We performed a comparison between BMC Compuware ISPW and IBM Rational Synergy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, BMC, Microsoft and others in Software Configuration Management."It does our CICS NEWCOPYs and our Db2 binds for us, whereas before, that was a manual process. It takes a lot of the workload off of the operations folks and off the DBAs."
"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."
"I think the most valuable features are code management, code deployment, and code generation. The fact that those three features are included makes BMC Compuware ISPW a robust product. If one of those features was missing, it would be less robust and less interesting. But because it has those three features, it is a very good solution for code development and management."
"We had parallel development before, but the way ISPW implements it is better. It has more control and oversight of the process, whereas before, it was like the Wild West. Everybody could have their own package with their own version of the component in it... ISPW is constantly aware of it. It notifies when someone else is using or has a different version of that component."
"The visual ability to see potential downstream impacts to changes being made assists our developers in understanding the impact associated with their change."
"Managing source code, tracking modifications, and being able to analyze evolutions of source code are the most valuable features."
"One thing I would really like to see some improvement on is the promotion diagnostic messages. It invokes utilities "under the covers" to copy components, and it does not echo back any of the error messages from those utilities."
"There are some features that are not well documented, so documentation could use a little help, on things like setting up deployment and which structures in the database correspond to which tables."
"The solution could be improved by being better integrated with the open world. In the next release, I would like to have the ability to work in an open environment whilst remaining integrated with the legacy environment."
"Better discussions to identify inventory prior to the start of any migration would be helpful for potential clients that have applications with code that is not modified often."
"When you're setting up the parameters for how ISPW will work in your shop, there are a lot of questions that have to be answered... BMC Compuware should have more in-depth explanations about what the choices in each question mean. If you pick A, what does that mean has to happen? What does that impact? If you pick B, what does that mean? What does that impact?"
"I'd like to see more integration with respect to requirement management, though this is not possible with this Synergy solution. I know that PTC enables this feature as well as Polarion. We need to have full trustworthiness and accountability in knowing that the tool will track every modification from specification through to the source code, with Synergy this isn't possible. The solution requires additional tools like rectify, desktop system solutions, to enable trustability between requirements, from one specification to another."
Earn 20 points
BMC Compuware ISPW is ranked 2nd in Software Configuration Management with 5 reviews while IBM Rational Synergy is ranked 10th in Software Configuration Management. BMC Compuware ISPW is rated 8.6, while IBM Rational Synergy is rated 3.0. The top reviewer of BMC Compuware ISPW writes "Tracks code during the change process so that more than one group could have code checked out for change. ISPW provides this tracking info real time helping move toward a more Agile environment". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Rational Synergy writes "Users must go through a lot of steps to properly manipulate this solution, which can interrupt workflows and cause unnecessary downtime". BMC Compuware ISPW is most compared with Endevor and OpenText ChangeMan ZMF, whereas IBM Rational Synergy is most compared with IBM Rational ClearQuest.
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