ROC Software (512.336.4200) announced that its two e3000 flagship products can now notify system administrators and operations staff by way of e-mail, pagers, cell phones and Web page alerts. The functionality comes by way of a shared library that talks with existing event handlers and signalers in the products. Maestro, which schedules jobs anywhere on a network and addresses errors in job streams, has more fluency for its Signaler. The module in the latest version now allows Maestro users to receive alerts of errors, or alerts about messages, through a wide range of mediums, including text e-mail messages, text-capable pagers or cellular phones, and Web pages. For example, using CGI or Perl scripts, a failed job will post the associated spoolfile number on a Web page. Operators can then click on the spoolfile number to read the $STDLIST output.

ROC also announced a similar enhancement for BackPack/iX, its e3000-based backup solution formerly known as RoadRunner. BackPack/iX has new capability in its Event Manager to notify users through e-mail, pager, cell phone and Web page mediums about errors in backup jobs, requests for media changes, or when a specific backup volume is requested via user-defined messages. New keywords have been added to the Event Action mechanism, allowing customers to specify the alerts to be sent when utilizing the AFTER keyword. The enhancements to both ROC products are available at no extra cost to customers on current support contracts.