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Brussels, February 13, 2007 At the SHARE User Event - an annual gathering of mainframe users - IBM today announced software to enable professionals to more easily program, manage and administer a mainframe system - as well as to increasingly automate the development and deployment of applications for the mainframeenvironment.
IBM continued rolling out the mainframe’s powerful graphical user interface, integrating simple point-and-click controls that manage the system’s performance and resource availability. These graphical tools are for the first time available in Chinese and many other languages, enabling IBM to more easily meet customer demand in emerging markets.
These System z mainframe software upgrades and enhancements follow the October 2006 news of an approximately $100 million dollar, cross-company effort to make the IBM System z mainframe – the world’s most sophisticated business computer - easier to use for a greater number of computer professionals by 2011. The initiative, involving a team of hardware and software experts, leverages IBM’s expertise in automation and systems management.
"These new software upgrades and enhancements will ensure that the System z software stack not only leverages the latest technologies, but continues the trend towards making the mainframe easier to use and administer," said Jim Stallings, general manager for IBM System z. "These capabilities are a large part of why the IBM mainframe continues to gain market share and attract new, non-traditional customers to its committed install base."
Illustrating the comprehensive nature of IBM’s simplification effort, today’s news covers a broad spectrum of disciplines, including security, systems and data management, and virtualization.
System z software enhancements include:
* Consul zSecure Suite - As part of the newly acquired Consul security portfolio, Consul zSecure Suite v1.8 gives z/OS customers an easier way to generate and review XML security audit reports on their mainframe data as well as ensure a more secure operating environment upon migration to z/OS 1.8. The Consul acquisition closed last month and the Consul software is currently being integrated into Tivoli Software portfolio.
* Enhancements to the IBM Tivoli Monitoring family of availability and performance management tools – including: a new release of the IBM OMEGAMON z/OS Management Console. Version 4.1, available at no charge to z/OS customers, adds new GUI workspaces for monitoring z/OS availability and health. The OMEGAMON products feature an improved installation tool and translation into Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish. IBM also continues to migrate key OMEGAMON II® features into OMEGAMON XE functionality.
* z/VM version 5.3 adds expanded scalability enhancements to the industry’s most powerful virtualization technology, z/VM. With this new release, customers can now host the industry’s largest number of virtual images on a single hypervisor, allowing them to further simplify, optimize and consolidate their infrastructures.
Internal testing conducted by IBM reveals that the new virtualization product release can host more than 1,000 virtual images on a single hypervisor. Managing z/VM environments especially with Linux on System z guests is enhanced with the OMEGAMON XE for z/VM and Linux product which works in partnership with the z/VM Performance Toolkit and the IBM Operations Manager for z/VM.
* DB2 9 for z/OS – Generally available in March 2007, this new version of DB2 for z/OS enables high-volume transaction processing for next wave of Web applications with pureXML. It extends capabilities for transaction processing, availability, scalability and improves performance. DB2 9 reduces the total cost of ownership and productivity by helping with regulatory compliance and reducing System z specific skill needs. Substantial SQL and optimization improvements help data warehousing and OLTP reporting.
* WebSphere Developer for System z V7.0 – The new version, released in January 2007, includes new features for accelerating the development and delivery of new business applications and integrating existing core business applications with web services and SOA. New features include a System z Application Pattern Generator, improved SOA access to CICS TS V3.1 and IMS V9, and an upgrade to Eclipse 3.2 which provides a responsive, attractive, and customizable user interface that helps increase developer productivity.
* WebSphere® Service Registry and Repository for z/OS®, V6.0 is an industrial-strength tool that helps achieve more business value from service-oriented architectures (SOA) by enabling better management and governance of services. Through its robust registry and repository capabilities and its tight integration with IBM SOA Foundation, WebSphere Service Registry and Repository for z/OS can be an essential foundational component of an SOA implementation.
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