Operating systems on a stick

You’re probably familiar with IBM’s z Personal Development Tool Adapter, which allows users to develop mainframe software without a mainframe. In effect, users plug a very expensive memory stick into their PC and it acts like a mainframe.

But now, IBM has extended the idea by allowing users with the appropriate memory stick to load a cloud-hosted Windows or Linux operating system onto their PC – although they will need a Windows or Linux computer with a 64-bit processor. It’s called the Secure Enterprise Desktop (SED) and comes packaged as an extension to IBM’s Smart Business Desktop Cloud service.

The memory stick plugs into a USB port (as you’d expect) and comes with its own HTTPS stack, bootloader, and the necessary proprietary code to create a secure VPN channel connection between a partitioned drive on the user’s PC and a remotely-located server.

That’s nice, you say, but what’s the point? Well, it’s another way of allowing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). This is an issue that I blogged about a little while ago, and one that is beginning to raise its head at many sites. Users like the devices they’ve bought themselves and are familiar with, rather than the products IT allocates them. And they want to use those devices to access their work-based data and applications.

Running the bootloader from the memory stick protects the business from the problem of home machines being riddled with viruses and trojans. The PC establishes a connection to the server, then there’s two-way authentication to ensure you’re who you say you are and the server is really the right one for your company (and not anyone else’s). Once this connection is established, the user downloads a small (kernel-based virtual machine) hypervisor, which allows the user to choose a Linux or Windows operating system. Any changes the user makes to data is written in an AES-256 encrypted format to a portion of the local hard drive with the key retained on the stick, and these changes are replicated back to the cloud-hosted operating system.

The device offers a range of authentication options, including a built-in card reader as well as PIN.

If the memory stick gets removed, the operating system instantly stops because the connection to the remote server has been severed. Re-inserting the stick allows re-authentication to occur and the user can carry on as before.

Users have the option to download the host operating system from the cloud, so they can continue to work without an Internet connection – if that’s what they require.

At the server end, a Linux server with Apache and OpenLDAP (open Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) are required.

It seems like a very useful innovation. What do you think?

IMS systems and costs - analysis

I blogged about IBM’s IMS (Information Management System) at the end of July, saying that it has been around since 1968 and originated as a bill-of-materials program for NASA’s Apollo programme. I said that IMS effectively comes in two parts – there’s the Transaction Manager (TM) part and the Data Base (DB) part. I talked about different types of database, and I mentioned the Virtual IMS user group at www.fundi.com/virtualims.

Today I want to pose the questions: how much does an IMS development/test system cost? And how many development test systems does a site typically have installed?

It’s a bit like asking: how long is a piece of string? Obviously every piece of string has a length, but it is unknown, a quantative answer can’t be given. And by implication, whatever else is being discussed will contain a degree of indeterminate uncertainty!

Our experience at iTech-Ed (where we administer the Virtual IMS user group) is that a single IMS development test system can cost an organisation between US$1,000,000 per year and $2,000,000 per year (and possibly more in some cases).

There are some sites that run their development systems on dedicated machines that can be larger than many average-sized organizations’ production systems.

However, there is an additional complication. We believe that, although IMS is a huge revenue earner for IBM, they will waive their fee for software for organisations that are development shops and don't use it for production.

We also estimate that the personnel costs for installing and maintaining IMS development systems can amount to about half a million US dollars per year.

And the number of IMS development/test systems can vary hugely from 1 or 2 true development systems (plus test, QA, etc) in smaller shops, to larger customers, who may have any number from around ten to perhaps 30+. We know of some users with 300+ test IMS regions, but the bulk of the bell-shaped curve is skewed to much lower values. The reason we believe the average is ten or slightly above is because of the amount of administrative effort these test systems take to maintain.

The waters can be muddied further by the fact that organizations can negotiate deals on price with IBM, but are then discouraged from sharing information about those prices with others.

Our conclusion is that the cost to the organisation of running a development system depends on the size of the installation. US$1-2M is a good estimate of the cost for each IMS development/test system, with 10 being a reasonable estimate of, on average, how many development/test systems exist.

And, of course, if you have any further information on this, we would be really interested to hear from you.