Lands' End: Replaces CA Legacy Job Scheduler with Universal Automation Center

Lands’ End is a leading multi-channel retailer of clothing, accessories, footwear and home products. Lands’ End is a classic American lifestyle brand with a passion for quality, legendary service and real value. They seek to deliver timeless styles for men, women, kids and the home.

Lands’ End needed to upgrade its legacy CA Workload Automation ESP scheduler to comply with a company-wide strategic decision to migrate all enterprise applications off the z/OS Mainframe environment.

The Lands’ End scheduling team volunteered to be the first in the company to tackle the mainframe modernization initiative. First, they collected, reviewed and ranked a robust list of system requirements. Then, they sent a request for proposal (RFP) to five vendors, including Stonebranch.

“Universal Automation Center had precisely the functionality and capabilities we were looking for in a workload automation solution. The price offered tremendous value, and the in-house knowledge at Stonebranch with regard to transitioning from CA‘s ESP was an additional benefit.”

BRIAN LEMANSKI
Mainframe Systems Programmer, Lands’ End

Following a thorough review of RFP responses and an intense proof of concept (POC), Stonebranch’s Universal Automation Center (UAC) was identified as the ideal automation engine for Lands’ End’s post-mainframe environment.

“Universal Automation Center had precisely the functionality and capabilities we were looking for in a workload automation solution,” says Lands’ End Mainframe Systems Programmer, Brian Lemanski. “The price offered tremendous value, and the in-house knowledge at Stonebranch with regard to transitioning from ESP was an additional benefit.”

“The custom dashboard facilitates correct and successful monitoring. I would definitely recommend Stonebranch to other organizations looking to improve on automation. We are very pleased to be powered by Stonebranch.”

BRIAN LEMANSKI
Mainframe Systems Programmer, Lands’ End

The implementation of the UAC went smoothly, with minimal impact on Lands’ End’s operating environment. The transition from ESP, aided by Stonebranch’s experienced transition team, was verified successfully and completed on schedule.

With Universal Automation Center, the key benefits reaped by Lands’ End were:

• Ease of use
• Improved maintenance
• And the ability to mass update without affecting active servers.

“We are no longer dependent on messages to the z/OS master console, or subject to them being deleted accidentally or disappearing because the console was set to roll/delete,” says Mr. Lemanski. “The custom dashboard facilitates correct and successful monitoring.”

Lands’ End can now change commands or parameters in a waiting or failed task instance. The company can also fail over to the passive controller instantly. When the z/OS LPARs are IPLed, the distributed workload continues to process. Automatic restarts are easier to code, and it’s effortless to identify if a task is defined to restart automatically. None of this functionality was available in their previous job scheduler.

Furthermore, Lands’ End reduced z/OS CPU usage by approximately 19 hours a month by moving their scheduling manager off their z/OS environment. This has resulted in substantial cost savings in addition to the wealth of newly gained functionality.

Most importantly, Lands’ End has become a vibrant advocate in the Stonebranch community. “I would definitely recommend Stonebranch to other organizations looking to improve on automation,” says Mr. Lemanski. “We are very pleased to be powered by Stonebranch.”