“With ClearCheck we have an ongoing assurance that our ClearCase environment and VOBs are working properly. Instead of occasional manual checking which cost us money and added one more task to a busy schedule, we now get notice if there is a problem and exactly what it is. ClearCheck has made my job much easier.”
Evgeny Krassilshikov, Director of R&D at harmon.ie (formerly Mainsoft)
Background
One of the products offered by harmon.ie (previously known as Mainsoft) is a cross-platform enterprise solution, developed to function as an OEM system for some of the world’s largest software vendors including Oracle Siebel, SAP Business Objects, IBM Rational, IBM Cognos, Mentor Graphics, Cadence Design and ESRI. Since 2008 the company has also been marketing enterprise collaboration products under its own brand.
The Challenge
Visual MainWin product is kept in “maintenance mode”. There are several active releases of this product that have been deployed by harmon.ie customers for years. However, clients still ask for small changes, bug fixes, and other minor maintenance requests.
The Visual MainWin project was developed in IBM’s Rational ClearCase environment, and is still stored on that platform. harmon.ie is highly committed to its clients and attaches great importance to ensuring that the Visual MainWin product is healthy, safely stored and capable of being updated as necessary. Thus, it was critical for them to follow IBM’s recommendation to periodically check their VOBs’ health.
Previously, harmon.ie used an external ClearCase specialist to conduct manual health checks of each VOB once or twice a week. This ongoing expense was necessary to verify the integrity of the database and protect the valuable projects stored there. Yet, this expense also increased the cost of maintaining delivered projects.
The Solution
The ClearCase specialist providing services to harmon.ie suggested that they try ClearCheck as an alternative to manual health checks. A pilot project was successful, and ClearCheck was quickly installed on the project maintenance environment.
After using the product successfully for over a year, harmon.ie was able to save a significant amount of money on ClearCase maintenance. ClearCheck checks all the VOBs automatically, using the most advanced checking methods. Once a problem is identified, it sends alerts so that the issue can be fixed quickly and effectively.
