Friday, October 6, 2006

IBM's Five year march to Mainframe Simplification

z/OS 1.8 has of course lots of new features. When looking at features disappearing from this release there were some features lifted from 'msys for setup' and 'msys for operations' was even withdrawn. Enhancements for 'msys for setup' were planned and a completely new interface and infrastructure were promised for 'msys for operations' . . . for some future release.
Now IBM is shedding some light on this with their 04/10/2006 announcement on this subject. IBM will invest $100 million in the coming years "to enable technology administrators and computer programmers to more easily program, manage and administer a mainframe system -- as well as to increasingly automate the development and deployment of applications for the mainframe environment". Main areas include :
"1) Automated configuration checking -- to make it easier for information technology administrators and computer programmers to predict and avoid technical problems.
2) Modernizing the mainframe user interface -- including network configuration, systems management, and data center hardware configurationdesigned with both existing IT staff and the new generation of IT workers in mind.
3) Improving software asset management technologies -- to make it easier for users to control software costs and, as well, simplify and automate the acquisition of software services.
4) Modernizing the mainframe's development environment with visual tools that enable novices to quickly learn how to program for the mainframe."
For more detail : check out the announcement.

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