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BMC AMI DevX vs Rocket ChangeMan ZMF (formerly a Micro Focus product) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC AMI DevX
Ranking in Software Configuration Management
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Debugging (4th), Database Development and Management (14th), Mainframe Application Development (1st), Test Data Management (4th), Mainframe Testing Tools (1st), Data Masking (4th), AI Software Development (190th)
Rocket ChangeMan ZMF (forme...
Ranking in Software Configuration Management
6th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Software Configuration Management category, the mindshare of BMC AMI DevX is 9.8%, down from 27.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rocket ChangeMan ZMF (formerly a Micro Focus product) is 9.2%, up from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
BMC AMI DevX9.8%
Rocket ChangeMan ZMF (formerly a Micro Focus product)9.2%
Other81.0%
Software Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

Wisdom Mbiza - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Engineer at Absa Group
Modern tools have boosted mainframe file extraction speed and simplified everyday workflows
I definitely think BMC AMI DevX could be improved or enhanced in terms of the logging in features. BMC AMI DevX's logging in feature is not so great. Whenever you try to log in, it always prompts you for passwords. Then when you have to switch sessions, because we usually have to switch between production and UAT, there's no quick way of switching between the two. Every time you try to switch, it prompts you to log in. Additionally, there's a pop-up that I always receive. When you click X on it, it doesn't disappear. Eventually, I just end up minimizing it. Furthermore, the startup of BMC AMI DevX takes a long time to start up before it loads. It doesn't just immediately start up and it's ready. It takes a good solid two to three minutes before it's ready so that you can work on it. BMC AMI DevX's logins and the other ones I can understand because security has to be there, but I do feel that once I've logged in, I shouldn't need to log in again. The startup problem is the annoying one because if I want to do something, I need to open it two or three minutes earlier to give it time to load up. The startup problem is the one that definitely needs to be addressed.
reviewer1527093 - PeerSpot reviewer
Development Team Lead at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Very flexible with Johnny-on-the-spot tech support
I would like to see them enable parallel development for online. It's available now for batch stuff on the mainframe. Jenkins, IBM, and Rocket all supposedly already have safe and workable version of Git for the mainframe. With that in mind, we need to know where our feature is. Unfortunately, as good as ChangeMan is, if we're listing downfalls, they should be talking to me about this. Not me having to go talk to them about it. Hopefully, they have this in the works and they are positioning their product for the future. That's just a straightforward comment. It really comes down to whether they are complacent or not. The other thing that should improve is cost. Git, even on the mainframe, a large part of the components "free". They're the way you set them up yourselves and they're self-sustaining and built into the infrastructure. You can't charge me for that. I gave ChangeMan an overall score of eight, but what could drive them to a nine is coming up with a way for all my code that belongs together to be tracked and moved together. Everything should move based upon the mainframe; it needs to be alerted and synchronized.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"We have seen an improvement in the rate and level of quality at which we deploy changes."
"The smart editor helps because it will code-complete for me. I can see code working a lot faster and I'm able to get things coded in less time."
"It helps our staff work by speeding up their documentation process."
"I like the ability to flow through the source and see what happens to the data as the statements are executed. If there is a fault, it will track the event, and we can then look back to see why it may have caused the fault. You can also reverse engineer your test. You can set it so that you can go backward as well as forward in your test. This is something that I haven't done here at my company. Compuware Xpediter is one of the best debugging tools for mainframe software development. We have currently licensed only the COBOL language for Xpediter, but I know they have other languages, including Assembler, PL/I."
"One of the features that the developers like is that they can retrieve what they need with the tool. They don't have to go through some process or request something be done by another team. They can get the programs they need, compile them, retrieve the JCL and alter the JCL if they need to, and put these programs wherever they need to go for their testing."
"It's a modernized development portal and helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform,"
"My guess is this would have taken twice as long, or we would have had many more issues without using Xpediter."
"Compuware Xpediter is one of the best debugging tools for mainframe software development."
"What’s most valuable to me is the ability to compile the code and move it through the test and productions environments."
"We audit once a year for our ChangeMan access, accurate financial programs, and all of that. Auditors really love ChangeMan for how easy it is to get through and how tight the security is on it. Our internal auditors, external auditors, and SOX editors love this solution. We're in the healthcare business, so HIPAA regulations and all such things are a big deal, and this makes all that really simple."
"Auditors really love ChangeMan for how easy it is to get through and how tight the security is on it."
"Scalability is great. It has absolutely met every need for us so far. We do have some concurrent development paths and we're able to flexibly assign variables. At the same time, our skeletons assemble where we want them to, so the scalability is very good."
 

Cons

"BMC AMI DevX's logging in feature is not so great. Furthermore, the startup of BMC AMI DevX takes a long time to start up before it loads."
"Technical support has gotten better over the years, though there's always room for improvement."
"The only thing that bothers me about BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline is the screen movement."
"I'm waiting to see what 19.2 for Topaz looks like, but I have a problem with the JES Explorer right now. It limits you to a certain prefix for job names and there are some groups that have multiple prefixes that they'd like to see all at once in their job names, because of how they work in a group. And they can't see that in the JES Explorer."
"Topaz Workbench often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment."
"The ability to edit source code that has special characters is limited. The ability to incorporate or convert REXX into macros that are usable under the Topaz software is not there. And the REXX macros that I have developed over 40 years of work are useless, so I have a toolbox I can't use or deploy using the Topaz technology, while I can use it under MVS."
"I find it more cumbersome to use Topaz."
"While I am aware of the possibility to integrate Git with BMC AMI DevX zAdviser, this integration does not fit within our solution landscape."
"Their technical support is not so good. To be perfectly honest, that's one of the reasons we were looking at other solutions."
"I would like to see a better search tool."
"As such, there's nothing wrong with the product. It is great, but there are small things that can be better to make it much more friendly. The way you navigate through fields can be improved. If I'm going to stage a component over something that exists and that I've created in another library, and I want to pull it in and write it over what I've got there in my package, I've got to type in that data set name every time. That can be aggravating. It is not a big deal. The way things are sorted can also be improved. If you're doing a delete of a bunch of components, you can't sort those out by type or anything. Some things are just standard, and you can't look at them in a way that would be helpful."
"I would like to see them enable parallel development for online. It's available now for batch stuff on the mainframe. Jenkins, IBM, and Rocket all supposedly already have safe and workable version of Git for the mainframe. With that in mind, we need to know where our feature is."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price point is great."
"I like the seat-based licensing much more than MSU-based licensing, and that the cost has been competitive."
"It has saved our developers time and effort when working on documentation, which is now more readable and fluent."
"In general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
"In terms of pricing, there isn't an extra charge for the parts of it we use. It comes with the licenses we purchased for other products, so no complaints there. The licensing is built in with the other products that you purchase from Compuware."
"The only thing I would mention related to the licensing and/or the pricing, is that they have some visualization features in there that are licensed by concurrent users. We're starting to trip up on that. We're looking to probably increase the number of concurrent licenses that we have. But those types of licensing strategies, where they license by concurrent users or the number of seats is confusing for some people. They don't understand why it works sometimes and doesn't work other times."
"It's on a yearly basis. I am not aware of any additional costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
33%
Insurance Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Insurance Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Non Profit
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with BMC AMI DevX?
To improve BMC AMI DevX, consideration should be given to cloud-style provisioning and development models, as well as integration of more AI capabilities. Enhancements in VS Code extensions to deve...
What is your primary use case for BMC AMI DevX?
BMC AMI DevX solutions are primarily used for mainframe-based resources and application development, encompassing not only COBOL but also Workbench and VS Code for various purposes. Data management...
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Also Known As

File-AID, Data for Db2, Code Debug, Data Studio, Workbench for Eclipse, Code Pipeline
Open Text, Micro Focus ChangeMan ZMF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NRB, Iberdrola, Consorzio Servizi Bancari 
SPTS Technologies, Generali France, Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. (BBH), Kutxa-Vital-Banco Madrid, Space and Naval Warfare Information Technology Center (SPAWAR ITC)
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC AMI DevX vs. Rocket ChangeMan ZMF (formerly a Micro Focus product) and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
903,182 professionals have used our research since 2012.