Endevor Reviews

I thought the most valuable feature of the product was maturity in the process, in the tool itself. In other words, while there were many things we would have liked it to have done, what it did, it did very well.

Over the course of many years of usage, one of the things that we found that some customers wanted to have was point-in-time recovery, which was one thing that I worked on. I remember I was on a project that was called Space Station Freedom at the time, with NASA. They felt like they needed to have a point-in-time recover process. They built that into the tool. They got it done, so there was a way to do it.

Quick Edit was a big add-on. Initially, when I started working with the tool, there was pretty much, "Use your own text editor." ISPF, because everything was ISPF based. You would add it into the tool through the normal script language or core ground processing. Well, they came up with something called Quick Edit, which was an add-on to the tool, but it was seamless. It just gave you an editor where you could go in and change a single object and save it and have it kick off the build in a development stage. It was that automation that really, I think, helped catapult Endevor because before, it was little bit more restrictive. It was more cumbersome to work with.

Since then, I haven't done a whole lot with it.

I'd say, overall, as a development tool, it helped us to automate processes that otherwise were very manually intensive. As a release tool, there probably could have been some additional enhancements, but it was effective. I could easily go from one LPAR to the next LPAR at the push of a button.

The funny thing is that I've learned that most organizations didn't know how much they appreciated it until they didn't have it.

There were a lot of developers who naturally oppose any process that they would deem to be making their jobs more cumbersome. In other words, more overhead on the task that they had to complete. The automation that we were able to build in; we were doing essentially some aspects of agile development before it was even a concept, because we were doing integrated builds every hour, on the hour, with no problems. It was virtually automated, totally automated. All the program had to do was finish your code, let us know, approve a package, and then it would go.

It was just a very nice process. When it was running properly, it was very transparent relative to the whole application development lifecycle.

I have used it off and on for about 26 years.

It was very consistent. When implemented appropriately, it was very solid. It was very stable; it was dependable. I never failed an audit with Endevor.

The only time that we really had down time is when we abuse it or we didn't follow our regular maintenance process. I can think of maybe once or twice in all the years that I've had it where the MCF was corrupted, or the package data set was corrupt, because either one of them could be catastrophic.

They were built on a solid VSAM validation, so it really never caused a lot of issues in that way, although from time to time, some of the share options were not allocated appropriately. Therefore, we might have run into issues of performance degradation, normally, when the share options weren't set right.

There was something called L-serve, which was a separate component that ran as an instance to start a task. That helped improve performance. I remember at one point it did, but in my last installation, we didn't even use it. I was able to use PDSEs and everything was fine, along with the V-samp files which were for the MCF.

I think the scalability did improve over the years, because if there were was issues with performance degradation, it would have been due to not configured properly. For example, too many environments that were nested or linked to each other, which caused a problem because the search routines would have to go through multiple sets of data sets in order to resolve what it is that you were querying. It really depends on how you set that up. Numbers or integers can cause performance degradation, but with that said, there are companies out here that have hundreds, if not thousands, of people connected to Endevor. They do not have these problems, so I know there are probably testimonies much better than mine that could prove that. I've known of many companies that they were using it on a very large operation. Mine might have had, over the last 10 years, maybe 100 or 150 programmers, but I know of others that have 600, 700, 800 or more.

Support has always been excellent. I know Paul Lewis is still there. I remember he was one of the first people I talked to. He would give you that tough love. He says, "Well, when in doubt, try it out." That was always the same. I would say something like, "Paul, do you think I could do this? Do you think I could do that?" His response: "Oh, well, Mark, when in doubt, try it out." I said, "Okay."

I'd go try it and maybe it would work. If it was something that he knew for sure that I was the one exploring it and we were at second- or third-level support, he would say something like, "Okay, well, we have a problem," or right away he would tell me if it was a known issue. There's no way that any company's supporting a product like that, or for any product, knows of all of the variants or considerations - just by searching a data base repository.

Work with CA, a third party or CA consultancy to do a proof-of-concept; not just the demo out of the can, but actually take an application or some part of an application, do a POC, and then get it on your machine. Even if you have to pay for it, it would be worth it, because that's going to set a foundation for you to be successful with the initial implementation. One thing, when working with the consulting company, they're going to have a better view of your configurations, your systems, and your environment. Work with them, and that will make you successful in the long run.

I have not given a perfect rating because I would want that one extra point to be for some subjective criteria that I haven't even thought of.

As an administrator, the csv utility and reporting are vital in obtaining information for leadership.

The introduction of promotion packages was awesome. In the past, we would have to create multiple (up to five) packages to move coded changes into production. We had to have a naming standard in place in order to be able to pull the information for audit. Now, our processes are streamlined in that we only have to create a single package and all of the information is there for audit.

The Eclipse based UI still needs improvement and CA is working on that in v18.

I have been using Endevor for 16 years at three different companies.

I have not seen any stability issues.

I have not seen any scalability issues.

I would rate technical support as very good.

Endevor has been in place as long as I have worked in my current role.

I did not perform the installation.

I did not choose this product.

• Resilience capacity for mainframe applications
• Self-installation z/OS workflow
• Informative content to save a rich source of events, such as a movie of the real evolution of our IS

For any organization to succeed in implementing this software is dependent upon the resilience of staff in the face of frequent organizational changes of the information system and in their work. It can manage the continuous-flow deliveries or cascade deliveries.

Globally this product manages back end process powered by z/OS. The interface could be improved in terms of the MMI/HMI. For example, with monitoring, the graphic view of the evolution of the IS.

Conceptually this system is based on a centralized vision. An improvement axis should exist to help you open your system and to decentralizing it. Converge a unified HMI for, and propose, more analyses and opportunities for the graphical analysis of the content of data included in repositories.

We've had issues with the stability of the genotype, the repository integrity.

It's OK, but it could be better with an incremental approach.

They are serious and display empathy.

It's complex because it depends upon your development architecture. Also, it's reached the limits of automation and freedom given to end users.

You need to think why you want to use an application configuration management system and if it matches with your development objectives.

Endevor was brought in because we wanted to stop developers from making production changes in production. It’s enabled us to find a way to make sure the code stays in one area, and to make it secure. Therefore they’re not allowed to do that anymore. It’s a change management tool and that’s the way we use it.

They’ve got little things that I would like to see. It’s more for the administrative side as opposed to the developer who uses Endevor. Since I’m one of the administrators, I'd like to be able to use wildcards a little more often when I’m querying things.

It’s very stable. We don’t have any issues. Whenever we have an issue, we can call them up and say, “Hey, we got a problem.” They’ll fix it right away.

It's very scalable. They’re becoming more and more scalable every day because a lot of people are trying to get rid of the mainframe, not realizing that it’s still just a giant server and it can be used for that. It holds more data, and runs things faster.

Our upgrade plans: the plan is to upgrade. The more and more systems you add to it, and the fact that it handles other things that it never used to do that people wouldn't even think of it doing. It does grow with you and you can keep going with it.

It’s great. We’ve never had a problem. I would recommend that anybody, if you’ve got one of their tools, join one of the user groups because they do have input on the way things are done and any changes you need, they’re willing to listen and to help you out should you have a problem.

It’s straightforward as long as you know the mainframe. If you don’t know the mainframe, they’ve gotten better with the instructions. It’s more like a distributed side. They’ve gotten a lot better, so it’s a lot easier. They’ve got little things that I would like to see. It’s more for the administrative side as opposed to the developer who uses Endevor.

It's important for us that it actually handles the job that we need it to, that it actually covers everything for Endevor. We needed to make sure that we can actually put security in there so not everybody can touch anybody else’s code or anything like that and that it does incorporate the other CA tools that we use going forward.

I’d probably give it a ten because I’ve used it for fifteen years. I love it. The developers now love it, so it’s all good.

I highly recommend for current users to keep it and keep going forward with it because it is very useful, the user group is great. You can get lots of help from everybody out there.

I think some of the most valuable things with Endevor, as far as the build process, before we had Endevor, everyone had their own way of building an application. With Endevor it's very, very standardized. Once an application is built one time through Endevor, there next time you go to build the application again it works exactly the same way. It's very repeatable and very reliable. That's a huge part of it. It's used to for managing source code and executables throughout the entire software life cycle.

Some of the other benefits are the security that goes along with Endevor, the only way that you'd be able to update the output executable in the source code in Endevor would be to go through the product and use the product to do it. You really can't bypass the security and go around the product. You have a very, very tight source code to executable synchronization. They're linked together. I can go out to a load library and be able to go back to the source code that made up the executable very, very quickly. Very, very important, and the auditors very much love the product because it really satisfies a lot of the auditor requirements we have at our company.

Some of the things we want to look at is expanded Unix system services support within Endevor. From talking to the product manager, I know that that's coming up in future versions of Endevor. They're very, very good at getting information from customers to make sure that they're going in the right direction with future releases of the product.

Very, very stable. We just upgraded to release 17 about 6 months ago. We had 0 defects with it from our view with the release of Endevor release 17. Very, very smooth, very reliable, no real issues with it since we installed it.

Excellent, we have it architected in our company so we can add applications in or take applications out very, very easily. Very, very scalable, and the performance of it is awesome. We've never had really had any performance issues. It works very, very smoothly throughout the entire process.

I know all the technical support people in Framingham who deal with Endevor. No exaggeration, I put a service call in, and within 5 minutes I get a call back from CA asking about the problem, and they're requesting a little bit more detail, so, very, very timely and very excellent customer support.

We're currently working on installing Unix system services on z/OS Long Name Support with Endevor. We've had some issues with it, primarily just educational types of issues. They've helped us work through that, so now we're pretty much on our way there. We still have some open items that we're working through, but right now that's internally in our organization. CA support has provided some really good support in respect to that issue as well as many, many other ones that we've had in the past.

Quite a few years ago we had homegrown software configuration management system. It was very, very difficult to maintain. We converted over to Endevor years and years ago, actually back in the 90s. We've been able to make changes to Endevor over the years to be able to keep up with the new technologies being released out in the environment. We're pretty much current right now. We don't really have any open requirements from our customers. We're able to get the new technologies brought into Endevor very cleanly. It's really open ended, so it can plug things in, take things out

I think what we look at, first of all, just to make sure that technically the product is doing what we want it to do from a paper perspective, the documentation, and then I think being able to engage the vendor, talking through the product in real detail about some real specific cases that we have at our company, and making sure that the vendor could respond to those, and we feel comfortable that they'd be able satisfy our requirements.

Going back to when we first brought Endevor, Endevor was really the only one at that time, it was the first PLC that we did. Obviously, we brought Endevor in so we didn't really have to continue looking at other vendors. That was back in the early days of Endevor. Over the years it's gotten much more solid, a lot stronger. We brought Endevor in years ago when it was still maturing, and they still won as far as bringing in the product into our company.

Obviously we love the product. It does everything we want it to do. On the other side, it's not only the administrators of the product that really love the product, but our internal customers like it very much as well. It adds a lot of value to them. They're not even looking at, "Let's replace this with something else." There's no need to do that. It satisfies everything we want to do. There's nothing that it can't do as of right now.

I'm going to rate it a 10 because I just know it's the best out there in the industry. I've been very much an active member in out user group community over the years, talking to many, many people. As far as products in the industry, Endevor is definitely on top.

Everyone's a little bit different as far as the way they have it installed at their company. I think the biggest thing that I hear out there is the Unix system services support, expanding that support in Endevor. I hear that common theme, and CA knows that and they're working on delivering that as well.

My recommendation would be, definitely go with Endevor.

The quick edit function allows our dev staff to make modifications easily as well as maintain version control in case they want to regress or go back to a prior version.

It increases productivity as it maintains version control for development.

I'd like the processors to provide us the ability to dynamically set a symbolic.

It's very stable, which is why we use it and why others should too.

10/10. I’ve been working with CA support for years. I know them by first name.

I provide training for it, and people tell me I'm far ahead of anyone else. I see it so much that for me implementation is simple, but for others for whom it's new, it may be difficult.

The one best piece of advice I can give is to make sure the person installing the software is qualified for the tool, so check their qualifications. There’s a lot of people who say they can do things, but they can’t. Make sure you get a list of clients. When asked for a recommendation, I always say Endevor.