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Company url: http://www.pathpointsoftware.com
Partnerworld Global Solution Directory:
http://www-304.ibm.com/jct09002c/gsdod/scsolutiondetails.do?cd=BPAS&sbcd=&solution=16532&lc=en
At our July Destination z teleconference, I had the opportunity to talk with Bob Buchanan, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at PathPoint Software. Bob is a veteran of the computer software and hardware industry with over thirty years of domestic and international experience.
Marc: Hi Bob, PathPoint recently joined our Destination z community. Can you tell me a little bit about your company and the solutions you provide?
Bob: PathPoint Software is dedicated to supporting the application support needs of mainframe customers worldwide. We offer a dynamic mainframe application discovery tool that provides a breakthrough, execution-based, approach for understanding how mainframe applications “really work”. Our produce, PathPoint, traces and captures the sequential application-processing path followed by specified, user entered, business transactions as they execute. Captured information provides unparalleled insight into execution-based application facts.
PathPoint’s dynamic approach eliminates the need to analyze static source code and “play computer” as you try to find the right code. No more guess work. PathPoint helps you find the right code.
PathPoint is also included in the IBM Global Services AMS Toolkit.
Marc: What are you finding are the greatest challenges your customers are facing and how does PathPoint Software help them?
Bob: Our customers are often facing a variety of challenges. They need to drive efficiencies into their mainframe application maintenance efforts, including analysis, testing and performance. PathPoint provides a means for customers to reduce analysis time by 50% or more and testing time by 50% or more and identify the cause of application performance problems. Our value proposition revolves around improving personal productivity, which drives down the time and significantly reduces the cost associated with many mainframe application maintenance projects.
PathPoint Software also helps customers struggling to understand how legacy online or batch mainframe applications "really" work – of major importance to customers who are need to make changes to existing applications or to identify the source of application problems. Users of PathPoint simply enter a business transaction of interest, or job a step number, and the product traces and captures the actual application-processing path followed by that executing business transaction – all without any change to source code. Information captured in the actual sequence of execution includes: input screen, programs called, call statements issued, tables/files accessed, how tables/files are accessed (CRUD) and output screen. Optionally, Cobol source code can be parsed during post processing to capture the conditional logic related to executing business transaction.
Marc: PathPoint sounds like it really helps customers quickly identify the “right code” in a mainframe application and relate this code to change requests and other problems. Please tell me a little bit more about PathPoint’s role in addressing application-level performance problems.
Bob: PathPoint captures application level performance timings for specified user-entered business transactions – very unique and valuable information. For example, we capture the elapsed time per call statement, the interim time between call statements, and the frequency of call statements. Using this information, customers can quickly identify the cause of bottlenecks in their applications and how to improve application performance.
Marc: What economic benefit would a user of PathPoint derive?
Bob: First of all, the mainframe application budget is a substantial portion of the overall IT budget in today’s corporations, as you know. And, application maintenance consumes a large percentage of the application budget itself. We are confident that PathPoint users can reduce their mainframe application maintenance budget by up to 20%. Why? Because PathPoint enables users to reduce analysis time by 50% or more, reduce system and regression testing time by 50% or more, and reduce overall project time.
Marc: How can folks find out first-hand about your product?
Bob: We encourage all mainframe sites to try PathPoint. The product can be installed in as little as 2 hours and does not require any change to source code. Visit our website for more details.
Marc: One last question, why is being part of Destination z a valuable community association for PathPoint?
Bob: PathPoint is delighted to be a part of the Destination z community. As an Advanced IBM Business Partner, a very active participant in the IBM Academic Initiative program, we are eager to engage in discussions with other IBM Business Partners serving the System z community. We feel that the Destination z community enables mainframe customers to understand that innovation continues in the world of mainframe computing – PathPoint is just one example of such innovation.
Marc: Thanks Bob. And I welcome readers to listen to the replay of our July 29th Destination z call featuring PathPoint Software. Visit the Destination z website
