I blogged the other week about whether I really did want a new Vista laptop, and if I did whether I needed Microsoft products running on it. Well, I visited another PC superstore and they had about two Mac laptops and absolutely none at all with Linux pre-installed. In the end I was swayed by the hardware and took the software that came with it. So yes, I was turned to the dark side and now have a Vista machine.
I bought an HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop – it has a 17” wide TFT screen (1440 by 900) and is sleek and black. The processor is a 1.66GHz core duo T5500 centrino duo chip. It has 2GB of RAM and twin hard drives providing 120GB of storage. The operating system is Windows Vista Home Premium. As well as being wireless enabled (802.11a, b, g) it has an nVidia GeForce Go 7600 video card, DVD writer, and even a digital TV tuner. So it should be able to do everything except make pot noodle (as they say!).
I turned it on, and after a long time it allowed me to set it up – pretty normal stuff here. It found our wireless network and I was soon on the Internet – all good so far. It came with a 60-day version of Norton, which I started and then let it update from the Symantec Web site.
Next, I thought I’d connect to the other computers in our office network. That’s when I met the first problem. The default workgroup name is WORKGROUP, with XP it is MSHOME (I think), anyway, I had to change the workgroup name so it was the same as on the other computers.
The next problem was that although the XP machines could see the new Vista laptop, they could not access it. That problem was solved by turning off the Norton firewall (gulp!). Once we’d done that, the Vista machine could see all the other workgroup machines and they could see the Vista one. From the Vista machine we could see the folders “shared” and “shareddocs” on the XP machines, but from the XP machine we couldn’t see any directories at all on the XP one.
That problem was solved by selecting the Network and Sharing Center and, under Sharing and Discovery, turning on Public Folder Sharing and turning off Password protected sharing. We now have a shared directory on the Vista box and it can be accessed from all the other networked PCs without needing a password or anything else. It also told us to modify Norton to allow network access but nothing else. We haven’t quite managed to find where to do that yet!
The next stage was to use Laplink (www.laplink.com) to transfer the contents of the old computer to the new one wirelessly over our network. This worked brilliantly (I think) although it did have to run overnight (it said it would take 12 hours). Once it finished, my new Vista machine looked just like my old XP machine. Laplink ran a start-up program showing which applications were launching automatically. Obviously I didn’t need my XP anti-virus or anti-malware (I’ve got Norton). I did ask it to start PC MACLAN and Iomega software (yes, I still back-up to a ZIP drive).
I tested that my applications were running OK. All were except Word! Word would launch and then disappear. We spent ages trying all sorts of things – re-installing etc. Someone suggested a hack they knew which did the trick. We right-clicked on winword.exe and selected properties from the pop-up box. We then clicked the Compatibility tab and ticked the box saying, “Run this program as an administrator”. It seems to have done the trick.
The next stage was to connect up the printer, ZIP drive, and Macintosh laptop. But I’ll tell you what happened there next time!!
Our main problem was finding the time to work on the new laptop because we kept expecting each step to take much longer than we’d normally anticipate. And that’s because we didn’t know what new differences Vista would throw at us. Any additional help and advice gratefully received! (Anyone writing “told you so” or “only a complete idiot would buy Vista” would only be repeating what we’ve been saying in the office this week!!) You can contact me at trevore@xephon.com.
Wednesday, 26 September 2007
Arcati Yearbook 2007
Back in September I was talking about the 2006 version of the Arcati Yearbook – saying what a great source of information it was for mainframers. Well, the good news is that the 2007 version is now available for download. It’s free and you can get it from www.arcati.com/newyearbook07.
It’s a 2763KB download, and the PDF file describes itself as “the independent annual guide for users of IBM mainframe systems”. The Yearbook contains 147 fact-filled pages (with a few adverts – that’s why it’s free to download I guess!) – up from 124 last year.
As in previous years, the Yearbook contains pages of information and in-depth mainframe-related articles. It also contains the results of this year’s survey of mainframers.
The Vendor Directory lists vendors, consultants, and service providers in the z/OS and OS/390 environment. There is a media guide for IBM mainframers, which contains information resources, publications, and user groups for the z/OS environment. Next is a glossary of terminology, which provides definitions for some mainframe-related terms. The final part of this long and detailed section is the technical information, which is subtitled, “Hardware tales – z9, z990, z890; mainframe hardware timeline”.
The articles in the Yearbook have all been written by mainframe experts. These include: “Mainframe management: where ITIL fits in” by Ralph Crosby of BMC Software and Carl Greiner of Ovum; “Problems with worldwide pricing variations” by Barry Graham and taken from a recent Mainframe Market Bulletin; “What has IBM been doing in 2006? Spending, spending, spending!” by Mark Wilson, a mainframe consultant; “Transforming the economics of data center operations” by Steve Revell of ASG; “Securing automated file transfers to and from z/OS” by Kalle Jaaskelainen from SSH Communications Security; “Harnessing the power of legacy systems” by DataDirect Technologies’ Andy Gutteridge; “The buffer pool: change control for DB2 access paths” by database guru Craig S Mullins; “A new alternative for modernizing security” by Barry Schrager of JME (and original designer and primary author of ACF2); “Firefighting versus fire prevention” by Osman Aykut of TRILOGexpert; and “Modernize your systems with XML – quickly and easily!” by Peter Prager of Canam Software Labs.
It’s worth downloading a copy of the Yearbook simply for the survey results. It’s always useful to know what other mainframe sites are up to, and the Yearbook provides a snapshot of System z users’ current hardware and software configuration and their plans and concerns for the months ahead. The 86 users included in the survey were taken from a variety of locations with a range of hardware installed.
Interestingly, the majority of respondents believe that their Unix and Windows acquisition and support costs are growing faster than those on the System z, and they continue to use the mainframe as their principal repository for corporate data. I’ll leave you to read the full conclusions at your leisure.
Anyway, well worth a look and, as I mentioned above, it is completely free.
It’s a 2763KB download, and the PDF file describes itself as “the independent annual guide for users of IBM mainframe systems”. The Yearbook contains 147 fact-filled pages (with a few adverts – that’s why it’s free to download I guess!) – up from 124 last year.
As in previous years, the Yearbook contains pages of information and in-depth mainframe-related articles. It also contains the results of this year’s survey of mainframers.
The Vendor Directory lists vendors, consultants, and service providers in the z/OS and OS/390 environment. There is a media guide for IBM mainframers, which contains information resources, publications, and user groups for the z/OS environment. Next is a glossary of terminology, which provides definitions for some mainframe-related terms. The final part of this long and detailed section is the technical information, which is subtitled, “Hardware tales – z9, z990, z890; mainframe hardware timeline”.
The articles in the Yearbook have all been written by mainframe experts. These include: “Mainframe management: where ITIL fits in” by Ralph Crosby of BMC Software and Carl Greiner of Ovum; “Problems with worldwide pricing variations” by Barry Graham and taken from a recent Mainframe Market Bulletin; “What has IBM been doing in 2006? Spending, spending, spending!” by Mark Wilson, a mainframe consultant; “Transforming the economics of data center operations” by Steve Revell of ASG; “Securing automated file transfers to and from z/OS” by Kalle Jaaskelainen from SSH Communications Security; “Harnessing the power of legacy systems” by DataDirect Technologies’ Andy Gutteridge; “The buffer pool: change control for DB2 access paths” by database guru Craig S Mullins; “A new alternative for modernizing security” by Barry Schrager of JME (and original designer and primary author of ACF2); “Firefighting versus fire prevention” by Osman Aykut of TRILOGexpert; and “Modernize your systems with XML – quickly and easily!” by Peter Prager of Canam Software Labs.
It’s worth downloading a copy of the Yearbook simply for the survey results. It’s always useful to know what other mainframe sites are up to, and the Yearbook provides a snapshot of System z users’ current hardware and software configuration and their plans and concerns for the months ahead. The 86 users included in the survey were taken from a variety of locations with a range of hardware installed.
Interestingly, the majority of respondents believe that their Unix and Windows acquisition and support costs are growing faster than those on the System z, and they continue to use the mainframe as their principal repository for corporate data. I’ll leave you to read the full conclusions at your leisure.
Anyway, well worth a look and, as I mentioned above, it is completely free.
User interface façade
What does user interface façade mean, and is it a good thing?
Like all good philosophy essays, let’s start with some definitions so that we know what we’re talking about. A user interface is simply what a user sees when they are trying to make use of a piece of technology. The interfaces are usually completely inflexible. A user interface façade is very similar to a user interface in that it represents the presentation layer seen by the user. It is a way of giving the user an easy way of interacting with more complicated technology – or more usually software applications. What can make a façade more than a simple interface is the ability for the user to combine other interfaces and to have some control over the appearance of the interface.
So why would you want a user interface façade? Well, you can mask almost any technology with almost any design façade you want. Typically they are used to isolate a user working from a browser from the underlying CICS or other mainframe SOA application. The business units of work that are available on the mainframe can be easily used by an end user with little or no understanding of the technology that is being invoked on the mainframe. So in many ways a façade is a good thing.
Strangely though, the definition of façade is often negative. For example, http://dict.die.net/facade/ defines façade as, “a false appearance that hides the reality”; www.thefreedictionary.com/façade gives us, “an artificial or deceptive front”; and www.m-w.com/dictionary/façade defines it as, “a false, superficial, or artificial appearance or effect”. The printed Chambers dictionary even goes so far as to suggest, “the appearance presented to the world, esp. if showy and with little behind it”.
These all seem to be rather negative uses for façade, the last implying that all those years of mainframe effort count for nothing! I guess it’s similar to the term “legacy”, which in computing terms tends to mean something old and unwanted, whereas in more general usage a legacy is something you benefit from. Rich Aunt Agatha leaves you all her money – that’s a legacy you’re pleased to receive.
I guess that the big problem with user interface façades is that the original user interface on the mainframe has grown over time to suit the users (both new and experienced), and now a completely new one is designed that starts again. All that has been learned over the years with regard to how people feel most comfortable when interacting with the application is lost – and will have to be relearned for Version 2.0 of the interface. This seems like a waste of time.
Anyway, these thoughts about mainframe applications and user interface façades were stimulated by an e-mail from Anthony Rudd.
Like all good philosophy essays, let’s start with some definitions so that we know what we’re talking about. A user interface is simply what a user sees when they are trying to make use of a piece of technology. The interfaces are usually completely inflexible. A user interface façade is very similar to a user interface in that it represents the presentation layer seen by the user. It is a way of giving the user an easy way of interacting with more complicated technology – or more usually software applications. What can make a façade more than a simple interface is the ability for the user to combine other interfaces and to have some control over the appearance of the interface.
So why would you want a user interface façade? Well, you can mask almost any technology with almost any design façade you want. Typically they are used to isolate a user working from a browser from the underlying CICS or other mainframe SOA application. The business units of work that are available on the mainframe can be easily used by an end user with little or no understanding of the technology that is being invoked on the mainframe. So in many ways a façade is a good thing.
Strangely though, the definition of façade is often negative. For example, http://dict.die.net/facade/ defines façade as, “a false appearance that hides the reality”; www.thefreedictionary.com/façade gives us, “an artificial or deceptive front”; and www.m-w.com/dictionary/façade defines it as, “a false, superficial, or artificial appearance or effect”. The printed Chambers dictionary even goes so far as to suggest, “the appearance presented to the world, esp. if showy and with little behind it”.
These all seem to be rather negative uses for façade, the last implying that all those years of mainframe effort count for nothing! I guess it’s similar to the term “legacy”, which in computing terms tends to mean something old and unwanted, whereas in more general usage a legacy is something you benefit from. Rich Aunt Agatha leaves you all her money – that’s a legacy you’re pleased to receive.
I guess that the big problem with user interface façades is that the original user interface on the mainframe has grown over time to suit the users (both new and experienced), and now a completely new one is designed that starts again. All that has been learned over the years with regard to how people feel most comfortable when interacting with the application is lost – and will have to be relearned for Version 2.0 of the interface. This seems like a waste of time.
Anyway, these thoughts about mainframe applications and user interface façades were stimulated by an e-mail from Anthony Rudd.
Alternatives to Microsoft
I’m just buying a new laptop – I need it for work. I want one with a letter box-shaped screen and I think I’d like that screen to be 17 inches rather than 15.4 (or any other size). I definitely don’t want a sub-notebook. I don’t want to record TV programs (because I don’t want a TV card), but I do want to burn DVDs and have lots of windows open at the same time. Doesn’t seem too difficult a specification does it? But because of the date, I am unable to touch a machine like that running Vista at my local PC superstore – although I can touch a machine running XP media edition, or smaller machines running Vista.
Do you want Vista? That was the question the man in the shop asked me and I immediately thought yes. I thought of all the times in the past when new versions of software packages needed features in the latest version of the operating system to work optimally. But driving home (empty handed) afterwards I thought about the question and whether I wanted a Microsoft operating system at all.
If I don’t have Windows on my computer, what are my choices? Well, you know the answers as well as me – Mac OS X or Linux. Mac OS X is really a Unix-based operating system that is designed to be the iPod of PCs. It does everything very easily. I’ve seen it find wireless networks, and it’s good with audio and video files. It’s definitely a contender – especially as I have Mac software because I use a Mac OS 9 laptop some of the time at the moment. I know widgets work on Macs because that’s where they were first created.
Linux is a harder choice. Ubuntu seems to be the favourite at the moment, but very small distros like Puppy Linux are very popular with enthusiasts as well. Every one I speak to has their own Linux favourite for different reasons.
Going with Linux also involves finding alternatives to the well-known packages that Microsoft supplies. Again, this isn’t a problem – and it’s also not a problem on Windows PCs. I use Microsoft Office on my PC and Mac, but I don’t have to. OpenOffice is an Open Source alternative to Office that runs on PCs, Macs, and Linux machines. It comes, as you’d expect, with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, and a drawing program. It also has a database program. It’s not totally compatible with MS Office, but in each version it gets closer and for all the standard stuff it does seem very compatible.
Of course, everyone who talks about Web 2.0 and AJAX is suggesting that these kinds of application don’t need to be installed, they can be used from a browser. The choices in that case are Writely and Freeform (www.thinkfree.com/common/main.tfo). Freeform allows you to work on word processing files, spreadsheets, or presentations. Writely, which is now owned by Google allows you to use word processing files and spreadsheets. You just need a Google account.
I never use Outlook – although I know many people do – so not having an alternative is not really a problem. I never used it because it was vulnerable at one time (every one in your address book suddenly starts receiving viruses), and I had an alternative address book and to-do software. So I just never started. For e-mail, I did use Eudora for a while, but I prefer not to download e-mails. They sit on various accounts –like Hotmail, Yahoo, etc – where I can view them and delete all the unwanted ones that get through the spam filters. I can then access my mail from any Internet enabled computer – whether it’s running Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. Yahoo mail offers a diary facility and I am sure that a search would find hundreds of freeware PIM software packages for every platform. I could use Google Calendar, which allows you to see other people’s calendars.
There are plenty of alternatives to Explorer as a browser. To be honest I find it quite OK. I use IE 7 with its tabs etc, and I also use Firefox, which I prefer because I have been able to customize it so it does exactly what I want!
There are also plenty of alternative to Media Player. Version 11 seems to think all I want to do is rip or burn or waste time creating playlists. It took me ages to find a way to find some music files tucked away inside a directory inside a directory. Once you’ve found your files it looks very elegant. iTunes, which obviously works on Macs, seems far more intuitive to use – but that is really the big difference between Apple and Microsoft! And there are plenty of other players like WinAmp and Real Player (which I have installed anyway to listen to some BBC radio programmes).
So, do I want to move away from Windows completely and never know the joys (/anguish) of using Vista? Do I buy a Vista machine and try using non-Microsoft applications until I’m brave enough to move off the Windows platform? I’ll let you know when I finally make up my mind. In the meantime, any helpful hints will be much appreciated – you can e-mail me at TrevorE@xephon.com.
Do you want Vista? That was the question the man in the shop asked me and I immediately thought yes. I thought of all the times in the past when new versions of software packages needed features in the latest version of the operating system to work optimally. But driving home (empty handed) afterwards I thought about the question and whether I wanted a Microsoft operating system at all.
If I don’t have Windows on my computer, what are my choices? Well, you know the answers as well as me – Mac OS X or Linux. Mac OS X is really a Unix-based operating system that is designed to be the iPod of PCs. It does everything very easily. I’ve seen it find wireless networks, and it’s good with audio and video files. It’s definitely a contender – especially as I have Mac software because I use a Mac OS 9 laptop some of the time at the moment. I know widgets work on Macs because that’s where they were first created.
Linux is a harder choice. Ubuntu seems to be the favourite at the moment, but very small distros like Puppy Linux are very popular with enthusiasts as well. Every one I speak to has their own Linux favourite for different reasons.
Going with Linux also involves finding alternatives to the well-known packages that Microsoft supplies. Again, this isn’t a problem – and it’s also not a problem on Windows PCs. I use Microsoft Office on my PC and Mac, but I don’t have to. OpenOffice is an Open Source alternative to Office that runs on PCs, Macs, and Linux machines. It comes, as you’d expect, with a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, and a drawing program. It also has a database program. It’s not totally compatible with MS Office, but in each version it gets closer and for all the standard stuff it does seem very compatible.
Of course, everyone who talks about Web 2.0 and AJAX is suggesting that these kinds of application don’t need to be installed, they can be used from a browser. The choices in that case are Writely and Freeform (www.thinkfree.com/common/main.tfo). Freeform allows you to work on word processing files, spreadsheets, or presentations. Writely, which is now owned by Google allows you to use word processing files and spreadsheets. You just need a Google account.
I never use Outlook – although I know many people do – so not having an alternative is not really a problem. I never used it because it was vulnerable at one time (every one in your address book suddenly starts receiving viruses), and I had an alternative address book and to-do software. So I just never started. For e-mail, I did use Eudora for a while, but I prefer not to download e-mails. They sit on various accounts –like Hotmail, Yahoo, etc – where I can view them and delete all the unwanted ones that get through the spam filters. I can then access my mail from any Internet enabled computer – whether it’s running Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. Yahoo mail offers a diary facility and I am sure that a search would find hundreds of freeware PIM software packages for every platform. I could use Google Calendar, which allows you to see other people’s calendars.
There are plenty of alternatives to Explorer as a browser. To be honest I find it quite OK. I use IE 7 with its tabs etc, and I also use Firefox, which I prefer because I have been able to customize it so it does exactly what I want!
There are also plenty of alternative to Media Player. Version 11 seems to think all I want to do is rip or burn or waste time creating playlists. It took me ages to find a way to find some music files tucked away inside a directory inside a directory. Once you’ve found your files it looks very elegant. iTunes, which obviously works on Macs, seems far more intuitive to use – but that is really the big difference between Apple and Microsoft! And there are plenty of other players like WinAmp and Real Player (which I have installed anyway to listen to some BBC radio programmes).
So, do I want to move away from Windows completely and never know the joys (/anguish) of using Vista? Do I buy a Vista machine and try using non-Microsoft applications until I’m brave enough to move off the Windows platform? I’ll let you know when I finally make up my mind. In the meantime, any helpful hints will be much appreciated – you can e-mail me at TrevorE@xephon.com.
z/VM virtualization
I blogged about virualization a couple of weeks ago (see Virtualization – it’s really clever, 22 January), well a couple of days ago (6 February 2007) IBM came out with an interesting announcement about virtualization.
IBM said that with z/VM Version 5.3 they were able to set all sorts of new records for the number of virtualized machines. For those of you who tuned in late, virtualization is a way of allowing one set of physical hardware appear to be many sets of hardware. And just how many “sets” does the new version run to? IBM is claiming more than 1000 virtual images can be hosted on a single copy of z/VM V5.3 – which they claim (and who can doubt them?) is a record.
In addition, the new version of VM can support a larger number of processor units (that’s real hardware). It now supports 32, whereas previously the maximum was 24 – so that’s quite a big jump.
VM has had quite a chequered history because IBM has seemed to never know quite what to do with it. However, a strong and vocal user base has been responsible for getting it through the bad times in the 80s and again in the 90s. It has fought off the introduction of LPARs on processors and many other developments that seem to signify its death.
Currently, with z/VM, it’s possible to run z/OS images under it (which is how it has always worked) or as a very big Linux-only server. For people running Linux on other platforms, this gives you a single footprint, savings on just about everything like heating, cooling, lighting, electricity, staff. Plus, you should be able to run larger workloads, and it gives you better monitoring and management.
An interesting announcement – and one pointing the way forward. z/VM will be available on 29 June 2007.
IBM said that with z/VM Version 5.3 they were able to set all sorts of new records for the number of virtualized machines. For those of you who tuned in late, virtualization is a way of allowing one set of physical hardware appear to be many sets of hardware. And just how many “sets” does the new version run to? IBM is claiming more than 1000 virtual images can be hosted on a single copy of z/VM V5.3 – which they claim (and who can doubt them?) is a record.
In addition, the new version of VM can support a larger number of processor units (that’s real hardware). It now supports 32, whereas previously the maximum was 24 – so that’s quite a big jump.
VM has had quite a chequered history because IBM has seemed to never know quite what to do with it. However, a strong and vocal user base has been responsible for getting it through the bad times in the 80s and again in the 90s. It has fought off the introduction of LPARs on processors and many other developments that seem to signify its death.
Currently, with z/VM, it’s possible to run z/OS images under it (which is how it has always worked) or as a very big Linux-only server. For people running Linux on other platforms, this gives you a single footprint, savings on just about everything like heating, cooling, lighting, electricity, staff. Plus, you should be able to run larger workloads, and it gives you better monitoring and management.
An interesting announcement – and one pointing the way forward. z/VM will be available on 29 June 2007.
Mainframe futures… (part 2)
Last week I was considering issues that CIOs and others might be concerned with for 2007. I talked about having to do more with less (less space, money, and fewer people), High Availability, licensing issues, and Open Source software. This week I will extend that list with some more things worth thinking about.
SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) has definitely been the acronym of choice for most vendor presentations during 2006 and it is likely to continue throughout 2007. The simple idea behind it makes perfect sense in all management presentations. If I can summarize: mainframes contain all the best applications and most important data, and users like to work from anywhere using a browser. SOA is the acronym that puts the two together. Again, from a high-level view, it seems sensible and straightforward to chop up your CICS applications into business-related units and give users access to these units of work. The actual mechanics of doing this is much harder. Even so, CICS is now a consumer as well as a provider of Web services, which makes connecting the parts of the new business-based application easier. There are many companies whose main business seems to be in making CICS applications available as Web services. These include Attachmate, Attunity, IONA, Jacada, NetManage, and Seagull (now part of Rocket Software), as well as IBM.
Virtualization is something I talked about in a blog a couple of weeks ago. The importance of virtualization is not only the fact that it gives you a way to maximize the use of devices by applications, but it also allows more devices than you actually have to appear to be available to the virtualized machines. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it gives you a way to control the way the hardware is used. You can monitor and manage how the applications use the physical hardware you have. And here’s the third advantage, The IBM Virtualization Engine allows you to manage across platforms. It’s possible to link with other virtualization software like VMware’s ESX Server, Microsoft’s Virtual PC, and XenSource’s XenEnterprise. Users can then manage a multiplatform virtualized enterprise.
Another area that will take up as much time in 2007 as it did in 2006 is compliance. It is likely that most sites will not receive any more money for this extra work and will therefore be looking for some kind of automation software to ensure that they comply with the regulations. Companies that operate on more than one continent will have the added burden of finding themselves having to comply with more than one set of regulations.
One other area that CIOs will have at the back of their minds in 2007 is on-demand computing. The idea behind this is for the user to be able to call on extra resources when they are needed. All sites experience demand levels that vary during the course of the day and the course of the year. A way of cutting costs is to not have all the processing power necessary for peak periods available all the time. However, the resources can be called on when required. IBM has a way of pricing so that users should pay only for what they use.
Well, there are some of my thoughts about what is going to be important to in the world of mainframes this coming year. I’d be interested to hear your opinions. You can e-mail me on TrevorE@xephon.com.
SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) has definitely been the acronym of choice for most vendor presentations during 2006 and it is likely to continue throughout 2007. The simple idea behind it makes perfect sense in all management presentations. If I can summarize: mainframes contain all the best applications and most important data, and users like to work from anywhere using a browser. SOA is the acronym that puts the two together. Again, from a high-level view, it seems sensible and straightforward to chop up your CICS applications into business-related units and give users access to these units of work. The actual mechanics of doing this is much harder. Even so, CICS is now a consumer as well as a provider of Web services, which makes connecting the parts of the new business-based application easier. There are many companies whose main business seems to be in making CICS applications available as Web services. These include Attachmate, Attunity, IONA, Jacada, NetManage, and Seagull (now part of Rocket Software), as well as IBM.
Virtualization is something I talked about in a blog a couple of weeks ago. The importance of virtualization is not only the fact that it gives you a way to maximize the use of devices by applications, but it also allows more devices than you actually have to appear to be available to the virtualized machines. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it gives you a way to control the way the hardware is used. You can monitor and manage how the applications use the physical hardware you have. And here’s the third advantage, The IBM Virtualization Engine allows you to manage across platforms. It’s possible to link with other virtualization software like VMware’s ESX Server, Microsoft’s Virtual PC, and XenSource’s XenEnterprise. Users can then manage a multiplatform virtualized enterprise.
Another area that will take up as much time in 2007 as it did in 2006 is compliance. It is likely that most sites will not receive any more money for this extra work and will therefore be looking for some kind of automation software to ensure that they comply with the regulations. Companies that operate on more than one continent will have the added burden of finding themselves having to comply with more than one set of regulations.
One other area that CIOs will have at the back of their minds in 2007 is on-demand computing. The idea behind this is for the user to be able to call on extra resources when they are needed. All sites experience demand levels that vary during the course of the day and the course of the year. A way of cutting costs is to not have all the processing power necessary for peak periods available all the time. However, the resources can be called on when required. IBM has a way of pricing so that users should pay only for what they use.
Well, there are some of my thoughts about what is going to be important to in the world of mainframes this coming year. I’d be interested to hear your opinions. You can e-mail me on TrevorE@xephon.com.
Mainframe futures… (part 1)
If I was in charge of a data centre at the moment, what issues would I be concerned about for 2007? That’s the sort of question CIOs and others must have been asking themselves recently. I’ve been kicking around that question recently and below are some of my thoughts. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on this topic.
The perennial problem of how to do more with less must be at the top of everyone’s agenda. There is always less money and there are always more demands put on the data centre. For example, the amount of data that needs to be stored somewhere just seems to grow each year and this compounded in some companies by the need to store sound files (whether music or podcasts) and pictures (including videos). This is on top of the growing databases and the increasing number of unstructured files, and, of course, the need to retain everyone’s e-mails for audit purposes. Doing more with less also applies in many cases to manpower. It’s a frequently discussed phenomenon of the aging COBOL programmer. But loss of application programmers also goes with fewer operators (certainly than the heydays of the late 1970s with 20 operators on a single shift!), and fewer systems programmers. The solution is more and more automation – which would be much easier if companies didn’t insist on changing the hardware or software in use.
High Availability is also an important issue. Again there is a lot of talk about how this can be accomplished on mainframes and mid-range boxes. But IT departments can also be responsible for a fairly mixed bag of PCs and networks that also need to be up and running. This all needs to be taken in to account when an HA initiative is undertaken.
Many sites also have issues with licensing problems. William Kim Mongan has an article on this topic in a forthcoming issue of Xephon’s z/OS Update (www.xephonusa.com). He describes the problems with licences his company faced when moving processing from one location to another. He describes how some vendor products are dependent CPU-ID, which means that they won’t run on different hardware. Some have a tolerance mode giving the user a week or two’s grace before new keys need to be entered. IT departments are going to have to ensure back-up or recovery sites will run the software they think it needs in the case of a failover situation or even following all too common company mergers.
Most IT managers will be looking more favourably at Open Source software in 2007. This is a difficult decision for many sites. On the one hand licence fees cost money, but they do bring with the assurance that someone cares about that software. Whereas Open Source may have been developed and debugged by hundreds of different people and should be robust and resilient, but, should you experience a problem, who are you going to call? Having said that, there are many examples where Open Source software may be just what you need for PCs and mid-range machines. And with Linux on the mainframe, we will see the growth of Open Source applications running on the mainframe.
Next time I will look at the future for mainframes in relation to virtualization, SOA, and compliance.
The perennial problem of how to do more with less must be at the top of everyone’s agenda. There is always less money and there are always more demands put on the data centre. For example, the amount of data that needs to be stored somewhere just seems to grow each year and this compounded in some companies by the need to store sound files (whether music or podcasts) and pictures (including videos). This is on top of the growing databases and the increasing number of unstructured files, and, of course, the need to retain everyone’s e-mails for audit purposes. Doing more with less also applies in many cases to manpower. It’s a frequently discussed phenomenon of the aging COBOL programmer. But loss of application programmers also goes with fewer operators (certainly than the heydays of the late 1970s with 20 operators on a single shift!), and fewer systems programmers. The solution is more and more automation – which would be much easier if companies didn’t insist on changing the hardware or software in use.
High Availability is also an important issue. Again there is a lot of talk about how this can be accomplished on mainframes and mid-range boxes. But IT departments can also be responsible for a fairly mixed bag of PCs and networks that also need to be up and running. This all needs to be taken in to account when an HA initiative is undertaken.
Many sites also have issues with licensing problems. William Kim Mongan has an article on this topic in a forthcoming issue of Xephon’s z/OS Update (www.xephonusa.com). He describes the problems with licences his company faced when moving processing from one location to another. He describes how some vendor products are dependent CPU-ID, which means that they won’t run on different hardware. Some have a tolerance mode giving the user a week or two’s grace before new keys need to be entered. IT departments are going to have to ensure back-up or recovery sites will run the software they think it needs in the case of a failover situation or even following all too common company mergers.
Most IT managers will be looking more favourably at Open Source software in 2007. This is a difficult decision for many sites. On the one hand licence fees cost money, but they do bring with the assurance that someone cares about that software. Whereas Open Source may have been developed and debugged by hundreds of different people and should be robust and resilient, but, should you experience a problem, who are you going to call? Having said that, there are many examples where Open Source software may be just what you need for PCs and mid-range machines. And with Linux on the mainframe, we will see the growth of Open Source applications running on the mainframe.
Next time I will look at the future for mainframes in relation to virtualization, SOA, and compliance.
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