A new z/OS release every 2 years !

This morning I posted about a statement of direction about changing the pace of releases of z/OS. Well, since then, I've been receiving some more information about this.

There will indeed be a new release every 2 years from now on. So, the next release will be in the second half of 2013. Some other interesting bits of information :

• IBM intends to keep the N-2 compatibility so that customers can still migrate 1 or 2 releases forward. This means you might choose to only migrate every 4 years.
• In order to support this scheme, the support for currently available releases (z/OS 1.12 and z/OS 1.13) will be adjusted in order to allow clients to bridge to the new release cycle.
• z/OSMF releases should also be following the same release pattern.
• Selected features may become available in between releases through e.g. SPE's

Well, that's it for now. And you know the drill : as long as it's not officially announced, IBM might still change things. More info should become available within the next 60 days.