Zombies are clearly very popular in books, on TV, and in movies and games. But they are spreading! Just recently, I’ve been hearing about zombie computers, zombie companies, and zombie everything else. So, I thought I’d take a look at this rise of the zombies!
So, let’s start with zombie computers. These look like ordinary Internet-connected computers, but they’re used to spread e-mail spam and launch distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks. Unlike their movie counterparts, zombie computers don’t look any different. What’s happened is that the user has typically downloaded a virus or a trojan that has allowed a hacker to take control of their computer. The user continues, probably unaware, to use their machine, and the hacker can take control and get it to send spam e-mails, or try to access a designated Web site at a specified time. The only good news about a zombie laptop is that it can be revived (see a qualified technician to do so), and by using firewalls and antivirus software, further attacks can be prevented.
Quite different are zombie companies. These are companies that are struggling to stay afloat. They can just about afford the interest payments on their loans, but not much more. They are generating just about enough cash to service their debt, so the bank is not obliged to pull the plug on the loan. And so the company limps along, but it doesn’t have enough money to invest.
There are also zombie households. They have interest-only mortgages, which they can afford to pay the interest on, but they are unable to pay off the loan itself.
Then there’s zombie data. This is described as old forgotten data that you thought you’d deleted, but hadn’t. The trouble with this kind of data is that it could be accessed by hackers and could be used against you. People are likening it to data that you thought you’d thrown away, but someone sorts through your trash and finds it – and then uses it to perhaps access your system. We’re talking about old laptops that are given to charities without the hard drives being wiped, or data stored in the cloud in an account that isn’t much use any more – it’s forgotten, but not actually gone. Dormant files can be a danger!
Zombie programs are the programs that hackers use to gain access to your computer. They are often calls ‘bots’. And a series of linked zombie computers is a botnet.
I’m also sure that there are plenty of zombie programs sitting on mainframes and other platforms that were written years ago to perform important tasks and were never deleted. They’re sitting there – perhaps their existence is unknown to the current sys progs – waiting for someone to execute them. Perhaps, with all the changes that have taken place in the intervening years, they can do no harm. Or, perhaps they can cause mayhem! It might be worth checking that any of these zombie programs can’t come back and cause chaos.
You get zombie processes on Unix. These are processes that have completed execution, but they retain an entry in the process table – allowing the parent process to read its child’s exit status. Usually all entries are removed once the parent process has read the information it needs. You can identify a zombie using the ps command – it puts a ‘Z’ (for zombie) in the STAT column.
You can get zombie transactions in SqlTransaction code. With this, a zombie transaction is a transaction that cannot be committed (due to an unrecoverable error) but is still open.
COBOL is sometimes described as a zombie programming language because, no matter what else happens in programming languages, it’s always there – seemingly unkillable! In fact, IBM has recently announced the IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS V5.1 compiler.
Perhaps there are more zombies out there than you thought!
Next time, I’m definitely not talking about vampire and werewolf computing.
Showing posts with label Data. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Data. Show all posts
Sunday, 9 June 2013
Monday, 14 January 2013
How much data is enough?
In the past, the only way of storing data was in your head. So, in less developed societies, older people were revered because their heads contained information about how to deal with problems. They remembered how the tribe or village survived last time everywhere flooded or the last major drought. They knew high spots or springs that don’t dry up.
Many societies have tried to make this information available to others by creating songs or poems that recite the lore – so that future generations will not forget the deeds of great heroes, but, more importantly, the list of tips and tricks for surviving in difficult situations.
Then came writing. There was now the ability to list the kings, so it was obvious who should be the next ruler. Or to list the goods that were to be bartered for some other set of goods. Or to record just how many sheep and goats someone owned at the end of each year. And writing in stone, which could last for many years, was later replaced by writing on papyrus, and eventually on paper. With the advent of printing, it became possible to create definitive lists of laws or stories that everyone had access to (well, provided they could read!).
And in our headlong rush through time, we get to the early computers. People could store information on them – like the milk yields of their cows and how much food the herd consumed, or how many coffees were sold in each coffee shop in a chain, or what you wanted for Christmas. And not only could you store data, you could calculate answers to questions. But it was all pretty much driven by humans for humans. And generally you knew where it was stored – even if it was on a mainframe in a different country, you could find the address of site.
But now two of those factors are changing, and changing in a very big way. Now, a lot of the data isn’t created by humans, it’s coming from devices. Let me expand on that. Every time you use your credit card, information about your purchases and where you purchased them is very likely stored somewhere, so the retailer can target adverts at you, and so they have a better idea of what types of product sell well in different parts of the country. Requiring even less human intervention is all the footage that gets stored from security cameras. No humans are involved in the recording and storage. And there are many other examples of devices that just store information. As time goes on, and more-and-more information is stored, there’s going to be a requirement for more-and-more storage. I’m sure someone somewhere has worked out the numbers, but if 500GB of storage occupies half a square foot, and the amount of data stored doubles every year, then in 20 years time, the whole planet will be covered in storage devices to the depth of 18 inches!!
But where is your data? Originally it was on your hard drive or on DASD in your organization’s buildings. But nowadays, I have most of my customer-facing files on Google Drive, and, so long as I’m in a wifi area, I use the CloudOn app on my tablet to show customers PowerPoint presentations as well as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. I also use Dropbox for sharing files with friends. The point I’m making is that I have no idea where those files are physically stored. And, for business files, that brings a huge security issue. For example, European organizations are pretty much prevented from using US-based, or indeterminate location, because they’re outside the EU.
It seems at this rate that there will always be more data to store (somewhere) – and hopefully there will always be enough storage, without covering the whole planet. But will there be any more knowledge in the world?
Many societies have tried to make this information available to others by creating songs or poems that recite the lore – so that future generations will not forget the deeds of great heroes, but, more importantly, the list of tips and tricks for surviving in difficult situations.
Then came writing. There was now the ability to list the kings, so it was obvious who should be the next ruler. Or to list the goods that were to be bartered for some other set of goods. Or to record just how many sheep and goats someone owned at the end of each year. And writing in stone, which could last for many years, was later replaced by writing on papyrus, and eventually on paper. With the advent of printing, it became possible to create definitive lists of laws or stories that everyone had access to (well, provided they could read!).
And in our headlong rush through time, we get to the early computers. People could store information on them – like the milk yields of their cows and how much food the herd consumed, or how many coffees were sold in each coffee shop in a chain, or what you wanted for Christmas. And not only could you store data, you could calculate answers to questions. But it was all pretty much driven by humans for humans. And generally you knew where it was stored – even if it was on a mainframe in a different country, you could find the address of site.
But now two of those factors are changing, and changing in a very big way. Now, a lot of the data isn’t created by humans, it’s coming from devices. Let me expand on that. Every time you use your credit card, information about your purchases and where you purchased them is very likely stored somewhere, so the retailer can target adverts at you, and so they have a better idea of what types of product sell well in different parts of the country. Requiring even less human intervention is all the footage that gets stored from security cameras. No humans are involved in the recording and storage. And there are many other examples of devices that just store information. As time goes on, and more-and-more information is stored, there’s going to be a requirement for more-and-more storage. I’m sure someone somewhere has worked out the numbers, but if 500GB of storage occupies half a square foot, and the amount of data stored doubles every year, then in 20 years time, the whole planet will be covered in storage devices to the depth of 18 inches!!
But where is your data? Originally it was on your hard drive or on DASD in your organization’s buildings. But nowadays, I have most of my customer-facing files on Google Drive, and, so long as I’m in a wifi area, I use the CloudOn app on my tablet to show customers PowerPoint presentations as well as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. I also use Dropbox for sharing files with friends. The point I’m making is that I have no idea where those files are physically stored. And, for business files, that brings a huge security issue. For example, European organizations are pretty much prevented from using US-based, or indeterminate location, because they’re outside the EU.
It seems at this rate that there will always be more data to store (somewhere) – and hopefully there will always be enough storage, without covering the whole planet. But will there be any more knowledge in the world?
Monday, 23 January 2012
More data stored off mainframes – user survey finding
The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2012 is now available for download from www.arcati.com/newyearbook12 – and it’s FREE. Each new Yearbook is always greeted with enthusiasm by mainframers everywhere because it is such a unique source of information. And each year, many people find the results of the user survey especially interesting. And this year, for the very first time, survey respondents indicated that, at their sites, more data was stored off mainframes than on.
This surprising result came from the 100 respondents who completed the survey on the Arcati Web site between 1 November and 2 December 2011. 40% were from Europe and 50% from North America, with 10% from the rest of the world.
46% of the respondents worked in companies with upwards of 10,000 employees worldwide, while 10% of respondents had 0-200 staff, 6% had 201-1000, 28% had 1001 to 5000, and 10% had 5001-10,000 staff. In terms of MIPS, 34% of respondents had fewer than 1000 MIPS installed, 40% fell into the mid-sized category between 1000 and 10,000 MIPS, and 26% were at the high end.
Looking at MIPS growth produced some interesting results. Larger, more mature businesses (above 10,000 MIPS) were almost all experiencing some growth, but predominantly in 0 to 10% per year category. Sites in the 1000-10,000 MIPS range were showing a range of results with some sites suggesting a decline while others predicted growth of up to 50%. Sites below 1000 MIPS were experiencing a more complex future, with most expecting a small growth, but almost as many expecting no growth or negative growth (a business-speak euphemism for decline). The mainframe market does appear to be quite fragmented with competitive pressures at the lower end of the mainframe market, and some respondents commented about lack of understanding amongst management about the value of mainframe computing.
It was interesting to see that 6% of respondents had the zEnterprise z114s, with 19% having the z196s models installed. I expect that future surveys we’ll ask how sites are making use of the extra features on these models. Previous surveys have shown that there is a willingness amongst mainframes (especially larger ones) to purchase new models as they become available. In order to benefit from the new features
The big talking point during 2011 was cloud computing and whether mainframers really have been doing it since the 1960s and the impact of offering software (and anything else) as a service. The survey asked whether respondents currently used their mainframe for cloud computing. Just 12% (up from last year’s 2%) of respondents said they did. 34% said they didn’t, and the rest weren’t sure. It’s still early days for a cloud computing initiative to move off the PowerPoint slides and into the business environment, so the survey asked whether respondents were planning to adopt cloud computing as a strategy. 40% said they weren’t at present. Just 18% thought some mainframe applications would be cloud-enabled in the future. It will be interesting to follow these figures in future surveys.
The survey asked respondents which specialty processors (IFL, zIIP, and zAAP) they had. 16% of sites had all three (up from last year’s value of 6%) and a further 20% of sites had two of the three specialty processors (down from last year’s 28%). More sites had zIIP processors (48%) than any other. 36% had IFL processors, and 30% had zAAP specialty processors. 28% of sites don’t have a specialty processor installed.
The survey inquired about what proportion of enterprise data resides on the mainframe and what on other platforms. This produced, for the first year ever, the surprising result that more than half of the respondents use other platforms to manage the lion’s share of their corporate data. 44 percent of sites surveyed have more data on their mainframes, whereas 56 percent of the sites surveyed have more data stored on other platforms. Unfortunately, the survey was unable to drill down to find out why, but we can speculate that it may simply be the growth of data associated with the non-mainframe side of the business. It could be a result of the quantity of e-mails that organizations store for their staff. It could be that non-mainframe data is less well managed and ‘spreads’ into larger data sizes. Perhaps non-mainframe databases are less space efficient. Or maybe, people just create and save Excel spreadsheets and Word documents on Windows servers, where they wouldn’t keep equivalent files on mainframes. Or perhaps sites move their mainframe archive data off the mainframe, but still have it available online on, for example, a Linux distributed system. I’d be interested to hear yiour views on this.
The comments in the survey identified management ignorance of the power and benefits of using a mainframe. This is now a perennial reason given for the decline in mainframe computing within organizations. But cost was also highlighted as a factor mitigating against the successful growth of mainframe computing. One respondent suggested, “software costs are sinking the mainframe”.
Anyway, full details of the responses to many other questions can be found in the user survey section of the Yearbook. It’s well worth a read.
The Yearbook can only be free to mainframers because of the support given by sponsors. This year’s sponsors were: CA Technologies, Serena Software, Software AG, Software Diversified Services (SDS), Type80 Security Software, and William Data Systems.
This surprising result came from the 100 respondents who completed the survey on the Arcati Web site between 1 November and 2 December 2011. 40% were from Europe and 50% from North America, with 10% from the rest of the world.
46% of the respondents worked in companies with upwards of 10,000 employees worldwide, while 10% of respondents had 0-200 staff, 6% had 201-1000, 28% had 1001 to 5000, and 10% had 5001-10,000 staff. In terms of MIPS, 34% of respondents had fewer than 1000 MIPS installed, 40% fell into the mid-sized category between 1000 and 10,000 MIPS, and 26% were at the high end.
Looking at MIPS growth produced some interesting results. Larger, more mature businesses (above 10,000 MIPS) were almost all experiencing some growth, but predominantly in 0 to 10% per year category. Sites in the 1000-10,000 MIPS range were showing a range of results with some sites suggesting a decline while others predicted growth of up to 50%. Sites below 1000 MIPS were experiencing a more complex future, with most expecting a small growth, but almost as many expecting no growth or negative growth (a business-speak euphemism for decline). The mainframe market does appear to be quite fragmented with competitive pressures at the lower end of the mainframe market, and some respondents commented about lack of understanding amongst management about the value of mainframe computing.
It was interesting to see that 6% of respondents had the zEnterprise z114s, with 19% having the z196s models installed. I expect that future surveys we’ll ask how sites are making use of the extra features on these models. Previous surveys have shown that there is a willingness amongst mainframes (especially larger ones) to purchase new models as they become available. In order to benefit from the new features
The big talking point during 2011 was cloud computing and whether mainframers really have been doing it since the 1960s and the impact of offering software (and anything else) as a service. The survey asked whether respondents currently used their mainframe for cloud computing. Just 12% (up from last year’s 2%) of respondents said they did. 34% said they didn’t, and the rest weren’t sure. It’s still early days for a cloud computing initiative to move off the PowerPoint slides and into the business environment, so the survey asked whether respondents were planning to adopt cloud computing as a strategy. 40% said they weren’t at present. Just 18% thought some mainframe applications would be cloud-enabled in the future. It will be interesting to follow these figures in future surveys.
The survey asked respondents which specialty processors (IFL, zIIP, and zAAP) they had. 16% of sites had all three (up from last year’s value of 6%) and a further 20% of sites had two of the three specialty processors (down from last year’s 28%). More sites had zIIP processors (48%) than any other. 36% had IFL processors, and 30% had zAAP specialty processors. 28% of sites don’t have a specialty processor installed.
The survey inquired about what proportion of enterprise data resides on the mainframe and what on other platforms. This produced, for the first year ever, the surprising result that more than half of the respondents use other platforms to manage the lion’s share of their corporate data. 44 percent of sites surveyed have more data on their mainframes, whereas 56 percent of the sites surveyed have more data stored on other platforms. Unfortunately, the survey was unable to drill down to find out why, but we can speculate that it may simply be the growth of data associated with the non-mainframe side of the business. It could be a result of the quantity of e-mails that organizations store for their staff. It could be that non-mainframe data is less well managed and ‘spreads’ into larger data sizes. Perhaps non-mainframe databases are less space efficient. Or maybe, people just create and save Excel spreadsheets and Word documents on Windows servers, where they wouldn’t keep equivalent files on mainframes. Or perhaps sites move their mainframe archive data off the mainframe, but still have it available online on, for example, a Linux distributed system. I’d be interested to hear yiour views on this.
The comments in the survey identified management ignorance of the power and benefits of using a mainframe. This is now a perennial reason given for the decline in mainframe computing within organizations. But cost was also highlighted as a factor mitigating against the successful growth of mainframe computing. One respondent suggested, “software costs are sinking the mainframe”.
Anyway, full details of the responses to many other questions can be found in the user survey section of the Yearbook. It’s well worth a read.
The Yearbook can only be free to mainframers because of the support given by sponsors. This year’s sponsors were: CA Technologies, Serena Software, Software AG, Software Diversified Services (SDS), Type80 Security Software, and William Data Systems.
Sunday, 12 September 2010
Cheaper mainframe data access?
Accessing mainframe data and applications (including CICS) just got easier and perhaps cheaper with the announcement by HostBridge (www.hostbridge.com) of HostBridge for zIIP – shortened to HBzIIP.
HostBridge – the software rather than the company – aids mainframe integration. The HostBridge base product runs under CICS and intercepts CICS data before terminal data streams are generated as output or expected as input. HostBridge then auto-converts the data to XML documents for integration with other applications, distributed systems, Web applications, and anything using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The HostBridge base product is a prerequisite for all other HostBridge products, modules, and connectors.
The company has now released HostBridge Version 6.5. The extra appeal of this version is that users are able to reduce their costs by moving integration/SOA workloads to the zIIP specialty engine. The other advantages the company promises include the development of Web services with greater speed and flexibility, and the ability to add Web 2.0 functionality to integration/SOA initiatives.
zIIP (z Integrated Information Process) specialty engines allows organizations to increase mainframe processing capacity for specific workloads without higher licence fees. As we’ve said before, when looking at NEON’s zPrime product amongst others, users need to pay to have the zIIP processor activated, but then pay less for usage of the main processor because the work is being processed on the zIIP engine. For most mainframe users, it can be quite a complicated spreadsheet calculating whether using zIIP or zAAP (z Application Assist Processor) specialty processors is worthwhile. But once you’ve got them, the more processing you can run on them, the less money you pay IBM each month.
Quoting from the press release, the new version offers the following advantages:
HostBridge – the software rather than the company – aids mainframe integration. The HostBridge base product runs under CICS and intercepts CICS data before terminal data streams are generated as output or expected as input. HostBridge then auto-converts the data to XML documents for integration with other applications, distributed systems, Web applications, and anything using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). The HostBridge base product is a prerequisite for all other HostBridge products, modules, and connectors.
The company has now released HostBridge Version 6.5. The extra appeal of this version is that users are able to reduce their costs by moving integration/SOA workloads to the zIIP specialty engine. The other advantages the company promises include the development of Web services with greater speed and flexibility, and the ability to add Web 2.0 functionality to integration/SOA initiatives.
zIIP (z Integrated Information Process) specialty engines allows organizations to increase mainframe processing capacity for specific workloads without higher licence fees. As we’ve said before, when looking at NEON’s zPrime product amongst others, users need to pay to have the zIIP processor activated, but then pay less for usage of the main processor because the work is being processed on the zIIP engine. For most mainframe users, it can be quite a complicated spreadsheet calculating whether using zIIP or zAAP (z Application Assist Processor) specialty processors is worthwhile. But once you’ve got them, the more processing you can run on them, the less money you pay IBM each month.
Quoting from the press release, the new version offers the following advantages:
- HostBridge Process Automation Engine.
The new HB Process Automation Engine is a JavaScript-based development/runtime facility that lets users integrate any CICS application or CICS-accessible data source (DB2, VSAM, DL/I, Datacom) with any distributed systems. HB Process Automation also allows users to orchestrate and automate complex CICS transaction processes as a single service. - Web 2.0/Lightweight Services.
Newly-supported services technologies include REST, E4X, XPath, JSON, and Atom. They offer simpler alternatives to formal SOAP/WSDL-based services for faster, more agile integration of CICS data and business logic into new composite applications and mash-ups.
If your looking at XMLing your mainframe applications and you have zIIP running workloads already, then it’s worth a look.
Sunday, 11 July 2010
Steganography
I’ve been variously involved in securing mainframe data over many years. I’ve looked at encryption of data, External Security Managers (ESMs), certificates, and public key encryption at various times. I’ve only recently become aware of steganography and how that can be used to send covert information in plain sight!
Steganography means concealed (the “stegano” bit) writing (the “graphy” bit), and there was a book about it written in 1499 by Johannes Trithemius – although not published until 1606. Trithemius was Abbot of Sponheim, but, even so, the Catholic Church banned the three volumes of his book (called Steganographia) for almost 300 years. So that must give you a clue as to how difficult it would be to control the use of hidden messages by ordinary people – you and I really!
Here’s an example – this week’s shopping list:
Allspice, lemon, banana, avocado, peanuts, strawberry, pomegranate, sweets, anchovies.
Allspice, lemon, banana, avocado, peanuts, strawberry, pomegranate, sweets, anchovies.
You’d look at that and think there’s nothing hidden in that list. Now look at it again:
Allspice, lemons, bananas, avocado, peanuts, strawberry, pomegranate, sweets, anchovies
Allspice, lemons, bananas, avocado, peanuts, strawberry, pomegranate, sweets, anchovies
It says LEAVE TOWN. Obviously more complicated messages could be included if I had a longer shopping list – but you get the idea.
But there’s an even better and more modern method of steganography – and that’s using images. You can hide messages in the least significant bit in an image. I have hidden a message in the photo below. Can you read it?
If you want to create your own hidden message, you can have a go at http://mozaiq.org/encrypt/. You can also read hidden messages by clicking on “tools” from the menu and “decrypt”.
The pixels in 24-bit images have their colour defined using three numbers. There’s one for red, one for green, and one for blue (RGB). Making a small change to a pixel alters its colour but not so much that the human eye will detect the change. These small changes can be combined to give the ASCII code for a letter – and those letters when put together give a word, a sentence, a complete hidden message. It would be completely plausible that the images in an innocent Web site could contain messages for banned organizations. Those pictures on the MI5 Web site could actually be coded messages to UK operatives (with Internet access) across the globe. But think how many other Web sites could contain coded messages – just who could those messages be for?
Almost any message that can be send – any picture, any digital message, any written or printed message – could contain a hidden message in it.
I’m not trying to make your paranoia worse, I just thought it might be worth checking those images, or reading every second character in a list (or third or fourth!), and making sure someone isn’t sending a message from your Web site that you don’t expect.
Sleep well!
Sunday, 17 January 2010
2009 – a review
2009 was quite an interesting year considering that we entered it in the middle of the worst financial crisis for x number of years – I’ll leave you to fill in a value for ‘x’, but whatever number you put, things were bad.
So, what exciting things did happen? Well, IBM continued with the inexorable progress of its mainframe software. We saw IMS V11 actually being GAed – it had been available as a beta for a while. The new version boasted even better SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) and Java features and a host of other useful enhancements for IMS users.
The people at Hursley gave us CICS/TS Version 4.1. This again had robust all-round improvements plus featured enhancements in the areas of Web 2.0, dashboards, and business event publishing.
DB2 didn’t exactly manage a new release proper, but did beta Version 10. Again, this is designed to improve performance and save MIPS – which being chargeable is a good thing to have. Obviously someone at IBM owns a Mac rather than a PC because they are calling it DB2 X (like Mac OS X).
Perhaps the most important release is the new version of the operating system. The cool kids are now using z/OS V1.11. Like all good operating system upgrades it is backwards compatible and improves performance. There were also some enhancements to autonomic computing – the software answer to the ageing IT population – which means the software will identify potential faults before they occur and take steps to prevent them. Or if it’s too late for that, they will recover from them – and all without human intervention.
Away from the mainframe, perhaps the biggest news was Oracle buying Sun Microsystems. Reports are coming in of potential massive job cuts at Sun. Interestingly, Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius, co-creator of MySQL (which Sun owns), ran a Web campaign called “Save MySQL” to convince European regulators to prevent Oracle’s buyout.
The other big news for mainframers was NEON Enterprise Software’s announcement of zPrime. Why the excitement? Well, IBM and many independent software vendors (ISVs) generally charge users for software by the amount of General Purpose Processor (GPP) capacity they use. IBM also sells specialty processors, which are available for workloads like Linux, Java (think WebSphere), and DB2. For a typical mainframe site, processing work in a specialty processor saves money because it is not using the chargeable GPPs – and there’s an added benefit that it can save an organization money by putting off the need for an expensive processor upgrade. The controversial zPrime software, according to NEON, allows users to run up to 50% of their workload on specialty processors. So in effect a zIIP doesn’t just run DB2 work, it can also run IMS, CICS, TSO/ISPF, batch, etc, etc. On the plus side this offers the strong possibility of bringing down the total cost of ownership of the mainframe, which is always good for users (though there is some debate about the achievable level of savings). On the negative side, IBM and ISVs may opt to limit the use of zPrime through licence changes (particularly for those users who are tied into Enterprise Licence Agreements) if specialty processors are used for workloads other than those intended. IBM has already issued letters about customers violating agreements if they use zPrime, and NEON has sued IBM. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2010.
Personally, 2009 was an interesting year. I became an IBM Data Champion in an IBM-sponsored initiative that was rebadged as IBM Information Champions. I was also a finalist in the Computer Weekly blog awards in the category of Individual IT professional male. In addition, I qualified as a clinical hypnotherapist and psychotherapist and added loads of letters after my name. (If you want to know, look at http://www.itech-ed.com/hypno/us.htmhttp://www.itech-ed.com/hypno/us.htm.)
Looking forward to 2010, the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook will be available shortly with its annual mainframe user survey; the Virtual IMS Connection user group has a full calendar of events for IMS users; you can now follow my IT-related tweets on Twitter (twitter.com/t_eddolls), and become a fan of iTech-Ed on Facebook. It will be interesting to see what else happens.
So, what exciting things did happen? Well, IBM continued with the inexorable progress of its mainframe software. We saw IMS V11 actually being GAed – it had been available as a beta for a while. The new version boasted even better SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) and Java features and a host of other useful enhancements for IMS users.
The people at Hursley gave us CICS/TS Version 4.1. This again had robust all-round improvements plus featured enhancements in the areas of Web 2.0, dashboards, and business event publishing.
DB2 didn’t exactly manage a new release proper, but did beta Version 10. Again, this is designed to improve performance and save MIPS – which being chargeable is a good thing to have. Obviously someone at IBM owns a Mac rather than a PC because they are calling it DB2 X (like Mac OS X).
Perhaps the most important release is the new version of the operating system. The cool kids are now using z/OS V1.11. Like all good operating system upgrades it is backwards compatible and improves performance. There were also some enhancements to autonomic computing – the software answer to the ageing IT population – which means the software will identify potential faults before they occur and take steps to prevent them. Or if it’s too late for that, they will recover from them – and all without human intervention.
Away from the mainframe, perhaps the biggest news was Oracle buying Sun Microsystems. Reports are coming in of potential massive job cuts at Sun. Interestingly, Michael ‘Monty’ Widenius, co-creator of MySQL (which Sun owns), ran a Web campaign called “Save MySQL” to convince European regulators to prevent Oracle’s buyout.
The other big news for mainframers was NEON Enterprise Software’s announcement of zPrime. Why the excitement? Well, IBM and many independent software vendors (ISVs) generally charge users for software by the amount of General Purpose Processor (GPP) capacity they use. IBM also sells specialty processors, which are available for workloads like Linux, Java (think WebSphere), and DB2. For a typical mainframe site, processing work in a specialty processor saves money because it is not using the chargeable GPPs – and there’s an added benefit that it can save an organization money by putting off the need for an expensive processor upgrade. The controversial zPrime software, according to NEON, allows users to run up to 50% of their workload on specialty processors. So in effect a zIIP doesn’t just run DB2 work, it can also run IMS, CICS, TSO/ISPF, batch, etc, etc. On the plus side this offers the strong possibility of bringing down the total cost of ownership of the mainframe, which is always good for users (though there is some debate about the achievable level of savings). On the negative side, IBM and ISVs may opt to limit the use of zPrime through licence changes (particularly for those users who are tied into Enterprise Licence Agreements) if specialty processors are used for workloads other than those intended. IBM has already issued letters about customers violating agreements if they use zPrime, and NEON has sued IBM. It will be interesting to see what happens in 2010.
Personally, 2009 was an interesting year. I became an IBM Data Champion in an IBM-sponsored initiative that was rebadged as IBM Information Champions. I was also a finalist in the Computer Weekly blog awards in the category of Individual IT professional male. In addition, I qualified as a clinical hypnotherapist and psychotherapist and added loads of letters after my name. (If you want to know, look at http://www.itech-ed.com/hypno/us.htmhttp://www.itech-ed.com/hypno/us.htm.)
Looking forward to 2010, the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook will be available shortly with its annual mainframe user survey; the Virtual IMS Connection user group has a full calendar of events for IMS users; you can now follow my IT-related tweets on Twitter (twitter.com/t_eddolls), and become a fan of iTech-Ed on Facebook. It will be interesting to see what else happens.
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