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For more information aboutUC4 products please visitwww.uc4.com.

Beyond Job Scheduling:The Road To Enterprise Process Automation

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Introduction

This white paper demonstrates the ever-increasing value of adding enterprise processautomation software to the IT infrastructure. It traces the evolution of traditional batch

scheduling, illustrates where leading edge products are today, and outlines a set ofrequirements for moving beyond batch processing and into the realm of true enterpriseprocess automation. The paper concludes by illustrating how the UC4 platform addressesthese advanced product requirements.

Introduction.............................................................................................................................

Job Scheduling Defined..........................................................................................................

The Evolution of Job Scheduling ...........................................................................................

UNIX CRONtab.......................................................................................................................

Distributed Scheduling Products ...........................................................................................

Distributed RDBMS-based Scheduling..................................................................................

Application APIs.....................................................................................................................

Enterprise process automation...............................................................................................

Dynamic, Data-Driven Automation .........................................................................................

Conditional Business Rules.................................................................................................. 1

Workload Balancing.............................................................................................................. 1

End-user involvement........................................................................................................... 1

Fast Flexible Implementations.............................................................................................. 1

Accelerated Information Delivery.......................................................................................... 1

Java-Enabled Client.............................................................................................................. 1

Interactive Graphical Management....................................................................................... 1

Security and Auditability ....................................................................................................... 1

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 1

About UC4 Software............................................................................................................. 1

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Introduction

The relentless pace of todays business environment and its enormous pressures on IT stahas made it critical for corporate business systems to become more responsive andreliable. End-user expectations for reliability and speed grow dramatically as more andmore users have come in contact with a wider array of software applications. Expectationsnow approach that of the telephone, with users demanding business systems to beavailable instantly and operate flawlessly.

Coincident with these rising user expectations are the increasing complications ofenterprise computing. IT personnel have been forced to come to grips with the acceleratingrates of change, and the demands of corporations everywhere to quickly respond to thecompetitive threats and opportunities brought about by e-business.

The rise of the web has proven to be the ultimate nemesis for the so-called batch windowthat nightly opportunity to run large groups of transactions offline. Instead we have seen thrise of the real-time organization that needs to respond to changing business conditions

quickly and effortlessly in a 24 / 7 fashion. This creates significant challenges forcorporations as they try to respond to the demands of near real-time processing with theirtraditional batch-oriented back end systems.

In traditional enterprise computing, the availability of the batch window meant that asignificant period of time could be set aside to launch, monitor and manage a variety ofbatch/sequential activities that were necessary for the proper running of the business. Thenew global business environment, and in particular the Internet with its implied on-line, reatime, 24x7 operation has dramatically altered this rigid notion of scheduling. The idea ofhaving batch processes with a multitude of similar transactions that are processed at nightis still relevant in many cases, but there are many other examples where traditional time-based, operations centric scheduling is wholly inadequate. Instead, companies requirenear, or real-time processing.

Traditional batch scheduling held that business processes could be mapped out andexecuted in predictable ways that followed one or more business calendars. The dominantconcept was that certain business activities and the software systems that supported thoseactivities operated in sequential, predictable ways. Scheduling tools were only required tosupport notions of day, date, time and multiple business calendars to support corporateand/or departmental needs.

For example, accounting might be scheduled on a calendar year basis and the emphasiswould be on months, quarters, and fiscal year end. Alternatively, manufacturing might placall of its emphasis on weekly periods for purposes of planning, inventory analysis, andproduction. Manufacturing would also be forced to deal with plant shutdowns and holidayperiods that impact production cycles, but may have little relevance for accountingpurposes.

Todays supercharged environment requires companies to respond much more swiftly tochanging business conditions. Referring to the discussion above, it might still be viable for companys fiscal operations to run on a fairly routine basis. However, the realities ofincreased global competitiveness dictate a manufacturer to be linked electronically with itsbusiness partners in an extended just in time enterprise. To exploit the extendedenterprise, the manufacturer must replace or automate its manufacturing, ordering andinventory processing systems to respond dynamically to changing business requirementsand competitive pressures.

Improving business responsiveness through automation requires a comprehensiveapproach build in from the start. The selected solution must automate processing across awide spectrum of software, computing platforms, and business processes.

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Implementing a solution that moves beyond mere scheduling and fulfills the promise ofenterprise process automation can mean the difference between corporate success andfailure. Traditional batch job scheduling products cannot meet todays enterprise automatio

needs, leading to the creation of a new breed of software to handle this increasinglycomplex and demanding role.

Implied in this accelerated business climate is the requirement that IT staffs must buildcomputing infrastructures that create responsive platforms for change. Job scheduling toolwith their rigid adherence to the limitations of automating tasks based on day, date and timdont meet this requirement. New solutions are required that can automate and accelerateexisting business processes and adapt to new processes and systems as they arise.

Job Scheduling Defined

At the most basic, job scheduling is the orderly, reliable sequencing of batch programexecution. To handle these duties properly, a modern job scheduler provides a host of

features that allow it to schedule distributed workload efficiently and in a manner consistenwith the operational goals of the business.

Simple scheduling

For instance, all businesses rely on one or more business calendars. Calendars governsuch things as when payroll is run, when corporate reports are generated, and when fiscalmonths and quarters are closed. The key issues with calendars and other importantscheduling features are flexibility and reliability: Can the scheduler adapt to the changingneeds of the business, and deliver predictable results time after time?

Additionally, programs and applications need to run on a variety of platforms, at specifiedtimes, in specified orders, and with varying levels of resource demands and prioritization.Schedulers need to be flexible enough to accommodate these varying technology, businesand resource demands. If the job scheduler is able to sequence processes and manageresource contentions, applications will execute faster and more predictably, and schedulingthroughput will increase. Unfortunately, most scheduling products only focus on sequentiaactivities and ignore other opportunities to balance and prioritize workload.

The Evolution of Job Scheduling

The concept of job scheduling has been around for decades and dates back to themainframe where originally all business activity was driven through batch transactions. Inthis section, we outline the evolution of job scheduling and discuss the value andshortcomings of various approaches. In the following section, we outline the additionalrequirements necessary for moving beyond job scheduling and into the realm of trueenterprise process automation.

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When beginning to manage batch workload, most firms inevitably launch their jobsmanually. This is understandable and even appropriate, but it is also easy to see howquickly this approach breaks down as the number of machines, jobs, and scheduling

dependencies increase.Most operating systems provide a command line interface for launching tasks in a manualfashion. As an example, UNIX provides the BATCH and AT commands that allow users tolaunch background tasks immediately (BATCH) or AT a specific time. These commandsrepresent the bare bones of scheduling and are in no way adequate for complexscheduling requirements.

Surprisingly, many modern enterprise applications still require a great deal of manualintervention. Often a required business process will span several batch processes with eacbatch process being preceded by a manual process to set up new batch runs, reviewprogram output, gather additional input data, initiate subsequent processes, etc. Standardscheduling tools cannot automate many of these processes due to inherit limitations in thedesign.

UNIX CRONtab

If the manual approach is not the answer for distributed scheduling, the next logical step isto look to UNIX or other distributed platforms to supply some of the necessary tools. In theworld of UNIX the tool is CRONtab. CRONtab is a positional, character-based tool designeto facilitate repetitive scheduling. To use CRONtab, a user enters the required positionalcharacters in a text file that in turn is read by CRONtab. An example of CRONtab is:

10 5 * * 1-6 /usr/lib/myprog

Translated, this statement runs a job at 10 minutes after 5:00 A.M. six days a week (theweek starts on Sunday, which is day zero).

CRONtab is in very wide use despite a number of serious limitations including:

No business calendars.

No dependency checking between tasks.

No centralized management functions from which to control and monitor thoverall workload across the network of CPUs.

No cross platform dependencies are allowed. CRONtab only manages workloaon the specific machine where it resides and it cannot manage dependencies oother machines.

No audit trail of jobs that have executed.

No automated restart/recovery of scheduled tasks.

No recovery is possible from machine failure. If the machine where CRONtab executing crashes, there is no mechanism to move processing to a backumachine to continue the scheduling.

The scheduling rules are rigid and not easily changed.

No dependencies are possible on the arrival of a file.

If we extend our CRONtab example to other environments, similar parallels exist betweenMVS/JES and DOS/Windows BAT files.

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Distributed Scheduling Products

When mainframe-centric computing began to give way to distributed computing, jobschedulers were created for this new environment. Conceptually, the requirements fordistributed job scheduling were thought to be no different than they were for the mainframetime-based sequencing and dependencies. With mainframe scheduling tools providing theconceptual model for how job scheduling worked, the implementation challenges in thedistributed environment were mainly architectural. Specifically, how do you implementsecure job scheduling cross a potentially large number of diverse platforms?

When the batch workload is widely distributed, the scheduling becomes increasinglycomplicated. Specific distributed scheduling issues include:

In the event of a failure, how will the machines resynchronize with one another when thenetwork is restored?

How can I manage and monitor the workload from these broadly distributed systems?

How can I keep my activities secure from unauthorized users? High-end distributed scheduling solutions address these issues. Moreover,

improvements in the reliability of networking, security and hardware have made theunderlying environments stable and secure.

State-of-the-art schedulers use a relational database and eliminate scripting.

In recent years, hardware and operating system vendors have concentrated on building faover mechanisms into their systems, which have dramatically improved reliability of theunderlying IT infrastructure. This has the additional benefit of allowing a single fail-overapproach to be implemented across the enterprise instead of needing to create anddocument dissimilar fault tolerance and recovery routines for each application or tool in theenvironment.

Despite these architectural advances, most schedulers are actually updated versions ofCRONtab: they simply schedule a script written around the core program that needs toexecute.

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With traditional job schedulers, scheduling involves not only the creation of scheduling rulewithin the scheduler, but the creation of a script for each program to be executed.

Distributed RDBMS-based Scheduling

Early distributed scheduling solutions relied on flat or index files for their implementationsThis made sense at the time given the lack of reliable, high performance distributeddatabase software to manage the scheduling repository. The flat file structure was highlyportable and fast, but lacked standards for data access, which limited interoperability andreporting capabilities.

Modern scheduling solutions rely on relational database technology to store theirscheduling data. Todays relational database technology is portable, fast, efficient, andeasily accessed using SQL queries or third party reporting tools. Given the dramaticimprovements and wide availability of relational technology today, it is the right choice.

Application APIs

The rise of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and other packaged applications in the lat1990s created another force for change in distributed job scheduling. Historically, jobscheduling and systems management emphasized the management of the variouscomponents in the IT infrastructure. Networks, CPUs, databases, controllers, programs,disks, and more require management and monitoring. Specific tools appeared for each ofthese areas to monitor each component in the infrastructure.

Over time, IT personnel realized that focusing strictly on a given component without regardto the applications that these components supported was missing the big picture:monitoring and managing the enterprise. Therefore the notion of application managementbecame popular and large systems management frameworks became available.

One-size-fits-all frameworks have been discredited as costly, difficult to implement, andlacking best of breed functionality. But the goal of managing applications and not just theunderlying components has prevailed. For many IT organizations, managing and monitorincore business applications, and maintaining service level agreements based on thoseapplications, is the essential service they provide to the rest of the organization.

Interestingly, most packaged applications have some type of rudimentary scheduling andmanagement capability. This built-in scheduling capability creates its own challenge aseach application becomes its own island of automation, isolated from other applications inthe enterprise. This creates significant integration problems when trying to synchronizeprocessing across the multitude of enterprise applications. Enterprise application vendorsresponded to this challenge and created the application program interfaces (APIs).

APIs, designed for use by programmers and other technical personnel, allow the scheduleto communicate directly with the packaged application to launch and monitor jobs.Sometimes these APIs work in conjunction with the applications ownscheduling/automation tool. In other implementations the applications scheduling tool iscompletely bypassed with the external scheduler controlling all batch activity. Thescheduling vendor writes an interface to the applications API, which then allows thescheduler to perform some minimum subset of commands necessary to launch and monitothe applications batch jobs. As discussed later, this is an important, yet still incomplete,approach to automating packaged application processing.

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Enterprise process automation

The previously discussed features are the minimum core selection criteria for any job-scheduling product. However, the market requirements for automating system and businesprocesses have moved beyond job scheduling and its rigid paradigm of scheduling jobsbased on day, date, and time. Todays enterprise process automation solutions use day,date, and time as pieces of the automation puzzle, but also incorporate additional featuresdesigned to address the dynamics of the business and improve the responsiveness ofenterprise computing.

Enterprise process automation goes beyond job scheduling in the following areas:

Dynamic, data-driven automation

Conditional business rules

Workload balancing

End-user involvement

Fast, flexible implementations Accelerated information delivery

Interactive graphical management

Security and auditability

The following section describes how the UC4 platform implements the above requirementsto provide unprecedented levels of automation, ease-of-use, reliability, and security.

Dynamic, Data-Driven Automation

Traditional schedulers completely ignore the applications data as a source for automating

business processes. By doing so, schedulers miss the opportunity to remove processinglatency and respond dynamically to the changing needs of the business. As a result, simpljob schedulers dont fulfill todays increased requirements for automating, integrating, andaccelerating complex business processes.

Application data found in flat files, reports, and relational databases represents the currentstate of the enterprise. Cash fluctuates, inventories rise and fall, and invoices are paid on aday-to-day, hour-by-hour basis. To accelerate application processing, automation productsmust respond dynamically to the changing state of the business as represented by changein the corporate data.

Take the case where the inventory of a part has dropped below its reorder level. A typicalscheduling approach would run a job at some interval daily or weekly to determineinventories. If the corporation wanted to accelerate this process it would need to write a

program to check this reorder quantity and take some subsequent action order moreparts. Depending on the nature of the application, several programs might needmodification, which could potentially take significant time and money.

The UC4 platform can accelerate this application process with a completely differentapproach. With minimal effort, process flows can be configured to analyze changingapplication data and trigger events based on that data. Advanced design tools allow datavalues to be interrogated, its status to be checked and initiating of events immediately or asome future time. IT personnel are then in a position to accelerate business processingwithout making expensive modifications to program source code. As we will see later, theUC4 platform is also capable of incorporating complex conditional processing into itsautomation rules to create custom solutions that further automate and integrate corporatebusiness processes.

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Dynamic application automation contrasts with the capabilities of typical job schedulingtools that rigidly schedule system events or scripts. As discussed above, true enterpriseautomation requires the ability to interact with the application and its underlying data to

achieve a complete solution. The UC4 platform is designed to manage applications, andcan leverage information stored in multiple application databases to accelerate applicationprocessing.

It is important in this discussion to define a business process. For purposes of thisdocument, a business process is a series of interrelated steps to achieve some stated goaFrequently, the business process, while conceptually simple close the books is verycomplex when broken down into its individual tasks. A process is nota single task or a jobit is more likely a collection of tasks.

Surprisingly, many packaged applications still rely on extensive manual effort to complete abusiness process. This manual intervention typically involves supplying data necessary forprocessing and validating the results of each step in the business process - checking dateranges, generating additional reports, validating file arrival and file contents, etc. There are

numerous examples where the application vendor simply did not provide all of thenecessary facilities to automate a given business process. The result is that criticalprocesses are labor intensive, error prone, and consume inordinate amounts of time.

Using the UC4 platform, organizations can automate these previously manual processes bcombining scheduling, conditional business processing, and an awareness of applicationdata. Including all of these capabilities in the automation effort, and using them to driveprocessing, allows UC4 users to automatically interrogate, update, process, and check thisdata as a part of the business process. This in turn improves timeliness, accuracy, andreliability.

Lets imagine a process that looked like this:

Business Process XBegin

Start task 1Manually review resultsManually start task 2 using data from task 1Manually review the resultsManually start task 3 using data from task 2Etc.Step nEnd

The entire business process X runs from Step 1 to Step n, but is broken up by a series omanual reviews and job submissions. Eliminating the manual steps of gathering input datareviewing output, and launching tasks changes the nature of the business process asshown below:

Business Process X with the UC4 platformBeginStart task 1The UC4 platform validates data from task 1, passes it to task 2Start task 2The UC4 platform validates data from task 2, passes it to task 3Start task 3Step nEnd

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The decision to run a job is based on calendars, system events,application events, and user requests.

Eliminating manual process accomplishes two very important goals. First, the processinglatency inherent in manual efforts is removed and processing is accelerated. Second, errorare reduced or eliminated by removing or reducing end-users involvement in the process.Error reduction is very important. Recovering from the effects of bad data or incorrectlymanaged processes can be costly and time consuming. Additionally, in todays acceleratedbusiness environment, there is very little time available to recover from processing errors.

The UC4 platform uses application data to provide superior automation, and in so doing,improves business responsiveness, eliminates errors, and frees up staff time.

Conditional Business Rules

Another important requirement for enterprise process automation is the ability to implemenconditional business rules. These rules can be based on the underlying application data asdescribed above, or may be based on other factors. UC4 provides powerful tools formodeling these conditional business rules.

When implementing business rules with the UC4 platform, logical operators are used tocheck for a variety of business conditions including greater than, less than, equal to, is like

etc. A wide variety of conditional operators for querying data values and making decisionsbased on the results of those queries are provided. Creation of these conditional operationis straightforward and supported through a natural language interfacemeaning non-programmers can create business rules without coding. Traditional schedulers only provideconditional processing for return codes, if they are provided at all.

Simple examples of the use of conditional logic include:

If the value in row x of table y is greater than 100, start process A.

If there are more than 50 transactions in table y, start process A.

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With the ability to add additional logical operators like AND and OR, it is easy to see howcomplex business rules can be constructed to model the dynamics of the business.

The UC4 platform also provides the ability to apply this conditional logic before, during and

after task execution. This provides tremendous flexibility when attempting to model complebusiness processes. With this capability, any process can be checked to ensure that allprecedent conditions, execution conditions, or successor conditions are valid. Often thisconditional logic will eliminate required manual intervention or writing of program code. Asimple example of this would be to check to see if a task or requirement has completedprior to starting a process, or possibly checking to see how long the current job has run ancanceling it if it has run in excess of some predetermined time.

More complex processes can be constructed around a variety of inputs, temporal conditionand events. An example of one of these more complex conditionals would be:

Number of rows in Table A > 100, ANDInventory_Quantity in Table B < 1000, AND

Time is > 22:00, ANDFiles A, B and C are all present, THENStart Task(s) X, Y, Z

Traditional job scheduling products dont provide the advanced functionality required tomodel conditional business logic.

Queues balance the workload on application machines.

Workload Balancing

Application processing today cannot be separated from the notion of workload balancing.Workload balancing ensures that scarce computing resources are allocated appropriatelyamong competing tasks and applications. Ignoring the effects of these resource contentioncan severely impact processing, with the result that service levels can suffer. Efficientautomation products need to provide technology for managing these resource contentions

The UC4 platform uses queues to balance the workload on application machines.

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Workload balancing provides not only the ability to set priorities for processes, but also tocreate multiple queues so that jobs of similar priorities can be grouped together and runaccording to a predetermined algorithm. Additionally, priorities and queues must be easily

changed to accommodate the changing needs of the business.Creating and managing queues, changing queue priorities, and assigning priorities toprocesses and schedules are all features provided by UC4. These capabilities optimizeapplication throughput and balance the load across systems and applications.

End-user involvement

Many of todays enterprise applications are designed to empower the end user. Empowereusers submit their own requests, generate their own reports, and are free to make demandon the system round the clock. As organizations have implemented these large applicationand their companion reporting products, they have realized some additional challenges.

The users, enticed by the promise of more control and better data access, want to submit

requests and reports 24/7. This poses a problem for the operations staff as these userrequests create fluctuations in system load that impact overall system performance. Thesefluctuations are often severe enough that operations personnel can no longer meet theirservice level objectives. Some user requests also collide with other mission critical businesprocesses. The challenge is to continue to allow end-users the freedom to maximize theiruse of the system while maintaining a reasonable system load and managing resourcecontentions.

The answer to this problem lies with the unique end-user capability available from UC4. Bycombining the automation of end-user interaction with the workload balancing and securitycapabilities, both operations and end-users receive the control and responsiveness theyneed.

Like the enterprise applications themselves, an enterprise process automation product mube flexible and easy to use so that an end-user can exploit the products features. The endusers often have the best grasp of the business and know how their business processescan be accelerated or streamlined. The UC4 platform gives them that chance.

A Request window provides a mechanism to safely manage conflicting user requests andgives end-users the ability to request jobs on an ad-hoc basis. Additionally, authorizedusers can submit chains (groups of jobs linked together with one or more dependencies)and monitor and manage them to completion. Upon completion, users have the ability toview output online and redirect output to a desired printer.

The key to making this all work in the enterprise is being able to set the correct processingand prioritization policies for managing user requested jobs. Operations personnel cancreate and maintain process queues, priorities and end-user profiles. These parameterscan be tuned to eliminate undue system load and resource contention. Queues can beestablished that only handle certain classes of requests and/or operate only during certaintimes of the day, which in turn allows users the flexibility to submit jobs for execution at anytime without IT staff needing to worry about unmanageable processing loads.

From an end-users perspective, he or she has gained an unprecedented level of controland visibility. Launching, monitoring, and canceling requests at will, no longer requiresintervention from IT staff. This eliminates an unnecessary burden from IT staff in terms ofhandling ad hoc user requests via phone or email. Moreover, since end-users control thesubmission, the chance for costly errors to be introduced when the user passes the requesto the IT group is eliminated. Additionally, because input data sources can be validated atthe time of the users request, the simple but potentially costly errors associated withrunning ad hoc submissions with incorrect data can be avoided.

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In some cases, IT departments have found it desirable to have the UC4 platform in thebackground, intercepting user requests after they have been submitted through some othemeans. With this approach, it is not necessary for users to learn a new interface to submit

their requests. Theyre often not even aware that automation software is involved inprocessing the request. The UC4 platform can still be configured to control the requestedtasks and operations personnel can capitalize on queue management and prioritizationschemes to meet their service objectives.

However, involving the end-users in the managing and monitoring of their requestsincreases user satisfaction and cuts down on help-desk calls. Users feel empowered andmore involved when they are able to actively participate in managing the application. TheUC4 platform provides the necessary facilities to allow this type of user participation.

Fast Flexible Implementations

As stated above, most schedulers are nothing more than updated versions of CRONtab:

they actually schedule a script written around the core program that needs to execute. Withtraditional job schedulers, scheduling involves not only the creation of scheduling ruleswithin the scheduler, but also the creation of a script for each program to be executed. Thisreliance on scripts, rigid scheduling rules, and complex APIs slows implementations andlimits flexibility. The reliance on scripts, and the technical knowledge required to write themprecludes most job schedulers from being used by end-users.

The UC4 platform provides a unique and much more efficient method for managing classeof programs: an object-oriented approach to automation. This method is based on themodule concept. A module is a template that describes a given set of inputs, outputs anderror handling for an entire class of programs. Once a module or template is developed fora class of programs, then its simply a matter of pointing and clicking to automate additionaprograms of that type. This saves time not only by eliminating the error-prone developmenof scripts, but also by improving future maintainability and flexibility. For example, if a

database login or a parameter value changes, then the administrator makes a singlechange that propagates through all applicable modules. A traditional job scheduler couldrequire modifications to tens or hundreds of scripts using commands such as grep andfind, with no assurance that all required modifications were made.

Note that there is nothing that precludes UC4 users from scheduling the typical UNIX,OpenVMS, or OS/400 script or Windows batch file, but efficiency and cost-savings is gainewhen the object-oriented approach is implemented for an application.

Another benefit of the modular approach is that it speeds migration of programs fromdevelopment to production. Because the automation rules are stored in a database, objectcan be freely exported and imported across environments. A mapping utility replaces fieldsunique to a given environment (i.e. database logins/passwords) with ease. Uniqueimport/export functions allow quick migration of automation rules through the entire

application lifecycle - development, quality assurance, user acceptance testing andproduction.

This approach speeds deployment and creates a flexible platform for rapid changes in theenvironment. Dozens of standard templates are available for the UC4 platform, with newtemplates being added as new opportunities arise.

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Accelerated Information Delivery

To further accelerate business processes, it is imperative that the data and reports moveswiftly through the system and get delivered to the right systems and personnel. Theprevailing Internet time is pervasive across all industries, which in turn places a premiumon accelerating processing and making fast, informed decisions using accurate data. Unlikmany other schedulers, the UC4 platform offers output distribution capabilities.

You can create a definition for each output device, and then assign the definition to one ormore jobs (modules). In this way, an output definition can be created once and reused formultiple tasks. Output device definitions can specify a single device, or a distribution list ofmultiple output devices. Supported output device definitions include devices such as laserprinters, plotters, faxes, pagers and e-mail. This ability to drive output to a number ofdifferent media has become increasingly important and is now an expected part of theinformation delivery chain.

An additional feature allows administrative personnel to create retention strategies for

output files. Administrators create policies to determine how long output should remain onthe system and how many copies of a given piece of output should be retained. SystemAdministrators can manage available disk space by combining business needs withhardware and software limitations. Essentially, important files are stored and less importanones can by systematically removed. This alleviates users and administrators fromhousekeeping duties and ensures that identical reports arent re-run time and time again ifthey are lost.

Automate report publishing and distribution to any type of output device.

The UC4 platform provides its own built-in FTP capability. This built-in function allowsprogrammers, systems personnel, and end-users to transfer files without the need forcoding. Files may be moved between servers and applications or even sent to the desktopConditions can be designed to check for the arrival of an FTP file before executing abusiness process. This function is extremely convenient when consolidating datatransferred from different locations.

The easy-to-use FTP feature improves developer, administrator, and end-user efficiency bsaving time during setup and maintenance that would otherwise have been spentdeveloping scripts.

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The UC4 platform provides integrated online-viewing for standard job output (stdout), andreport output. Operations personnel, as well as end-users, can use this viewing function.On-line viewing results in significant cost savings over printed output since it allows users t

either skip the printing process entirely, validate report contents prior to printing, and/or prionly selected parts of desired reports.

Java-Enabled Client

To take advantage of the widespread use of the Internet in corporate computing, the UC4platform offers a fully enabled Java client. It can be accessed from any standard browser,and it automatically installed when the user enters the correct URL. Maintenance demandson IT staff are significantly reduced as updating to the latest release of the Java clienthappens the next time the users log in.

Interactive Graphical Management

Graphical monitoring component provides a tree view of the current scheduling activity andan intuitive point and click management console. For instance, if the graphical displayindicated that a process had abnormally terminated, a user simply right-clicks on the objecand elects to retrieve job information. This instant action gets the job back up and runningquickly.

Many graphical displays provide forecasting information, but the UC4 platform displays jobstreams in a real-time, interactive environment, and allows users to interact with the displato take actions.

Security and Auditability

In the post Sarbanes-Oxley world, enterprise security and corporate accountability becomeincreasingly important as the automation solution expands to include additional users,applications, and data.

A distributed environment is inherently more prone to security intrusions. The widelydistributed machines, networks, and end-users present multiple opportunities forunauthorized access. An enterprise process automation solution must be flexible enough tallow the product to be safely used by the widest number of users without jeopardizingsecurity. Security has a minimum of two dimensions: user and network.

User security prevents individual users from taking unauthorized actions with the tool.These include creating and modifying modules and chains, launching processes, viewingoutput, etc. User-level security must provide enough granularity to allow or deny access tothe complete range of functions within the product. For instance, personnel might be

assigned to creating scheduling objects, but other personnel might be chartered withmanaging the production systems. The UC4 platform provides control over major functionsand every managed object.

Network security focuses on the distributed nature of todays computing environment. It iswell documented that standard UNIX security has some holes -- many products are alreadon the market to improve distributed security. The UC4 platform uses standard systeminterfaces and data encryption and does not open up holes that allow unauthorized networaccess.

Compared to typical script-based scheduling solutions security is significantly improved witthe UC4 platform. Database and host user logins and passwords required to accesssystems are securely stored in a central repository.

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This removes the risk of security breaches created when passwords are embedded directlyin scripts or given directly to end-users requesting jobs.

Optional logging capability is available that keeps track of user activity. If this feature is

enabled, all modifications to the UC4 platform repository are logged, including which usermade the modification, date, time, and before and after images of the data that waschanged.

This feature improves systems integrity and ensures compliance with various regulatorystatutes. Financial and governmental institutions have historically been the most securityconscious, but any organization that holds sensitive personnel, financial, or trade-secretdata in their network should closely investigate the security issues surrounding theirdistributed applications environment.

Conclusion

The rapid pace of todays business environment has created demand for a new breed of

tool to automate business processes. This new breed of tool must go beyond the world ofscripting and simple time-based events, venturing into a new realm where applications andevents can be driven dynamically in response to constantly changing business conditions.

To achieve these new levels of automation, the tool selected needs to reach out across awide array of platforms and applications to offer maximum functionality and flexibility.Additionally the tool must be easy to use and responsive to change. Users need to be ableto interact with the new breed of tools so that the corporation can leverage their skills andfree IT resources that can be better utilized on profitable initiatives like e-business. Finally,this new breed of tool needs to be much more application and data aware, with facilities toaccess the underlying applications data and use that data to drive the dynamics of thebusiness.

The UC4 platform provides all these capabilities and more in a straightforward and easy toimplement solution. The product has proven itself in hundreds of corporations worldwide asthe right solution for enterprises seeking a state of the art solution to their automationneeds. By adopting the UC4 platform early in a development cycle, organizations canmaximize their ROI, and build in a comprehensive automation philosophy from the groundup.

About UC4 Software

UC4 Software is the leading provider of intelligent service automation solutions that enableorganizations to connect IT service delivery with business demand. Combining real-timeintelligence with just-in-time execution ensures customers can automate processes thattraverse on-premises, virtualized and cloud computing platforms at low risk and cost. In

excess of 1600 organizations worldwide trust in UC4 to automate the mission-critical ITsystems that drive their business operations. Visitwww.uc4.com for more information.Contact UC4 Software

In the US at (877) 464-7300 (toll-free)In Europe at +43 2233 77880

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