS|Advisor monitors Control-M from a Business Service Delivery perspective. In a non-intrusive way Control-M jobs can be mapped to business services allowing APS|Advisor to monitor the progress of application suites and advise if service delivery SLAs are at risk. APS|Advisor provides:
- Web-based or Smartphone app visibility of batch suite status
- Full understanding by both IT and Service Delivery Managers
- Visibility of individual or grouped services
- Historical analysis of batch run statistics
- Proactive management to ensure SLA objectives are achieved
The APS Advisor component “Business Service Monitoring for Control-M” allows monitoring of Control-M for Distributed Systems from a Business Service Delivery perspective. 
Business Users, IT Managers and IT Experts gain an immediate overview about the status of the Control-M Workload Automation related Business Service delivery via the web, mobile devices (like Blackberry, iPhone or iPad) and push email.
The integrated, advanced predictive engine also informs the user about the expected completion time of the Business Service.
The benefits are obvious: Users gain up to date information about mission critical Business Services delivered through Control-M Workload Automation systems without consuming time and resources from IT Experts. This self-service approach for Control-M improves the service delivery agility and reduces costs.
Business Service Visualization
Status of a single Business Service
The status of an individual Business Service delivery can easily be identified through the graphical representation of the  Business Service in the APS Advisor Business Service Monitoring dashboard. If a Business Service has started late or the predictive end time is after the expected end time, orange colour indicators flag the expected or real delay. When a Business Service is running on time, no orange colour indicators are visible; the remaining service execution is represented by the grey progression bar.
Business Service Details
If authorised,  the user can also see the status of all jobs which are part of a Business Service and review a colour coded graphical flowchart representation of the Business Service delivery.
Integration with APS Manager
Authorised users who have licensed APS Manager for Control-M can branch from APS Advisor directly to the web based APS Manager to perform operational tasks.
Grouping of Services
 Individual Business Services can be grouped together. The user can then decide if he wants to follow the Business Service delivery status on an individual Business Service level or on an aggregated Group level.
Current Business Services and Business Service History
Running and Planned Services
 Within the Business Service Monitoring folder of the APS Advisor interface, Business Services that are running or planned for the current Control-M order date (ODATE) are visible.
Only Services the user is allowed to see are visible. The user can further select which Business Service he wants to see and in the desired sort order.
Last Started Services
In many cases, users would like to see the last started execution of a Business Service. The APS Advisor folder  Last Started Services provides a quick overview of previous Business Service executions. Different viewing formats are available, including an overview in a dashboard type style.
History View
 Past Service Executions can be queried via the APS Advisor Business Service History folder.
If authorised, full job status and flowchart information about the historic Business Service is available for review.
Business Service Administration
Defining Business Services
A Business Service is a number of dependent Jobs which automate the delivery of a business relevant function.
APS Advisor provides different models to define a Business Service:
- Path between one or many start jobs and one end job
- Path between multiple milestone jobs
- Jobs of a specific table
- One single important job
All Business Services are defined in a non-intrusive way via the APS Advisor web interface only. Not a single job needs to be added to Control-M.
The Service definition wizard ensures that Services are defined correctly.
Service Level Runtime Administration
The runtime administration allows the assignment of the planned start and desired end times from the Service Level Agreements (SLA) to a Business Service and the definition for which days these start and end times should be valid.
Multiple runtime definitions can be assigned to a specific Business Service, reflecting that Business Services may run multiple times during a day or that desired SLA times may be different on different days.
User Role Mapping
The Business Services defined within APS Advisor will be mapped to defined User Roles. Users can only see the Business Services they are allowed.
Predictive Engine
Automated Path Analysis
Based on the information available in the Control-M Active Job File, the Predictive Engine of APS Advisor calculates for all active Business Services defined by start and end jobs or milestone jobs all possible paths between the defined jobs. This ensures maximum accuracy, even in constantly changing environments.
Advanced Runtime Calculations
A key aspect of a correct and reliable prediction of when a Business Service deliverable will be available – beside the correct Path Analysis – is the correct estimate of how long individual jobs will run. Simple average  calculations of historic jobs runs often lead to wrong results. APS Advisor provides Enhanced Runtime Calculations which consider for example only historic job runs of a specific day of the week combined with the capability to ignore exceptional long or short historic job runs.
Administrator Messages
Due to the fact that some situations cannot be predicted based on mathematical algorithms, APS Advisor allows users with administrative rights to override the predictive calculation of APS Advisor for a specific Business Service. |
