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BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench vs Endevor comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench
Ranking in Mainframe Application Development
1st
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Endevor
Ranking in Mainframe Application Development
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Software Configuration Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Mainframe Application Development category, the mindshare of BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench is 25.1%, down from 29.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Endevor is 5.7%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mainframe Application Development
 

Featured Reviews

JW
Replacing ISPF tasks with Topaz Workbench
At this time I do not know of additional improvements from my perspective. Over the last year, Compuware has made major improvements to the JES Explorer, which used to be the biggest negative. There are some tools in ISPF that are not available outside of ISPF right now, things the programmers may need to look at. They still have to go to the green screen for a few things. Since we have the free version of Topaz, we do not have access to the new 3270 emulator that can handle this situation in Eclipse. We have noticed that Topaz supported Eclipse environments are rather old. It would be nice if Topaz were compatible with the more current Eclipse releases. The current version of Eclipse supported by Topaz is Photon.
Efrén Yanez - PeerSpot reviewer
Good analysis and integrations with helpful automation
If I had to comment on an area of ​​improvement or something new in the next or future version, I would like to see AI-assisted coding and impact analysis for mainframes. It is actually a fairly complete product. It is robust with a solid history and is always growing in functionality. It has a high level of maturity, which benefits the users and the administrators. This tool, with its group of options, facilitates the integration with other business processes, which allows you to take advantage of other solutions by incorporating automatic functions.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The smart editor helps because it will code-complete for me. I can see code working a lot faster and I'm able to get things coded in less time."
"It's a modernized development portal and helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform,"
"The most valuable feature of Topaz is Xpediter. It's more flexible than Xpediter through MVS."
"It helps our staff work by speeding up their documentation process."
"From a user perspective, the GUIs make it easier for people to see and interact with files on the mainframe."
"Once we got the configurations and deployment rolled out, it was very stable. I haven't had any major issues with Eclipse or the Topaz Workbench plugins."
"We can develop in parallel today on ISPF, but it's giving us the advantage of the newer interface into the mainframe programming languages that younger programmers can use and are familiar with, rather than using the ISPF green screen."
"We have been able to replicate entire SDLCs for new clients and have them loaded and ready to use Endevor in as little as one week. This was possible with the use of Endevor variables within the processors, so that a single processor was able to function for multiple systems across the entire SDLC."
"The source integrity is the most valuable feature."
"Any question that an auditor has about our processes and approvals is all stored in Endevor."
"Our automation, our development implementations are all automated, which is a huge amount of time savings."
"The source management is excellent."
"It offers security and audit of changes in information assets (software)."
"We can make it do pretty much whatever we want, depending on just how complicated we want it to be, as it is pretty flexible."
"The developers can very easily see what has changed on a particular piece of source code or a program, and others can look at that as well so they can coordinate their changes. It makes it much easier to promote a piece of code up to production."
 

Cons

"The area for improvement is related to the testing tools that are available for unit testing or acceptance testing. I know they have some out there that we are not licensed for at this time, but it seems like some of the Eclipse tools that are used for other programming languages, they're all just built-in and they're a little more intuitive to the developers. Making those testing tools as intuitive as possible, and as integrated as possible into the workbench, would be really beneficial."
"It often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment."
"I'm waiting to see what 19.2 for Topaz looks like, but I have a problem with the JES Explorer right now. It limits you to a certain prefix for job names and there are some groups that have multiple prefixes that they'd like to see all at once in their job names, because of how they work in a group. And they can't see that in the JES Explorer."
"The ability to edit source code that has special characters is limited. The ability to incorporate or convert REXX into macros that are usable under the Topaz software is not there. And the REXX macros that I have developed over 40 years of work are useless, so I have a toolbox I can't use or deploy using the Topaz technology, while I can use it under MVS."
"It's not as intuitive as it should be. In terms of navigation, there is a large training curve for using it. For a millennial it might be better, if they're used to Eclipse. But coming from a non-Eclipse environment and using Eclipse, though I have experience with Eclipse, it might be cumbersome."
"I'm always looking for improvement in things like the documentation, to make things a little bit easier and simpler to understand, a place where people can go to troubleshoot issues."
"It would be good if the vendors would work together or at least have some collaboration between them, so they would know what would work and what wouldn't work. Right now, the way things are working, they're relying on the customer to make everything work."
"It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what."
"One feature of Endevor is its Backout feature. If there is a problem, it can back out the executables. The only problem with that is that it will not back out the source in Endevor. For example, you can do a back out and it will back out the executable to the previous version, but it doesn't back out the source version in Endevor. It would make it much better if when you did a back out of Endevor, it would back out both the source and the executable and keep them in sync."
"Interfacing with some change control products that are not CA's, it's a little glitchy on the approvals of changes. It requires special needs for the users for approvals."
"Endevor can improve parallel development."
"The customer service and support team are not helpful."
"It is still kind of behind the times. It needs to catch up with all the millennials that want a distributed look and feel.​"
"Needs more audit capability when it comes to changes to settings that are made by administrators, as many of these are done through the panels and are therefore not logged as an action against a configuration item."
"The initial setup can be less complex and has room for improvement."
"The solution is very expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of pricing, there isn't an extra charge for the parts of it we use. It comes with the licenses we purchased for other products, so no complaints there. The licensing is built in with the other products that you purchase from Compuware."
"It has saved our developers time and effort when working on documentation, which is now more readable and fluent."
"The only thing I would mention related to the licensing and/or the pricing, is that they have some visualization features in there that are licensed by concurrent users. We're starting to trip up on that. We're looking to probably increase the number of concurrent licenses that we have. But those types of licensing strategies, where they license by concurrent users or the number of seats is confusing for some people. They don't understand why it works sometimes and doesn't work other times."
"In general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
"It's worth the value. The pricing is fairly good, justifiable for the return on investment."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Just make sure if you are going to license, ensure you license the right features.​"
"It's competitively priced and, as far as I know, it's just an enterprise license. We have found it is worth the money."
"The product is expensive."
"Licensing is fairly simple, you don't need multiple licenses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Insurance Company
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Endevor?
The product’s implementation process is complicated and restrictive. It is difficult to find file programs and use a different tool for the setup as the compilation process is all locked up, at lea...
What is your primary use case for Endevor?
We use the product as a source manager and program manager. It helps in controlling the mainframe code and performing data migrations.
 

Also Known As

No data available
CA Endevor Software Change Manager, Endevor Software Change Manager, CA Software Change Manager for Mainframe, CA Endevor SCM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Erste Group
Blue Hill Data Services Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench vs. Endevor and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.