Computer Associates International Inc. Monday announced the general availability of three Unicenter performance management products for mainframe data management.

CA"s new products are designed to streamline monitoring and management of data centers and to appeal to data center employees who grew up working in a PC environment.

"Many of today"s IT managers grew up with PCs and the Internet," said David Hodgson, senior vice president of mainframe system product development at CA. "So these products are the first of a series of products we"re bringing out to appeal to those IT manager," he said.

CA"s enhanced products include the Unicenter NetMaster r11 suite of products, Unicenter CA-OPS/MVS Event Management and Automation r11, and Unicenter CA-Sysview Realtime Performance Management r11.

All the products are designed to streamline the monitoring and management of today?s mainframe environments, enabling customers to optimize IT performance, availability, and resource utilization more efficiently, said Hodgson. .

"In a 24-hour global transaction environment, revenue and business performance have become more dependent than ever on the flawless operation of every data center process," said Hodgson. "The enhanced integration among our Unicenter mainframe management solutions will significantly help our customers achieve ever-higher standards for performance, availability, administration, and ease of use," he said.

Unicenter NetMaster r11 is a management suite for mainframe-connected TCP/IP and SNA networks. It provides Web browser access to real-time and historical information. The new version provides autonomic capabilities to discover abnormalities out of the box as well as REXX support for NetMaster commands and functions.

Unicenter CA-OPS/MVS Event Management and Automation r11 is an automated systems operation solution for z/OS environments. The new version provides enhanced support for Unix System Services and enables cross-console event management.

Unicenter CA-Sysview Realtime Performance Management r11 enables mainframe system programmers to determine the cause of degraded z/OS system performance by reviewing short-term historical event data. The new version provides an at-a-glance assessment of the overall health of the data center, supports IMS 9.1, and provides improved WebSphere MQ management and monitoring. Integration with Unicenter CA-OPS/MVS creates a single point for system managers to view and resolve mainframe network and system events and workflows, said Hodgson.

Hodgson also said CA will begin to add support for the REXX programming environment with the new products and that support will be spread throughout the Unicenter product line.

"It will really help our customers who have a lot of REXX-experienced staff because they can now use that staff on our products as well," he said.

The CA solutions, which work together but can be licensed separately, are available under CA?s FlexSelect Licensing program and its new Measured Workload Pricing option. Measured Workload Pricing bases licensing costs on measured system usage.