In today’s always-on environments, changes to z/OS systems are happening constantly—often dynamically, and often under time pressure.
While most organizations have formal change management processes in place, these processes are frequently reactive rather than preventative. They document what should happen, but don’t always ensure what actually does happen at the system level.
That gap introduces real risk.
Uncontrolled or poorly managed system changes can lead to:
- Service disruptions or outages
- Incomplete audit trails and compliance exposure
- Difficulty identifying and reversing problematic changes
As systems grow more complex and availability expectations increase, these risks become harder to manage through process alone.
Why Traditional Change Management Falls Short
Frameworks such as SOX, GDPR, and DORA emphasize the importance of strong controls—but they don’t prescribe how to enforce those controls across the wide range of tools and methods used in z/OS environments.
In practice, systems programmers must make changes using many different utilities, commands, and interfaces. Without a way to track, control, and validate these changes in real time, organizations are left relying on:
- Manual processes
- After-the-fact auditing
- Trust that approved changes match actual changes
This creates exposure—not just operationally, but from a compliance and governance standpoint.
Moving Toward Real-Time Change Control
To address these challenges, many organizations are shifting toward automated, real-time approaches to change management.
These approaches focus on:
- Intercepting changes as they occur
- Ensuring only authorized changes are executed
- Maintaining a complete, accurate audit trail
- Enabling fast and reliable rollback when needed
For organizations looking to strengthen control without increasing operational burden, a more detailed framework can help guide implementation.
Putting This Into Practice
Action Software International’s flagship product, eventACTIONTM is a comprehensive event handling tool that provides unique and powerful real-time z/OS capabilities by automatically detecting and managing system events as they occur. This event driven approach allows you to automatically and transparently:
- Track, control, backup and restore changes to z/OS system data sets or members
- Track references to z/OS system data sets or members
- Track and control system commands
- Ensure that program products execute only on licensed systems
- Propagate changed data to other systems
Today’s systems programmers must ensure maximum reliability and availability for larger and increasingly complex z/OS environments while staffing levels stay the same or decrease. At the same time, they must satisfy stringent audit and compliance requirements with frameworks such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), ITIL, HIPAA, BASEL II, COBIT and EU-GDPR.
Meeting the Effective Change Management Challenge
An effective change management system will automatically prevent unauthorised changes, track and backup authorised changes, and provide for coordinated back-out of unsuccessful changes. Only an automated system with real-time change interception capabilities can ensure that only the changes that have been authorised are actually made. Similarly, only an automated full-spectrum process with comprehensive tracking and automated backups can provide full documentation of the changes made, as well as a fast-reversal of changes and quick business continuation in the event of a problem.
eventACTION Component Solutions
All eventACTION and ussACTION components record tracking information to a database, where detailed information on tracked events can be retrieved instantly. A powerful compare facility allows analysis of changes. Batch reports, email and a job scheduler facilitate the distribution of tracked events on a regular basis. Together, these capabilities improve systems management productivity and ease the burden of satisfying compliance requirements.
- eventACTION solutions track every change, creating a secure audit trail. They also prevent unauthorised changes from being made. Backups are created when changes are detected and can quickly be restored.
- eventACTION’s Reference Tracker component provides several ways to track what PDS/PDSE members are being used and who is using them. These facilities are useful for tasks such as detecting who is using different versions of products, and library cleanup.
- Command Manager allows tracking and controlling the use of operator commands. The site can specify what commands should be tracked and/or controlled.
- Product Execution Manager can be used to ensure compliance with software agreements by ensuring that products only run on those systems on which they are licenced.
- The Communications Manager and Distribution Manager provide facilities for propagating both data set changes and eventACTION definitions between systems.
- The Event Logger allows real-time propagation of events to an external product such as a SIEM.
- ussACTIONTM provides functionality on z/OS USS (UNIX System Services) similar to that provided by eventACTION on z/OS MVS.
In Summary
Action Software International’s z/OS MVS and z/OS USS change management tools are widely deployed within Global 2000 companies, institutional and government sites worldwide.
EventACTIONTM for z/OS MVS Components:
- Change Tracker
- Change Manager
- Reference Tracker
- Command Manager
- Product Execution Manager
- Communications Manager
- Distribution Manager
- Event Logger
ussACTIONTM for z/OS USS Components:
- Change Tracker
- Change Manager
- Reference Tracker
- Event Logger
Request a free trial or demonstration
Contact Action Software to learn how eventACTION can support your environment.
About Us
Action Software International is a division of Mazda Computer Corporation. Located in Toronto, Canada, Mazda Computer Corporation has been producing superior systems and network management software since 1980. The Company’s products are widely deployed within Global 2000 companies, as well as numerous government and institutional sites. Mazda Computer Corporation’s mission is to provide easy to use high performance systems management solutions to the IBM z/OS system user community, based on highly functional products and exceptional customer service.
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