2010 mainframe review

As this will probably be my last blog of 2010, I thought it would be traditional to review what’s happened in the mainframe world over the past year.

2010 will probably be remembered as the year of the cloud because it was the year when cloud computing started to be taken seriously across the industry. Microsoft opened its ‘mega data centre’ in Dublin and promoted its Windows Azure environment for development, service hosting, and service management based on the cloud. Google worked with VMware to develop a new operating system for the cloud, and launched a version of the Google App Engine for enterprise users. Amazon promoted its Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service. And many people suggested that mainframes have offered cloud computing all along – we just called it something else!

IBM’s acquisitions this year include: National Interest Security Company, Initiate Systems, Intelliden, Cast Iron Systems, Sterling Commerce, Coremetrics, BigFix, Storwize, Datacap, Unica, OpenPages, Netezza , PSS Systems, and Clarity Systems.

The big story of 2010, of course, was the launch of a new mainframe range in July. The zEnterprise 196 brings together the latest mainframe technology with POWER7 and x86 IBM blade systems, giving potential users z/OS, AIX, and Linux all on the one box. And all this is controlled from the mainframe console by the new Unified Resource Manager. This new mainframe can be thought of as a virtualization hub that manages other workloads in the data centre.

For people who like to stay current with the latest version numbers and dates of major products, CICS 2.1 has been available since the middle of 2009, DB2 10 was announced earlier this year, as was z/OS 1.12, and IMS 12 should be generally available early in the New Year.

The battle between IBM and NEON Enterprise Software (provider of the zPrime product, which allows users to run traditional workloads on specialty processors) has rumbled on in the courts for a year without any sign of an outcome. The European Union regulators have taken IBM to task for not allowing its operating system to run on other hardware, and for not being fair to so-called ‘spare-part’ vendors. The first complaint came from T3 and TurboHercules, saying that IBM ties its mainframe operating system to its mainframe hardware – and thereby destroys the emulation market.

For me and iTech-Ed Ltd it was a good year. I was given the accolade of IBM Information Champion again this year. My blog at Mainframe Update (mainframeupdate.blogspot.com) was again a finalist in the Computer Weekly annual blog awards. I was interviewed by CIPS (the Canadian Information technology Professionals). You can download a podcast of the interview from the CIPS Connections site at stephenibaraki.com/cips/v610/trevor_eddolls_2010.html. I was invited by CA to be on their expert panel for a webinar called “From Here to Eternity: The Mainframe as a Mainstay of the Enterprise” discussing cloud computing. Other panellists were Jon Toigo, CEO, Toigo Partners International; Keith Winnard, IT technical services, JD Williams; and Dayton Semerjian, general manager, mainframe, CA Technologies; and control of the session was maintained by Michael Krieger. iTech-Ed helped produce the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2010, which is still available for download from www.arcati.com/newyearbook10. The 2011 edition will be available in January. IBM Systems Magazine's Mainframe Extra eNewsletter was quite taken by one of my regular blogs and they included it in their "Links We Love" section. My articles on cloud computing and IMS was published in the October/November issue of zJournal. The links for the articles are www.mainframezone.com/it-management/ims-and-cloud-computing and www.mainframezone.com/it-management/sidebar-cloud-computing-origins-and-evolution. Exciting things are happening with the Virtual IMS user group that iTech-Ed runs. After a short hiatus, a new sponsor for the user group has been found and webinars and newsletters will continue for members and guests in the New Year. Look out for more details.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

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 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.

IBM v EU

Just as IBM was basking in the success of its zEnterprise mainframe-in-a-box, along comes the European Union regulators to take it to task for not allowing its operating system to run on other hardware, and not being fair to spare-part vendors.

The European Commission has already warmed up for its probe into IBM’s workings by taking action against Intel and Microsoft. EU antitrust laws ensure that big organizations deal carefully with small competitors. The EU can issue a range of fines and sanctions should it believe a dominant organization in the market place is abusing its position. IBM’s legal team are used to this kind of battle. Back in 1956 the US Department of Justice reached a consent decree with IBM that, in effect, created a market for used mainframes and mainframe parts. In 1984 the EU agreed with IBM that competing mainframe companies would have access to the mainframe platform.

As we’ve mentioned before, the first complaint comes from T3 and TurboHercules saying that IBM ties its mainframe operating system to its mainframe hardware – and thereby destroys the emulation market. The second investigation was initiated by the Commission alleging discriminatory behaviour towards competing suppliers of maintenance services – spare parts to you and I.

How does IBM respond? The company said that it intends to cooperate with any EU inquiries, while denying there was any merit to the complainants’ claims. It then alleged that the accusations were being fuelled by business rivals. Microsoft is a minority stakeholder in T3. IBM went on to suggest some of its larger competitors want “to mimic aspects of IBM mainframes without making the substantial investments IBM has made and continues to make”. IBM declared these competitors, “are violating IBM’s intellectual property rights”. It continued: “IBM is fully entitled to enforce its intellectual property rights and protect the investments we have made in our technologies”.

It will be interesting to see what comes out this. Bear in mind there’s the NEON zPrime case waiting in the wings as well.

In its on-going watch on successful companies, the Commission has also launched a preliminary anti-monopoly investigation into Google, examining its power in the online search and digital advertising markets.

So sue me!

OK, I don’t really mean me. It’s just that IBM seems to have been particularly litigious recently, and in many ways seems to have returned to its bunker mentality of old rather than the caring all-embracing modern self that we were just getting used to. Two particularly high-profile cases are IBM versus TurboHercules and IBM versus NEON Enterprise Software.

TurboHercules, you’ll remember, sells services around the open source Hercules project – there was an interesting article about it in the recent Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2010 (www.arcati.com/newyearbook10). Hercules basically emulates a System z mainframe on a PC. IBM has rattled its corporate sabre saying that it has “substantial concerns” about the Hercules project infringing its patents.

The Internet is abuzz with people rushing to mount their high horses to condemn IBM for alleged double standards. Last time, I was talking about 10 years of Linux – the well-known open source software – on mainframes, and here they are attacking another open source project. Well, they are probably right. I’m no apologist for IBM. I personally feel that these alternative entry points to mainframes are a good thing. But I can also see IBM’s point of view: they are a business, and they don’t get any income from the Hercules project. Some bean counter somewhere is going to flag this as a bad thing! And someone else looking at revenue income is going to view this as a hole through which they are losing money.

So, Hercules has filed an antitrust motion in the European Union asking for IBM to unbundle its mainframe operating system from its hardware. IBM claims the motion is unfounded and offers the metaphor that a software emulation business is just like selling cheap knock-offs of brand-name clothing.

Neon Enterprise Software, you’ll recall, produced zPrime, which allows “ordinary” mainframe work to be run on specialty processors – thus saving the users money because only work running on the main General Purpose Processor (GPP) is chargeable (although, of course, the specialty processors must be paid for). IBM sent out letters suggesting that people using zPrime would be breaking the terms of their contract with IBM. NEON sued claiming IBM was illegally using its powerful position in the marketplace to hurt sales of zPrime. IBM then countersued claiming that zPrime violates their (IBM’s) copyrights (that word again).

Grasping for metaphorical language again, IBM suggests that NEON’s business model is “no different than that of a crafty technician who promises, for a fee, to rig your cable box so you can watch premium TV channels without paying the cable company. Even if it could be accomplished technically, it is neither lawful nor ethical." Again, the blogosphere is full of people listing their “why I hate my cable provider” stories.

So, it’s a good year to be a lawyer. A good year for people writing metaphors for IBM. And probably a bad year for mainframers and would-be mainframers. And, in terms of publicity, a bad year for IBM.

OpenMainframe.Org

I must admit that until the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2010 was published, I was only dimly aware of OpenMainframe.org (their Web site, not surprisingly, is at openmainframe.org). They sponsored the Yearbook, and so I thought I’d find out more about them.

Their Web site explains that OpenMainframe.org is a forum for exchanging news, views, and information related to creating an open market for IBM-compatible mainframe solutions. And I guess they would put the stress on the word “compatible”.

It goes on to explain that the Web site was built by a community of individuals and companies sharing a common interest in promoting a fair, open, and diverse marketplace for mainframe solutions. There’s a big thank you to T3 Technologies (which describes itself as effectively out of business due to the direct actions of IBM – you may remember its tServer mainframe, based on FLEX-ES, was a great success) Microsoft Corporation (not a fan of IBM), the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA says it promotes open markets, open systems, open networks, and full, fair, and open competition), Peerstone Research (which advises customers on buying decisions), TurboHercules (which describes itself as the first commercial entity exclusively dedicated to Hercules, the well-known open source software implementation of the IBM mainframe architecture) and others.

This group of IBM-alternativists informs us that it believes IT customers can benefit from lower costs, increased innovation, broader choice, and better customer service when markets are truly open and multiple vendors compete for business. A sentiment that it’s hard to disagree with – unless, I suppose, you’re an IBM accountant!

The site lists a large number of laudable beliefs, including:
•    IBM mainframe system software, middleware, and intellectual property should be available to all solution providers and customers for licensed use on alternative hardware platforms under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.
•    In order to promote interoperability, compatibility, and an open market for mainframe solutions, IBM should be required to publish interface and protocol information for mainframe technologies.
•    Given the strategic value of IBM-compatible mainframe systems for businesses and governments worldwide, multiple vendors should be allowed to participate in an open market for the supply of mainframe hardware, software, and services without interference from IBM. An open market will encourage price competition, differentiated innovation, and broader solution choices to meet the needs of customers.

I’ve got to say, that it’s a long time since I was at a site with an Amdahl mainframe or even a Hitachi one. Whatever happened to these Plug-Compatible Mainframes (PCMs). And IBM has squashed the life out of mainframe software emulation systems from organizations such as Platform Solutions and Fundamental Software. OpenMainframe.org is keen to see some kind of alternative to a monolithic IBM – hence the support for (and from) TurboHercules.

I’ve become a member. I’m a strong supporter of IBM, but I can also see the benefits from competition. I talk to people who wouldn’t even consider a mainframe solution at the moment – without understanding the benefits – who might think differently if there were a cheaper way of bringing them into the mainframe fold.

If you feel the same – and they list IBM’s assault on NEON’s zPrime as just one example of IBM’s tactic of crushing threats – then why not join as well?

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.

zPrime for IMS

The latest webinar from Virtual IMS CONNECTION (www.virtualims.com) was entitled, “Reducing mainframe costs – in a BIG way”, and was presented by Tony Lubrano, a product author at NEON Enterprise Software. Tony has been in data processing since 1975 and has been a software developer since 1993. As a software developer for Candle Corporation, Tony led the team that developed the Candle Command Center for IMS and DB2 products, as well as developing components of Omegamon II for IMS. Tony has been a product author with NEON Enterprise Software for the past 14 years developing many IMS products. NEON’s IMS Prefix Update Utility, Database Director, Application Director, and HALO are some of the commercial products Tony has developed. Most recently, Tony is one of the product authors of the NEON zPrime product.

Tony started his presentation by explaining what NEON zPrime actually is. He said that:

• NEON zPrime “facilitates” the movement of processing from a general purpose processor (CP) to a specialty processor (zIIP or zAAP)… It does not guarantee its movement
• NEON zPrime is a proprietary software solution governed by trade secrets. Details will not be publicly disclosed
• There is no publicly documented interface that facilitates this capability.
• There is no privately documented interface, that has been disclosed to NEON, that facilitates this capability.

Tony then clarified exactly what zPrime does not do. He said zPrime does not:

•  Hook/alter z/OS dispatcher
• Hook/alter Workload Manager (WLM)
• Hook/alter System Management Facility (SMF)
• Hook/Alter Resource Measurement Facility (RMF)
• Enable/Disable any type of processors on any LPAR.

The workloads that are supported by zPrime are: IMS MPPs (transactions), IMS BMPs (transactions, online batch), IMS IFPs (transactions, online batch), IMS DLI or DBB (batch database), CICS transactions, TSO/ISPF, DB2 application programs, DB2 stored procedures, batch application programs, and all NEON’s IMS utilities.

Tony discussed how the various workloads could be enabled to use zPrime and then focused on zPrime for IMS enablement. These include:

• IMS pre-initialization exit
•     –    JCL change
•     –    IMS Proclib change.
• Batch Wrapper
•     –    JCL Change
• Language Environment (LE) Exit
•     –    SMP/E Usermod
• NEON IMS utilities.

The zPrime IMS pre-initialization exit:

• Enables IMS MPP, BMP and IFP processing
• Copy ?neonhlq.LOAD(NSLZPIMS) to the IMS Reslib
• Create/modify the pre-initialization proclib member (DFSINTxx)
• Modify the MPP, BMP, and/or IFP job JCL to point to the pre-initialization proclib member.

Picking up the point about creating or modifying the DFSINTxx member, Tony said:

• It must be in the //PROCLIB DD in the BMP, MPP, or IFP JCL
• Member name is DFSINTxx – where xx is the pre-initialization suffix
• Add NSLZPIMS to the list of modules in the DFSINTxx member.

When modifying the BMP, MPP, and IFP JCL, Tony told us that the Execution Parameter must specify the preinitialization member name suffix, and the Jobstep must contain a //PROCLIB DD containing the data set with the DFSINTxx member.

Tony explained how the zPrime Batch Wrapper worked, and went on to look at the Language Environment exit enablement. He suggested:

• Affects all LE-enabled programs
•     –    Not limited to IMS applications
• SMP/E usermod for global/production use
•     –    Updates LE runtime library – usually in Linklist
•     –    No JCL changes required
• Linkedit job for local/testing use
•     –    Link to non-global library
•     –    Add to STEPLIB/JOBLIB.

Tony talked about using NEON’s IMS utilities and then described in depth customizing the NEON server (NESS). He then continued by talking about enabling zPrime workloads, suggesting:

• It uses documented exits for all system enablement
•     –    Implementation of exits are well understood by appropriate systems personnel
•     –    Implementation of exits are documented in appropriate product documentation
• zPrime exits and batch wrapper do not force enablement… only make call to the NESS
• Everything to be enabled must be specified via the zPrime Enablement Console
• ex ‘?neonhlq.EXEC(zprime)’.

So, how good is zPrime? Tony said that he used the worst values reported by customers and found savings of 44% for CICS, 75% for TSO/ISPF, 84% for Batch Wrapper, 89% for DB2, 91% for IMS MPP, and 93% for IMS BMP!

Tony also identified some known problems. With z/OS V1.9 and below:

• TPUT SRB specifies CPU affinity resulting in intermittent S072-8 abends. Affinity points to a zIIP or zAAP however, the generated SRB is not eligible for zIIP or zAAP processing.
• Does not produce a dump – only logrec data
• No adverse affect to processing.

In terms of the Batch Wrapper:

• SMF 30 record shows the program name as NSLZPAPP when NESS is not running
• Not an issue when using the LE, TSO/ISPF, IMS, CICS or DB2 exits.

Membership of the Virtual IMS Connection is free and open to anyone interested in IMS. Webinars are presented free to members. You can join by going to http://www.virtualims.com/register.aspx and completing the form.