Looking back on 2015 - Year review

Personally, my year could've been a bit better. I had a hernia operation back in April and I was out for a couple of months from half September till November due to an unlucky fall, but apart from that, I still had a fruitful blogging year. And within a couple of months I can even celebrate my tenth blogging anniversary. But first, let us have a review of 2015.

January started off fiercely with the announcement of the z13. No more EC or BC model and the naming also changed from System z to z Systems. I'm still getting used to that. One of the main messages was : memory, memory, more memory. Customers are easily getting at least half a TB of memory. It's the only way to compete with all the in-memory big data analytics stuff that's out there. But of course it remains, as Ross Mauri (General Manager, z Systems, IBM) points out in relation to the LinuxOne, "an I/O monster". Yeah, we like that ! All compilers immediately bring a new version utilizing the new functionalities of the z13. We like that too. Fast responsiveness.

In February we start setting up our XIV campaign. Not all storage news turns out to be positive as Europe sees a price increase of 15% on all storage components. This seems to be due to the dollar-euro rate and, I must say, we see similar moves with other vendors as well.

The next months we remain focused on our XIV campaign. The RealTime Compression is announced and we also see the software defined version, Spectrum Accelerate, arriving (ZP15-0090). You cannot not have a software defined version in this modern world. And it opens perspectives for smaller customers as well.

In April IBM announces the 'z Systems Collocated Application Pricing for z/OS or in short zCAP (ZP15-0244). It's a new pricing mechanism for new z/OS workloads. In short it allows workloads that you would put in a separate environment for pricing reasons to be priced as if they are running in a dedicated environment while technically integrated with other workloads. I sometimes wonder why IBM is making this so complicated. Can't you just say e.g. if you grow 5% next year, we give you a reduction of 10% on your growth. But I guess this would be way too easy.

In May IBM announces RealTime Compression on the XIV and RealDolmen has its XIV event. We also publish a brochure on XIV : "Powerful Storage with IBM XIV'. You can still download it over here. There was also a preview of z/VSE 6.1 since, you can hardly believe it, z/VSE turn 50 in 2015. And before we have the announcement of the DS8880 later this year, we still have some enhancements to the DS8870 with e.g. the 16Gb FC cards.

In June we see the End of Marketing for z/OS 2.1 move from September to January 2016. Reason for me to also explain the difference between End of Marketing and End of Service. It's surprising how sometimes the most simple terms still create confusion. Perhaps I should start a series on the basics of software pricing. Actually, why not ? June was also the month I found out that the z13 was actually manufactured in my own home town. How about that ? I passed that sign hundreds of times and now all of a sudden it gets a new meaning.

Two interesting events in July. z/OS 2.2 is officially announced. But for those who are more into hardware, the one on the change to the start of the warranty period on IBM material is even more interesting. Before warranty started the first of the month following the installation of the CE. Now it either starts the business day following the completion of the installation or it starts 45 days following the shipment from IBM.

More software pricing news in August. IBM announces Country Multiplex Pricing (CMP) (ZP15-0318). CMP is a new sub-capacity offering that allows clients to use their z Systems capacity within a given country without the constraints of sysplex aggregation rules and many of the limitations of previous reporting methodologies. I'm not aware of any customers using this for the moment in Belgium, but then again we live in a rather small country.

What's more important, IBM also announced LinuxONE in August : a Linux only mainframe introducing new applications, even new operating systems (like Ubuntu) and even more important a new hypervisor : KVM. As I already told you in my article about this, it's a kind of two worlds meeting each other for the first time. Will mainframers be willing to embrace the open world and on the other hand will, let me call them disrespectfully, open world Linux people embrace the mainframe just because it's become a bit more open ? I really don't know, the future will tell us. Hey, that's already my conclusion for this year.

In September we have the new Mainframe Contest in the Benelux (and elsewhere of course) which will eventually lead to another worldwide contest among the best contestants as we saw with the announcement of the z13.
On the tape front we eventually see the announcement that ends direct attachment from mainframe to tape via the tape controllers. In the meantime the last generation, the C07, has become End of Marketing. It became too difficult to support newer generations of drives like the TS1150 or supporting more than 4TB in z/OS. The alternatives are TS7700 and ProtecTIER Mainframe Edition (ME).


In October there are announcements for IMS V14 (ZP15-0539) and for IBM CICS Transaction Server for z/OS 5.3 (ZP15-0495). But what especially caught my attention was of course the new generation of the DS8000 : the DS8880. More power, more performance, a new 19 inch footprint, a change to the HMCs and to the power requirements (only single phase) along with a completely new license pricing mechanism makes this quite an interesting announcement.

z/VSE 6.1 and CICS Transaction Server for z/VSE V2.1 were announced in November. For the first time in 16 years (that means since last century in 1999) we have a new version of CICS for z/VSE.

The last announcement I want to mention was already in November but became available in December : the new IBM XIV Gen3 model 314. The focus is on the improvement of RealTime Compression. Therefore CPU and SSD cache capacity are doubled. Playing advocate of the devil one might wonder how earlier models coped with this as IBM always told us RealTime Compression ran on those machines with no performance loss either ?

Well, that's it for 2015. Any predictions for 2016 ? Not really, or rather an open question from an open mind. Last year I mentioned that OpenStack was here to stay and I guess that is pretty much the case, but today I'm, let's say, a bit confused. We see a lot of change towards cloud or hybrid cloud not only in the market but we, at RealDolmen, as a service provider are also heavily investing in it. I'm no longer doing infrastructure, I'm part of the hybrid cloud team. And I'm glad about that, it's the way to go, but where does that leave the mainframe in a world of dockers, containers, software defined environments . . . ? I guess we'll just have to find out in 2016. Perhaps it will just disappear . . . disappear into the cloud . . . and . . . be used more then ever.

Looking back on 2014 - Year Review

Can you imagine, no mainframe announcement in 2014, the year the mainframe turned 50. Would that suggest this was a boring year. Not at all.

January started out with a warning for every one still on z/OS 1.12 or even lower. You're way behind if you still have to order z/OS 1.13 and January 17 was the last day it could be ordered. Next to that there were a couple of Flashes concerning problems with DS8000 boxes. But of course right from the start of the year we paid a lot of attention to the anniversary of the mainframe turning 50.

In February IBM announced IBM Wave for z/VM : it's a "virtualization management software product that provides management, administration, provisioning, and enables automation of Linux virtual servers in a z/VM environment" making your life a lot easier. Next to that there was this one : "As a part of IBM maintenance services, maintenance charges will now apply for processing capacity activated through On/Off CoD". That wasn't the case until then. I was less impressed by the IBM Redbooks mobile app. I don't know what it is, I tested it back then, tested it again a couple of weeks ago, but I personally prefer my redbooks on my laptop. Call it a personal preference.

In March and April the tension is mounting for all kinds of anniversary festivities. Memorial coins were handed out, but of course the star of the show was the mainframe itself. We could not stay behind and we came with a special anniversary edition of our System z Newsletter. One of the articles I wrote and also published in this blog was about OpenStack. If you've never heard of OpenStack, have a look at it. I think the article is still relevant, allthough I wrote it myself. And certainly OpenStack itself is.


In May I once again pointed out the two-phased End of Marketing for the z114 and the z196. One tends to forget it, but be aware : after June 30, 2015 not one upgrade nor downgrade is still possible for those machines. IBM also announces its next generation, let me call them, DS8870 Flash Systems. At the beginning of the month, IBM also announced its new Mobile Workload Pricing for z/OS. It's a new subcapacity pricing giving you reductions on softwares when you are running Mobile trasactions on the mainframe. It was one of the topics that certainly drew a lot of attention during the System z technical university in Budapest.

In June I pointed out that as of z/OS 1.12 there was no longer the well-known lifecycle extension. It was kind of replaced by the new 'extended support' : a "fee-based corrective service to users who have not completed their migration to a newer z/OS release" for a period of 3 years. There were a number of GSE Working Group meetings in June and I must say the working groups thrived throughout the year. The Young Professionals group stays very active as well. A pity we didn't see anything from the earlier announced 'Ladies' group. Or they just didn't tell it to us ?

July is traditionally a busy month for big announcements the last couple of years. This year however, no new mainframe was announced. IBM must've heard my complaint that I have to postpone my holiday each time because of these announcements :-) . In the meantime I took the opportunity to dig a little bit deeper into the new Mobile Workload Pricing for z/OS and had some great assistance for this by David Chase from IBM. You can read all the details about it over here.

On the storage front, in August an announcement confirms officially what had already been clear for a while now : IBM will no longer sell its nSeries or NetApp equipment via OEM. StorWize should replace these offerings.
There were also some hardware and software witdrawals in August. Regarding hardware, anything related to attachment to zBX from the z196 and z114 is withdrawn from marketing. From a software point of view IBM announces EOS dates for z/VSE 5.1.1 (6/30/2016) , DB2 10 (9/30/2017) and a new one for z/VM 5.4 (ZP14-0382).

I must admit my blogging frequency dropped significantly after August, but of course there's a reason for this. I'm not solely involved in mainframe business at my company. I also assist in making larger propositions and we had a couple of really big ones taking up most of my time for the latter part of the year. But don't worry. Allthough I haven't blogged about everything, I can still give you the big picture for the last part of the year.

September comes and look, it's the first time I mention price changes (ZA14-1142) this year. VWLC, AWLC, EWLC, AEWLC and PSLC pricings will increase by about 4% from January, 1 2015 onwards. z/OS version 1 will be aligned with version 2 and this means an increase of about 5%.
And in September a new Master the Mainframe contest is finally announced again for the Benelux. The contest is running for the moment and ends on January 14, 2015. You can follow it on Facebook as well.

We have quite interesting storage announcements in October. First of all there's the announcement of the new TS1150 Tape Drive (ZG14-0272) with a native capacity of 10TB as opposed to 4TB for the TS1140. We can only repeat it over and over again : tape is not dead.The TS1150 is of course also supported by the new tape library that was announced already in May as the successor of the TS3500 : the TS4500 (ZG14-0114). In short this library has up to 3.3X the slot density of a TS3500, up to 2.2 PB native capacity in a single frame, two I/O Stations and it can now grow left or right of the base frame.
Last but not least there's also a new release of the DS8000 with some exciting features (ZG14-0280,ZG14-0281). There had been talk about before, but now it's there : the Multiple Target Peer to Peer Remote Copy where a single volume can be the source for more than one remote copy relationship. Other highlights : Easy Tier version 7 and zHyperWrite which reduces up to 43% of the DB2 log write time. And The DS8870 is also enabled for cloud with OpenStack support.
 
November was a quiet month and I only note some price changes. There's a 7% increase for '5648-054 - IBM CICS Transaction Server for VM/VSE' from March 15, 2015 onwards. Another one is for '5655-W41 - IBM DB2 Sort for z/OS S&S', '5697-DUS - IBM DB2 Utilities Solution Pack for z/OS S&S' and '5698-Z10IBM Tivoli Advanced Storage Management Suite for z/OS S&S'. Have a look at the announcement : some price increases are considerable.

In December there's an announcement indicating that the TS7700 offers support for up to 496 virtual tape drives in a single system in Release 3.2. And that's about it for 2014.

Conclusion ?

I see it everywhere and not only in the mainframe world, albeit sometimes in vendor specific offerings, but I can tell you, OpenStack is here and it's here to stay. We've all seen how Linux started off, how it was looked at in the beginning and where it's standing now. Well, I predict a similar trajectory for OpenStack. I think IBM did a good thing to embrace it from the very beginning. Will I be right about this ? Well come and see next year when I blog more about it . . .

Looking back on 2013 - Year Review

Well here we are. Another year's gone. And this is already my seventh Year Review for this blog. Let's find out whether there were some eye-catching or surprising evolutions during 2013.

January started out rather calmly but at least there was some good news about the IBM System z revenue. The last quarter of 2012 showed a revenue increase for mainframe server products of 56% compared to the year before.

In February we have a preview of z/VM 6.3 and there's a pre-announcement of z/OS 2.1. You know with the new release scheme you still have quite some time before you really have to be on z/OS 2.1. But perhaps you shouldn't feel too comfortable about that because since the announcement of the zBC12 we see that lots of functions become only fully available when you are on z/OS 2.1. So don't stay too long on z/OS V1 as it might become a showstopper for you.
Also in February there was an announcement on XIV bringing the SSD read cache at 6TB. By the end of the year this will even be increased to 12TB with 800GB SSD disks. Next to that the 10GbE ports were introduced.
I just want to point out some withdrawals from support : z/VSE 4.3 and one that's still in the pipeline COBOL for z/OS V4.1 (5655-S71) support ends April 30, 2014.

March passed by rather quietely but in April we had at least a couple of interesting annoucements. IBM Enterprise Cobol for z/OS V5.1 is announced.  And of course a year review wouldn't be complete without any reference to price changes from IBM. We begin with the usual, annual price changes. And at the end of the month there's some good news too in that matter : IBM announces CICS TS for z/OS Value Unit Edition (VUE) V5.1. It's a kind of OTC or IPLA software mechanism instead of the MLC pricing. It should help you lower your CICS TS cost, provided that it turns in a zNALC LPAR.
Other good news : in Belgium we see a new GSE working group : GSE Young Professionals. By now it has had two successful meetings.

In June we had the 30th anniversary of DB2. This, deservedly, gets quite a lot of attention. On the other hand, some interesting End of Supports amongst which the most notorious must be IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for z/OS V5.5 (5698-A13). On the storage side there's release 7.1 which is announced for the DS8870. Lots of attention goes to Easy Tier. Easy Tier Application gives the administrator some influence over the Easy Tier automatic processes as he can sort of overrule them for specific cases. Easy Tier Heat Map transfer helps you keep the same performance on your D/R box. Definitely some nice new features.
As of June 30, the z10 is now completely End of Marketing : no more MES upgrades to these systems. The only way is up to the next generations.

July is traditionally a busy month for big announcements the last couple of years. This time was no exception. As expected, the zBC12 was announced on July 23 along with zEC12 GA2. How can you summarize this ? Some new stuff : two new cards : the RoCE and the zEDC card. A new processor, IFP, though transparant for the customer.  Lower software pricing with a price reduction of 4% to 5% on the most important softwares. And there's a new 2:1 ratio for zIIPs and zAAPs.
Together with this hardware announcements there were also some software announcements. Finally, there's the official announcement of z/OS 2.1, z/VM 6.3 and PL/I for z/OS 4.4.
End of Marketing was also announced for the z196 and the z114. In short : no more hardware upgrades after June 30, 2014 and no more MES upgrades after June 30, 2015. You might know by now I'm not always entirely happy with those short End of Marketing ranges for the latest generations of mainframes.

In August I pointed out some interesting documents that are still relevant. The first one was the z/OS 2.1 Migration Guide. Who wouldn't want to bookmark this one for future use ? The second one was the return of the Hot Topics Newsletter with also lots of information on z/OS 2.1.

In September I mentioned BMC's 8th Annual Global Mainframe Survey. The key takeaway is that "the mainframe will continue to play a critical role as a scalable platform delivering crucial computing power in a world where business users expect access anytime, anywhere, without regard to the data volume and velocity required behind the scenes".
There was another DS8000 announcement with the withdrawal of some hardware features. Bottom line it meant that the DS8100 and the DS8300 were End of Marketing on all fronts, which left them at least a (nice marketing) life span of 9 years.
One other thing that kept surfacing time and again was the importance of Openstack for IBM. One example : the Unified Resource Manager was attributed an important role in managing the z/VM hypervisor and the virtual servers it supports for z/VM 6.2. For z/VM 6.3 things are already quite different : zManager is stabilized (we know what this means) and Openstack comes fully in the picture. z/VM V6.3 is "the first System z operating environment that can be managed with these open cloud architecture-based interfaces". I have the impression that Openstack is here to stay and that we'll see more of it in 2014.

Quite interesting announcements in October too. IBM announces DB2 11 and IMS 13. What's nice about those (next to the technical features of course) is that they get the same pricing as their predecessors. How about that ? No more whining about price increases. And you actually win twice. IMS follows DB2 in its efforts to increase functionalities with new releases and still drop the processor utilisation. And DB2 has proven with DB2 10 that this is more than just marketing talk. Our customers actually see the difference.

In November there's another DS8000 announcement with release V7.2 for DS8870. The DS8870 ships from now on with the Power7+ processor. This provides the DS8000 once again with a significant performance enhancement. With release 7.2 we also see the introduction of an all flash drive configuration. There are also two new disk models : the 1.2TB 10k rpm SAS drives and the 4TB 7.2k rpm nearline SAS drives. At the same time these disks are the replacements for the 900GB and the 3TB disks that are withdrawn from marketing and by now already no longer available.

In December there's yet another new GSE Working group here in Belgium : the GSE ladies. The primary objective of this group is to take away all the prejudices that people still have about ICT ladies and show young women the way to a career in IT. There were not that many announcements but I put up a bunch of reference materials to all kinds of information.

Well, that's all folks. Stephen L. Blinick from IBM gave me a wonderful description of the DS8000 a couple of months ago. It has actually remained the very same machine for 10 years. And yet it has tremendously evolved over those same 10 years adapting to the new IT world and its demands. Well, I think you can say the same for the mainframe. But then for a bit longer period. You know we celebrate its 50th anniversary on April 7 next year. For its 40th anniversary there was the announcement of the z890 on April 7, 2004. I wonder whether IBM has something up its sleeve for the 50th anniversary.

To be continued . . .

Looking back on 2012 - Year Review

Just try to sum up three important facts/evolutions that colored the mainframe world in 2012. With which ones do you come up in a split second ? I had some trouble you know. Was 2012 a rather quiet year for mainframe ? Well there's of course the announcement of the zEC12, oh yes, and there's the pre announcement of z/OS V2 and . . . and . . . Big Data perhaps ? Or something else ?
Well, let's find out.

My first post in January was about a belated New Years present by IBM with a price change for z/OS for VWLC and AWLC customers. In hindsight I think this was a more important price raise than the FWLC price raise later this year that caused a lot more of comment. I also broadened my perspective on storage. As I said it back then "I can no longer pretend to write about high-end storage attached to mainframe. There's a whole range of midrange storage devices that can also connect to this very mainframe and zBX". So I also started writing about XIV, StorWize ... and no longer just about DASD. One other thing I see throughout this year is that the customer Working Groups (especially GSE in Belgium) usually draw a lot of people and do one heck of a job. They also try to more and more involve young professionals into this. IBM also launches a try before you buy version of CICS TS 4.2.

In February we learn that the End of Support date of DB2 for z/OS 9.1 is set on June 27, 2014. For z/VM there's an EOS date for z/VM 6.1 : April 30, 2013. So, z/VM 5.4 outlasts z/VM 6.1 with half a year. We also had our first major storage announcement in February with Gen 3.1 of XIV. The most important feature of XIV Gen 3.1 is the introduction of SSD read cache.

In March Jeff Magdall, z/OS program leader from IBM, held the MVS Program Opening Keynote at Share and stated that the next z/OS releases would have a 2-year release scheme instead of the yearly releases up to now. And if you didn't get your copy of the source of true wisdom back then it's still there. I'm talking about the CA Technologies Reference Guide for DB2 10 for z/OS.

In April we got clarity about z/OS with a pre-announcement of z/OS 2. z/OS 2.1 will be released in the second half of 2013 and the current n-2 support for migration remains. Standard support is prolonged to 5 years. Price changes, now for Cobol V3 and Enterprise PL/I V3 follow the same train of thoughts as before. IBM has continuously added functionalities to these versions without significant price increases. Now it wants to level the prices with the more recent versions of the products. There were also some enhancements to z/VSE 5.1. Hardware withdrawal for the DS8700 is also announced this month. Mind you, it's only the base frame. This prevents you from buying new DS8700 boxes but you can still upgrade existing ones. And for those still on DB2 V8, by the end of the month the end of support date is reached.

May did not bring us a lot of new things. There was only an announcement on the DS8000 making clear if you're still on DS8100 or DS8300, it's time to move on as you can no longer order expansion frames nor practically anything else for them. Still there was an anniversary to celebrate in May : IBM Tape turned 60 and you can summarize this in a few words : "60 years of innovation – and counting".

More, no, a lot of storage announcements in June on XIV, SVC, StorWize, TPC and also DS8000. And, of course, it's especially the DS8000 statements of direction that caught our attention : Easy Tier will extend smart data placement intelligence to use server resources, communicating with servers to place hot data in server SSD cache to optimize performance. DS8000 will use fast, high-density SSD cache modules to enhance performance.and there will be an Easy Tier support for application APIs enabling servers to communicate with storage so storage can become aware of application workload needs and use that to optimize data placement. I can't wait to see this in action.

July and August seemed to be relatively quiet mainframe months but you know what they say : the sting is in the tail. But before that we should of course also mention that z/VM turned 40 in August and, more than ever, it stays alive and kicking. You know what they say : life begins at 40 ! And to complete this, support for z/VM 5.4 is prolonged. "z/VM V5.4 will continue to be supported until December 31, 2014, or until the z9 EC and z9 BC are withdrawn from support, whichever is later".
The most important announcement of August, and actually of 2012, was the announcement of the zEnterprise EC12 or zEC12. I'm nog going into too much detail, you can read everything over here, but I think it's reasonable to say that it's kind of a logical evolution of the z196 with the addition of two new features : Flash Express and IBM zAware. Not much news to offer on zBX, which only feeds some rumors that it might eventually be replaced by or merged with the new PureSystems of IBM. Something which is afterwards strongly contradicted by IBM. And surprise : there is no new pricing mechanism, allthough MLC software prices can go down up to 7%. That, we must say, is good pricing news of course.

In September we had another price 'change' for some CICS and IMS products. And in Belgium we had, yet again, a sucessful version of the Total Solutions Event at the IBM Forum. Don't forget to mark the days for next year's event : September 24 to 26, 2013.

Quite a lot of announcements in October. I start off with the new DS8870 which promises three times more performance than the previous version. It has a new Power 7 processor supporting a lot more cores and cache. But let's move on. Next one is the announcement of IDAA for z/OS V3.1. The most striking new things : you can put tables on the IDAA without keeping a copy in DB2. So it acts like a kind of archive, of very fast archive, that is. Secondly there's an incremental update feature giving you near real-time accessability instead of 'outdated' copies. Also CICS Transaction Server V5.1 is announced in October. And just like we saw with CICS TS 4.2 in January, it also gets a developer trial version. And there's more : the Early Support Program (ESP) for DB2 11 is announced. GA should be somewhere in 2013. No time to waste : Quality Partnership Program (QPP) for IMS 13 is also announced. This is also some kind of ESP. So also there, estimated GA in 2013. The last announcement is the Withdrawal from Marketing of the base frame of the DS8800. This means, similar to what we saw with the DS8700 in April, that you can no longer order a new DS8800 but you can still order all other components like expansion frames, disk capacity . . .

In November quite a lot of comments popped up about the FWLC price change IBM announced going as far as stating that customers would see a raise of their software bill of about 10%. I begged to differ there because definitely not all customers are affected and as far as I can see, only a small portion of their stack is taken into account making it more like a 0.5% price increase.
For the rest November and December were rather quiet months. I followed my first twitter mainframe debate (#mainframedebate). I'll let you know when there's another one, because it's actually quite interesting as lots of different people are there at the same moment. Just don't do like me by asking questions on customer experiences for products that haven't GA'd yet (FlashExpress that was).

Well, that's all folks. So, let me end by repeating my question : try to sum up three important facts/evolutions that colored the mainframe world in 2012. With which ones do you come up in a split second ? Well ? Or was it a quiet year after all ?

Wait a second, you'll say. Where are the 2013 predictions ? Well, it's not because I blog and, I admit, sometimes think about those things, that I have a crystal ball. I mentioned Big Data at the beginning but didn't really talk about it any further. Well, it's perhaps because I don't really like all those Big Words, but I'm definitely looking forward to evolutions in Data Warehousing and what role IDAA will have in this. Furthermore I'm curious on how the zBX story will continue, because let's be honest, we haven't seen much evolution here in 2012. And yes, I guess there will be a zBC12 in 2013.

To be continued . . .

Looking Back on 2011 - Year Review

Well, another year's gone by and it's time to take a last look back on 2011. If you want the management summary now, I'd say : z114, heybrid computing, Linux and Windows on zBX. But let's not rush and just start off with January. First of all we saw the new IWP pricing : if you have running some IPLA software in an LPAR (actually it's restricted to some Websphere products) then you might see a reduction of the MSUs of some MLC softwares (CICS, IMS) that are also running in that same LPAR. On the other hand, there were quite some software price raises this year. It started off with CICS TS V3 and some Websphere, Tivoli and DB2 IPLA software. And Windows on zBX was mentioned for the first time.

In February I found out how important social networking can be ànd how willing people still are to help each other. I got news from IBM Techline that you always have to have SSD in your DS8000 to use Easy Tier, even the manual mode. In just a couple of days Nick Clayton (IBM) and Antony Vandewerdt (IBM, Aussie Storage Blog) contradicted this. Thanks, guys. You could actually hear my sigh of relief that I hadn't been telling any lies to my customers. IBM also changed its statement of direction on ESCON telling us that after the z196 (and implicitely the, yet to be announced, z114) ESCON would be a thing of the past. No carry forward either. Period.

I still remember that in March I was really excited about the preview of z/OS 1.13. This had to do with changes to the Batch Runtime environment and lots of improvements/additions to z/OSMF with software deployment, Storage DASD management and Capacity Provisioning. And if I saw a positive thing about social media and such in February, the zPrime Saga gave us a downside of all this. Alan Radding aka DancingDinosaur wrote a very enthousiastic piece on zPrime mentioning really amazing savings for one company. But the same day the post had already dsiappeared. So beware, you can almost never delete all traces of anything you wrote. I had the post in my feed reader and you can't come and delete a feed on every computer that's out there.

In April I wrote an extensive piece on the DataPower appliance on zBX (XI50z). I still think these 'accelerators' are an added value to the hybrid zEnterprise and you can be sure there's more to come of these. The mantra of this year (whether you like it or not) : some more price 'changes', this time on the zSecure products and all FWLC products. Further, there's the announcement of CICS TS V4.2 and a clear statement of direction by IBM to deliver Linux on zBX in Q3 and Windows on zBX in Q4, which they did. There was also a preview of z/VSE V5.1 and we saw the first DB2night shows for z/OS.

May gave us the first wave of storage announcements of 2011 with innovations on nearly every mainframe related storage component. The DS8000, which by now definitely only means DS8700 and DS8800 gets Easy Tier V2, the priority manager ... We also had the new TS1140 tape drive.

In June we finally see 'The End' for zPrime and we can now put the link to our February story. zPrime has also become a thing of the past. And of course there was some great news for our own company. From now on, with the support of IBM, we're teaming together with Sogeti for mainframe opportunities where we both can mean an added value for each other.

Why IBM chooses July to announce a new zEnterprise system is totally unclear to me. Every one (at least in Europe) is on vacation in that period. Still, great announcement of the z114 which gives the Business Class customers also the opportunity to have a real zEnterprise System. I'm not going into too much detail (you can read everything over here) but, when we take a look at the really new stuff, it introduces the new PCIe I/O drawer and the Intel Blades for the zBX. There is no technology dividend for the z114 but there's a new and better pricing : AEWLC. But, better is a relative word because, here we go again, it sets off against a price raise of 5% for all EWLC customers starting January 2012. Next to that there's also the announcement of the new 3592 Model C07 tape controller which now includes library management functions. This makes the 3953-L05 Library Manager unnecessary for any mainframe customer.

After all these announcements August and September were really calm months. We saw the obvious thing happen : the 3953-L05 Library Manager was actually withdrawn from marketing. Just like last year, the Total Solution event for System z organized at the IBM forum was a success and there are already plans in place for a new edition in 2012.

October was also quite eventful this year. There were the software announcements of Enterprise PL/I for z/OS V4.2 and of (who said this was old and obsolete ?) IMS 12 Transaction and Database server. On with the storage announcements with XIV Gen3 with support of 3TB SAS drives and a mobile monitoring dashboard for iPad. We also see StorWize expanded to the StorWize Unified System supporting NFS/CIFS/FTP/HTTPS/SCP file protocols in addition to existing block protocols (iSCSI and FCP). DS8000 gets some new features supporting an additional frame on the DS8800, supporting three drive tiers for Easy Tier and I/O Priority support for System z volumes. And don't forget the new mainframe announcements with Windows on zBX, IDAA (IBM's DB2 Analytics Accelerator) and, last but not least, the Tivoli Storage Manager for z/OS Media making it possible to keep using z/OS FICON attached storage when migrating TSM to another environment.

As last year, November and December were rather quiet months. So I took the opportunity to write a bit more detailed on the Tivoli Storage Manager for z/OS Media and IBM's DB2 Analytics Accelerator (IDAA).

Conclusion ?
Software pricing is always a delicate story but it surely represents the larger amount of the mainframe cost. And I can tell you that most customers weren't really happy with all the price 'changes' that came their way in 2011. Especially the 5% price raise on the EWLC pricing was not very kindly received. Even if it's justifiable, you know how it goes : it's the perception that counts.

Here's a great role for hybrid computing. Now that zBX is also available on the Business Class Systems, I think that 2012 will be a crucial year for the breakthrough of it. We have more than a year of experience with it on the z196 and with that experience it's time to convince each and every manager that this could really be a valid alternative for lots of management problems. And I also think accelerators will play an important role in this. The more mainframe related workload we can run on the zBX, the easier it gets to justify this is a really cost effective platform.

That's why I still find it a wrong signal to the customers to put the IDAA on a separate Netezza box. I'd rather have seen IBM waited a bit longer and came up with a really integrated solution. How can you justify to your management you will run DataPower on a zBX and the successor of Smart Analytics Optimizer on a separate box ?

Well, that's it for 2011. Looking forward to 2012 and I hope you will join me in the coming year too.

Looking back on 2010 - Year Review

Well, another year's gone by and it's time to take a last look back on 2010. To us mainframers, I guess the main event was the announcement of the new zEnterprise this summer as it introduces a whole new concept to the (not only) mainframe world. Still the year started out rather calmly as we did not really see any significant announcements or things happening in January. Or we could mention the ever continuing legal saga between Neon and IBM over Neon's zPrime (you can find a little update over here).

But February already makes up for lack of interesting news. First of all, DB2 10 goes beta and there's a preview announcement of z/OS 1.12 and also an enhanced z/OSMF 1.12. Then there's ProtecTIER Deduplication Gateway, the virtual tape solution that emulates tape drives and writes the data to an attached disk array, which now comes available for System z as well. And, strangely enough I also pay some attention to the Power7 engine, allthough I didn't know then, it would become part of a new mainframe announcement, later on this year. Next to that, we see the first signs that the DS8100, DS8300 as well as the DS6000 will gently be replaced by the DS8700 in 2010.

If you want to read some more on ProtectTIER deduplication for mainframe, I payed some more attention to it in a March post. In that month there was also the creation of the new GSE Belux site, which is now used by almost every working group and contains lots of interesting information. We also see that z/OS 1.12 will no longer be available on 34xx tapes.

In April there are quite some storage announcements. In the year of its 10th anniversary, LTO comes with the fifth generation with 1.5TB of native capacity and up to 140 MB/sec native transfer rates. We also have a new DS8700 announcement with 600GB FC drives, 2TB SATA drives. But certainly the most important part of the announcement is Easy Tier with its automatic and manual modes. It takes care of automatic relocation of hot data to SSD drives and it also makes lots of volume migrations non-disruptive. Next to that ProtecTIER now offers many-to-one replication and XIV introduces 2TB SATA drives hereby doubling its capacity.

May shows us it's becoming a habit to add 2 years of extra (priced) support called Lifecycle Extension to the z/OS version that will go out of support in September, so this time for z/OS 1.9. It's also becoming clear that DS6800, DS8100 and DS8300 will be phased out. By the end of 2010 limited upgrades and disk types remain available. And as most of the customers are starting to pay (heavily) on maintenance by now, the message is clear, no ? We see a steady capacity growth of the TS7740 en TS7720 Virtualization Engines, too. BMC also did some catching up with the announcement that quite some additional products (focusing on DB2 utilities) will start using the zIIP from now on.

In June we learn about a new APAR (APAR PM12256) that should allow you to improve the redirection of DRDA workload over TCP/IP to the zIIP from some 45%-50% to about 60%. And you know what : it actually did ! Furthermore VTFM (Virtual Tape Facility for Mainframe Systems) is now also supporting zIIP for most of its workload. VTFM acts as a virtual tape library kind of like CA-VTape that already supported the zIIP pretty much from the beginning. IBM also announced the End of Marketing of their smaller TS3400 Tape Library without offering a replacement.

In July IBM managed to re-arrange my vacation plans by announcing the zEnterprise on July 22, 2010. A small offer for "A new dimension in computing". The zEnterprise did not only bring us a new mainframe (z196), it also introduced the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX) and the IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager. Together they form the zEnterprise System. For the moment the zBX contains Power7 Blades and/or the Smart Analytics Optimizer. The goal is to use the mainframe as a central system to manage the heterogeneous platforms which are connected to it. In the beginning we will be mainly talking about managing, setting up, monitoring and automating these systems. But in the end we should be talking about a common policy based Workload Management. This will be realized through the IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager. Oh, and there was also a new MLC pricing especially for the z196 : AWLC (Advanced Workload License Charge). The larger the customer, the higher the benefit. There's no longer a so-called technology dividend.

August and September were pretty calm after all the announcements in July. I even forgot to mention software announcements on z/OS 1.12, z/OSMF 1.12, z/VM 6.1, DS8700 (z/OS Distributed Data Backup) and PL/I for z/OS V4.1. Some of them were discussed in our latest Realdolmen System z e-zine which also came out in August. PL/I for example should now use less resources than its predecessor as it's using the new instructions on the z196. This seems to become a goal for IBM when launching new software : better performance without increased CPU usage. Which often used to be the opposite in the past.
The Total Solution event for System z organized at the IBM forum was a success and will surely be repeated in 2011.

October was also quite eventful this year. First there were some software announcements like z/VSE 4.3 and the IMS 12 Quality Partnership program (QPP). But the most important software announcement was of course the announcement of DB2 10. And here I continue the story I started with PL/I : "Just by REBINDing you should obtain out-of-the-box CPU savings ranging from 5% to 10% for traditional workloads up to 20% for some specific workloads". Read all the further details over here. Oh, and it's possible to migrate straight from DB2 V8.
On the hardware part there's more exciting news : the DS8800 is announced. I would summarize by saying : faster processor, faster connectivity and larger capacity on a smaller (hence more cost-efficient) footprint. But the message is clear : despite everything said and written, the DS8000 is here to stay for quite some time. Continuity prevails.
Less exciting news on the other hand : zBX will not become available for the z10.

Actually, November and December were rather quiet months. There was an announcement of a price increase for DB2 V8. Next to that there were also some updates on the status of the zPrime and TurboHercules cases, not that there was suddenly anything spectacular to mention.

Conclusion ?
Well, actually just some general remarks. First of all not only LTO had its 10th anniversary this year. Linux on z was also introduced ten years ago in 2000. And I think, when we see the zEnterprise today, that it's partially building on the success of the IFL and the other specialty engines. I'd say Smart Analytics Optimizer is the first System z specialty engine out of the box. So I can only fully support the direction IBM is taking with this zEnterprise. And of course the question raises : will we see a zEnteprise BC next year ? I guess so.

Second, what about cloud ? In your blog, not very present it is, Yoda would say. Well, it actually is, I think, I just don't like the term itself and I still have the feeling it's just a new name for things we've been doing for years (decennia). So I'd like to repeat a quote from James Governor's blog on this : "The next time someone tries to take you through 30 slides explaining the cloud you can just nod sagely, and say… “ohhhh. you mean servers, middleware and apps. Yeah I get it".”

And thirdly I would like to conclude with a trend I certainly like a lot. IBM has shown over the past year that it's thinking cross-brand and cross-product more than ever. Take e.g. StorWize : it introduces Easy Tier from the DS8000 and it takes the easy-to-use graphical interface of the XIV. Taking the strong points of one technology and not being afraid to use them in another product may continue to deliver some promising results in the future. Need I mention the zEnterprise in this context ?

Well, that's it for 2010. Looking forward to 2011 and I hope you will join me in the coming year too.

Looking back on 2009 - Year Review

Cloud, Dynamic Infrastructure, economical crisis, Smarter Planet, energy savings, zPrime, Solution Editions, SaaS (Software as a Service). Ok, I admit, I'm just trying to get as many hits from Google putting all the (excuse me) buzzwords of the year 2009 together. Perhaps I should add Twitter as well, no ? Just kidding, nevertheless, I think these terms pretty well sum up any IBM Mainframe Review for 2009. Let's get into some more detail looking month by month what happened on the mainframe front.

January. After IBM took over PSI in July 2008 and withdrew the FLEX-ES license for ISVs, no wonder voices were raised that IBM now really had a mainframe monopoly. T3 files an antitrust complaint against IBM, which will later in fall be dismissed by a federal judge. But at the same time however, the Department of Justice will start an investigation whether IBM really holds a mainframe monopoly.

In February IBM introduces Dynamic Infrastructure as the successor to New Enterprise Data Center as this was a bit too focused on (mainly) a green Data Center only. And throughout 2009 Dynamic Infrastructure turns out to be the underlying vision for most announcements with its three cornerstones : Improve Service, Reduce Cost and Manage Risk.
In February we also see a first of a series of announcements for the DS8000 with full disk encryption, Solid State drives, Remote Pair FlashCopy ...
We also proved that mainframe definitely isn't dead, not even for traditional workload as we won the 'STG Winback of 2008' for a customer who migrated its IDMS applications from a Siemens platform to the z10.

IBM announced GDPS V3.6 in March with improved coordinated disaster recovery across heterogeneous platforms, increased availability and simplified management.
We also hear the first buzz about Windows on mainframe from a company called Mantissa with its z/VOS application. This should run as a sort of emulation on top of z/VM, but hasn't been brought to market as far as I know.
Softek LDMF or zDMF as it's called now goes to V3.2 eliminating some of the disruptive actions like e.g. for DB2 datasets.

In April, CA introduces its "Mainframe 2.0 strategy and how it will transform mainframe management at your organization". This will be followed by CA's May Mainframe Madness (which, by the way, will recur this year) and CA's Mainframe Software Manager product, simplifying software installation and management for both experienced and new mainframe system engineers.
We also see the next round of Dynamic Infrastructure announcements on April 28, 2009. Talking about the three cornerstones to mainframe customers, we all came pretty much to the same conclusion as IBM : "System z’s core competencies align with a Dynamic Infrastructure Today". IBM also explained what this meant for the future of System z : we will not only see it as a central data repository but also as the central management platform for the entire IT-environment. It talks about Application Serving Blades and Accelerators, which can both be seen as non-z extensions of the well-known specialty engines. One example is the Smart Analytics Optimizer which is expected to be announced in 2010.
What were the actual announcements also made on April 28, 2009 : z/VSE 4.2, TSPC (Tivoli Storage Proeductivity Center) 4.1, CICS Transaction Server for z/OS 4.1 and some enhancements for z10 EC and z10 BC.

May was a bit calmer so I took the opportunity to have a look at some of the 'new' networking tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Let's say I'm no Facebook fan, but although I had my doubts about Twitter, I'm still tweeting though I mainly do so to automatically announce my new blog posts. Still, I've found it useful to pick up some first hand information on events and new announcements from the people I follow.

I know, CA's May Mainframe Madness was the month before but the tour only hit Belgium in June. It also was a good occasion to bring a CA survey back under the attention stating "that while on average 50% of all corporate critical data are on the mainframe, the cost on average is only 19% of the total IT-budget". CA also announces support for the zIIP for Datacom. Talking about specialty engines, June brings us the first mention of zPrime, some month before it's actually announced.

In July Neon Software introduces zPrime. zPrime enables mainframe customers to offload more traditional workload to the specialty engines than IBM finds eligible. Let's say it has been a bit of the talk of the town since eventually leading up to Neon suing IBM. We'll surely see some next episodes of this story in 2010.
We also get a preview of z/VM 6.1. It's particularly the statements of direction that are of interest : z/VM Single System Image and z/VM Live Guest Relocation. We're definitely looking forward to this.
More storage announcements as well with the next generation of XIV, R4.3 of DS8000 and V2.3 of the Data Deduplication TS7650 ProtecTIER Gateway & Appliance. And the announcement of FICON Express8 for System z10.

August brings us the announcement of Enterprise Cobol for z/OS 4.2, z/OS 1.11 and perhaps even more interesting z/OSMF (z/OS Management Facility). IBM seems to be finally delivering on its promises about its 'Five Year March to Mainframe Simplification' it made a couple of years ago. Talking about this to our customers also brought some sarcastic smiles to their faces : "Yeah, right, another Msys for Setup. What, even better ?" All in all, I think this is a fresh start and z/OSMF definitely deserves a chance.

In September we organize a joint IBM - Red Hat - RealDolmen meeting for customers who are interested in consolidating to Linux on System z. Linux on System z is definitely drawing more and more attention. I also see this when I'm attending an 'Introduction to zLinux & z/VM' Proof of Technology a couple of weeks later. So we're not suprised to also see a new Wiki on mainframe Linux and z/VM come to live.

We have lots of announcements in October starting with IMS Version 11. Next we have z10 EC GA3 and z10 BC GA2, the new DS8700 announcement, new functions of the TS7700 and TS3500, the actual z/VM 6.1 announcement and a preview of z/VSE 4.3. Sometimes to my confusion, it's all linked to Dynamic Infrastructure.

After that November and December are rather quiet months. One particular incident shows me to be careful with Twitter and with people who are (to my opinion sometimes) using it incorrectly. I wrote about a presentation on zPrime in November saying "Apparantly customers are going into production with it and they actually seem to pay less". This turned up on the zPrime Twitter account as "Mainframe Watch Belgium: Customers are in production with NEON zPrime and they really are paying less". Not my words.

Now you will say, what about cloud ? Well, I've looked it up and so far I only used the word sideways in two of my posts. The first time I heard about it, I just thought that we've been doing this already for centuries. But now it seems to have a name, or should I say, a new name. As you see, I'm still in doubt whether this is more than just another buzzword which will be replaced by another one next year.

Looking forward to 2010, it's possible that I will also broaden my horizon a bit, as I obtained my technical certification on XIV a couple of weeks ago. But then again, didn't Moshe Yanai mention at a customer event in November that connecting XIV to the mainframe was on the roadmap of XIV. I guess only the future can tell and we'll see more of this and other subjects I just mentioned in 2010 !

Looking back on 2008 - Year Review

Already my second year review. On the one hand it’s as though I only made the previous one yesterday. On the other hand, when I read it again, I realize how much of it I’d already completely forgotten. Or some things just fade away. I must admit I haven’t been on Second Life ever since.

In January the acquisition of Cognos becomes a fact. We'll see the realisation of this during the year with products like 'Cognos 8 Business Intelligence for Linux on System z'. There was also an interesting Share Market Review indicating that mainframe data and applications are not all that closely cooperating with distributed environments as we might sometimes tend to believe. I was also the month we saw the first z890 on eBay !

February brought us the Arcati Yearbook, but the main event was of course the announcement of the z10 EC, which we covered extensively over here and in the RealDolmen System z Newsletter. There's too much to summarize in a couple of words but there's e.g. the much faster processor, the introduction of the InfiniBand technology, the improved RAS . . . If you want to download the wallpaper I made for the occasion, it's over here.
At the same moment, there's a first announcement for the DS8000 as well with Extended Distance Ficon and Extended Address Volumes (EAV) which will be implemented with z/OS 1.10.
Another interesting announcement was that of Basic HyperSwap, you might say, the GDPS HyperSwap possibilities reduced to its essentials with a single site, IBM Storage and z/OS exclusive implementation.

For the first time in March, IBM announced a reduction in the price of z9 BC memory. We'll see that when the z10 BC is announced, there's even a further price reduction when the memory is bought in combination with a specialty engine.

In April IBM announces a new pricing metric for Websphere : 'Getting Started Sub-capacity Pricing'. It's intended for those who want to get started with small projects without immediately having to pay a lot. I must admit I haven't heard anything about it, since.

Some z10 EC elements only became available in May like e.g. OSA-Express3, the InfiniBand Coupling links and the Balanced Power Plan Ahead.
It was also in May that suddenly every one seemed to start focussing on specialty engines (especially the zIIP) and how to save money with them. I also made a list of ISVs supporting the zIIP at that moment. And I still think we've now reached some kind of turning point for many customers. So you really should start considering or re-considering whether specialty engines are also something for you.

In June DB2 turns 25. So it's older than many young people who are just starting out their careers on mainframe. Current version by now should be DB2 V8 as DB2 V7 is also going out of support this very month.

IBM took over PSI in July. Lots of people are quite unhappy with this as the 'mainframe emulation' territory seems to become a barren desert.
In July, we also saw the new TS1130 Tape Drive with faster throughput (160MB/sec) and larger tapes of up to 1GB (uncompressed).

In August there were quite a lot of announcements from IBM. The DS8000 is definitely here to stay for a while. We see the introduction of Raid-6, 450 GB 15,000 rpm Fibre Channel Disk Drives, Variable LPARs ...
New Operating systems are announced : z/OS 1.10, z/VM 5.4 and z/VSE 4.2 and we first hear of IBM CICS Explorer, the new face of CICS.
And there's more, the TS3500 library gets new, driveless frames with at least 2,5 times the capacity of former frames due to a new tiered cell structure.

September started with a new challenge for my company as Dolmen and Real Software merged into NV RealDolmen.
There was also the pre-announcement of IMS V11. So don't tell us IMS isn't alive and kicking or as we read in the Mainframe Update blog : 'IMS - still life in the old dog !'.
For the DS8000 and DS6000, the 500GB FATA disks are put to rest, the replacement coming in 2009 with 1TB 7,200 RPM SATA disk drives.

In October, the main event was of course the announcement of the z10 BC (and z10 EC GA2). No announcements last year, two announcements this year. The z10 is "smart, cool and affordable". Again we have the faster processor. We also leave the 2-model approach of the z9 BC behind. Other new features are new OSA-Express3 cards and the zHPF feature - once again improving the FICON performance.
There are also some important tape storage announcements in October. The current Virtualization Engine (TS7740) can be upgraded with additional cache drawers going from 6TB to 9TB of cache. There are also new models which will have up to 14TB of cache. And, you no longer need a separate frame for the Library Manager. But there's more : there's also a new, disk-only Virtualization Engine (TS7720) that can have 70TB of uncompressed data.

November. Oh yes, there were wallpapers for the z10 BC, too. And we had a webcast on the new IBM CICS Explorer. 'The Master Terminal', a new blog since March 2008 from the Hursley people, gives us the links to the necessary SupportPacs.

For December, there's not that much to mention. In October CA announced support for the zIIP for IDMS and Datacom and there was a webcast on it this month. And if anything drew a lot of attention this year, it's definitely the specialty engines. The list of zIIP uses is growing and IBM itself put the IFL in the spotlight with its own Project Big Green. I think this, combined with the New Enterprise Data Center (NEDC) will surely be one of the spearpoints of IBM's strategy for 2009.

Looking back on 2007 - Serious now

Often when I start a new post there's a tune stuck in my head accompanying it. Sometimes I mention it, usually I don't. So I'm starting off 2008 with a quote from Pearl Jam. You see what I mean :

Saw things
Clearer
Once you, were in my...Rearview mirror...

Time to take a last look in our rearview mirror on 2007. Of course I’m mainly interested in mainframe and related high-end storage. And sometimes things that don’t happen can be important too. There was no announcement of a successor to the z9 after three consecutive years of announcements. Let’s wait and see what 2008 will bring us ?

In January two new pricing mechanisms saw the light of day. There was zNALC, the common successor of NALC and z/OS.e. A more important pricing method to VSE customers was MWLC which introduced sub-capacity pricing to this community along with z/VSE V4.
And there was the acquisition of Softek by IBM with a.o. their migration product TDMF.

In February there was a preview of z/OS 1.9 and the announcement of z/VM 5.3. With z/VM 5.3 IBM stresses two major assets : the Virtualization Factor which we already know for decades and the lower energy consumption and cost effectiveness of the mainframe platform.
CA announced broad support for the zIIP engine for products like CA-Vtape and more important they said also IDMS would follow within the next 12 to 18 months. I’d say it’s about time for CA to tell us more about this in the near future.

DB2 9 goes GA in March. It offers a completely new hybrid data server supporting the storage of both relational data and XML data in their native format.
The Arcati Yearbook shows us that many companies still have got work to do as 33% still uses z/OS 1.4 and this historic release is End of Support by the end of the month.
GDPS 3.4 is also announced and it’s very promising to see that IBM attempts to cover disaster recovery enterprise-wide extending GDPS to ‘open’ systems as well.

In April CICS TS for z/OS V3.2 was announced. The message : CICS can be a central control point in your SOA environment. IBM even sets up a program where CICS specialists visit customers (at no cost) to talk about the benefits of CICS TS V3.
Another major announcement is GA3 for z9 EC and GA2 for z9 BC. Highlights are numerous. I especially remember the LPAR Group Capacity for software capping and the change in CBU strategy for the z9 BC. The z9 BC R07 model now also allows CBU to all z9 BC S07 models. I think this really was a must.

In May IBM thanks Vanguard for its services as since the acquistion of the Consul Products in December, 2006 IBM is working on its own zSecure Suite.
IBM launches their Project Big Green and allocates $1 billion to advance green technologies and services. It’s more than this but of course I’m personally reading ‘mainframe’ all over.
The ‘Gameframe’ catches the attention of the international press as it is said that IBM will integrate the Cell Broadband Engine (yes, the one used in the Playstation 3) into the mainframe as a specialty engine.
Bad news for small mainframe developers as they will no longer be able to prolong their FLEX-ES contracts and they don’t really have an alternative except for buying a small z9 BC. This might in the long run affect the users too.

June was the month I explored Second Life as IBM had just opened a new Virtual IBM Business Center. IBM is really putting great effort into these virtual worlds and has a firm belief that this will make part of all our future business lives.
IBM goes on with its ‘Five Year March to Simplification’ and introduces IBM Destination z. Still, I had the impression that this was not so much about simplification of mainframe administration. To me it turns out to be more about the consolidation itself of distributed platforms to the mainframe.

July-August. During the holiday months IBM delivers on one of its statements of direction offering support for the small TS3400 Tape Library for all mainframe operating systems. This tape library contains up to 2 TS1120 Tape drives and two removable 9-cartridge magazines.
In August IBM also takes the next step in its Project Big Green by setting the example itself. It starts the migration of 3.900 servers to some 30 mainframe servers.

September seems to have been a quiet month too. Since z/OS 1.6 goes End of Support and z/OS 1.9 goes GA, there’s the announcement of the z/OS 1.9 Migration Checker. A nice occasion for me to put some migration reference materials together.

October on the contrary was quite a busy month with lots of announcements. There’s Tivoli Decision Support for z/OS V1.8, Encryption Facility for z/VSE and already a preview of z/VSE 4.2. Another major one is of course the announcement of IMS V10 and there’s NTP client support for the Server Time Protocol.
The DS8000 also gets an important announcement with performance enhancements like Storage Pool Striping and a completely new caching technology. And there’s the long awaited Space Efficient Flash Copy.

In November IBM announces the acquisition of Cognos taking over one of the major business intelligence players.
IBM also announces DB2 server for VSE and VM V7.5. Other bloggers must have noticed my lack of enthusiasm regarding this release as IT Jungle summarizes I find this release as ‘exciting as a new pair of socks’.

In December the company Sine Nomine demonstrates OpenSolaris on System z. You can find some movies of this on Youtube.
And there’s the announcement of COBOL for z/OS 4.1. This version is a compiler only version equivalent to the former alternate version.

OK, enough of 2007, here's 2008 and there's already another tune in my head. Prince this time :

I've seen the future and it will be
I've seen the future and it works

Let's go and find out !