Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) has announced that Canada's largest daily newspaper, the Toronto Star (the Star), has deployed CA's Unicenter to manage its mainframe environments. The CA solution will control software costs while maintaining and improving management capabilities. Through the CA Rescue Program, the Star replaced existing performance management and print management software with Unicenter CA-SYSVIEW Realtime Performance Management and Unicenter CA-Spool Print Management, respectively. Combined, the software replacement reduces the cost of mainframe performance management and mainframe print management software by one-third and brings the Star additional ease-of-use and platform support capabilities. "We're very pleased with the results of our migration to CA's Unicenter solutions," said Rick Takashima, data centre and technical support manager at the Toronto Star. "Although our primary goal was to be more cost-effective, we also achieved added functionality. The new capabilities allow us to focus time and attention away from time-intensive monitoring of mainframe performance and toward activities more strategic to our business." Unicenter CA-SYSVIEW Realtime Performance Management empowers the Star to identify and quickly resolve performance problems and bottlenecks. According to Takashima, extra functionality found in the product simplifies management, reducing work spent on altering the priority of performance paths. "This solution lets us make performance alterations as simply as typing in a change. It makes life easier on the computer operators, since they can do these simple reconfigurations more quickly than before and move on to more time-consuming demands," Takashima added. By migrating to Unicenter CA-Spool Print Management, the Star is now able to route content to printers managed by a TCP/IP platform, a capability that was too expensive to add to the company's previous print and spool management software. "The Toronto Star clearly demonstrates the strength of CA's mainframe software solutions to continually meet customers' technology and business needs," said Jeanette Stroud, vice president of product management, mainframe solutions, CA. "Our portfolio offers proven solutions that enable customers to more effectively manage their mainframe environments -- increasing productivity and reducing their total cost of ownership." CA's flexible software licensing, excellent customer service and technical support helped to seal the three-year software agreement, according to Takashima. CA's Rescue Program allows customers to replace existing software products on both mainframe and distributed platforms with CA solutions that provide superior functionality. Hundreds of companies throughout the world have taken advantage of CA's Rescue Program, which includes services, education and training to speed deployment of the CA solutions. "It's crucial for organizations that support both mainframe and distributed environments to find a cost-effective way to maintain their support for mainframe applications, while deploying an open-architecture that bridges the gap between the two," said Joanne Moretti, general manager, Computer Associates Canada. "We're pleased to provide the Star with solutions that simultaneously allow them to reduce their financial investment in mainframe management software and prepare them strategically for the future."