CASE STUDY
Polaris Reaps Major Business Benefits
and Cost Reduction with SEA absMessage
SUMMARY
Seeking to improve its IBM i monitoring capabilities and lower its operating costs,
Polaris Industries gained a number of operational, performance, and cost-saving
benefits by switching to SEA’s absMessage solution.
Among the key new capabilities Polaris gained from employing absMessage was the ability to monitor high-availability
software performance, track and respond to ongoing issues, send fix istructions along with message alerts, create complex
responses to system issues, and automatically move spooled files and queued jobs for faster processing. All this came with a
dramatic 400% price/performance improvement.
PROBLEM
Polaris’s existing IBM i system management and message management software had functional limitations and was
more expensive than other packages on the market, so the firm’s executive team wanted to improve their system monitoring
capability while reducing the cost.
Polaris runs its business on 10 IBM i partitions running on three IBM Power systems in Minnesota and Poland. Although the
company maintains an on-call staff for monitoring and emergencies, it runs a “lights out” datacenter.
As part of their upgrade goals, the Polaris team wanted to expand their system monitoring capability to more IBM i partitions
than the one partition they were currently monitoring. The executive team also wanted to maintain a lights out datacenter
and avoid having to hire more staff to monitor the system.
SOLUTION
After evaluating the available IBM i system management products on the
market, Polaris chose SEA’s absMessage because of its comprehensive
capabilities and pricing advantages. The executive team saw that absMessage
would provide Polaris with significant improvements in several business
metrics at a significantly lower price.
absMessage is my eyes
“
and ears on the system.
It lets us focus on
completing projects
rather than monitoring
the system.
”
— Polaris IBM i administrator
RESULTS
SEA’s absMessage software dramatically improved Polaris’s IBM i message management processes, providing capabilities
that weren’t previously possible, including:
• Better monitoring for application errors and alerting responders when problems occur.
• Monitoring and automatically adjusting IBM i system resources, including system resources such as DASD
and CPU utilization, and taking corrective action when thresholds are exceeded.
• Advanced capabilities to create complex responses to system issues, including starting and stopping programs
in response to system events and using variables in system monitoring.
• Monitoring application performance and alerting on-duty responders when production processing needs attention.
• Customizing off-hour alerts to route issues to appropriate responders, regardless of when a problem occurs
(after-hours, weekends, holidays).
• Spooled file management.
With absMessage, Polaris was able to meet its criteria that no increase in its staff would be required to monitor and manage
multiple IBM i partitions. The company also was able to maintain an automated lights out environment in which monitoring is
performed without on-site staff.
“In other places I’ve worked, people were scheduled 24x7 to check system status. At Polaris, absMessage lets us know when we
need to take action,” said Polaris’s IBM i administrator.
For Polaris, the business benefits gained from deploying absMessage have proved substantial. By becoming Polaris’s eyes
and ears on their IBM i environment, absMessage has allowed the company to focus on solving business problems rather than
monitoring its information systems.
About Polaris Industries
Located near the Twin Cities Medina, Minnesota, Polaris Industries designs, manufactures, and markets motorized products
for recreational and utility use. Polaris produces several well-known brands such as Victory and Indian motorcycles, Rush and
Switchback snowmobiles, and Sportsman ATVs.
About Software Engineering of America (SEA)
Established in 1982, Software Engineering of America has built a global reputation as a leader in datacenter software
solutions. SEA is one of the most successful companies in the datacenter software industry, with products used at thousands of
installations worldwide. Over 10,000 data centers of all sizes and configurations are utilizing one or more of SEA’s products,
including 9 of the Fortune 10 as well as 85% of the Fortune 500 Companies.
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING OF AMERICA
PHONE 516.328.7000 SALES@SEASOFT.COM WWW.SEASOFT.COM