IBM Previews z/OS 1.8 for Mainframe Shops
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

If you like the mainframe flavor of alphabet soup, you are probably going to get a good meal out of the z/OS V1.8 and z/OS.e V1.8 preview that IBM put out this week. While z/OS V1.7 was just launched last September to coincide with the ramping up of the System z9 mainframes that were announced in July, mainframe customers always have things they need Big Blue to do to make their z/OS environments better, stronger, and faster. READ MORE >

Top Mainframe Stories and Vendor Announcements

(IT Jungle) Linux slipped past zSeries in overall sales during 2005, which was the first time in a decade that the mainframe moved down a peg in the platform rankings. The final score read: Linux platforms, $5.7 billion in worldwide sales; zSeries, $4.8 billion. Overall, the server market was up in the year-to-year comparisons, but fourth quarters figures show a slowing trend that some expect will continue. READ MORE >

(ServerWatch) The mainframe computer world has built its seemingly impenetrable fortress around the Fortune 500, but it also shows the ravages of war with the armies backing distributed systems. But despite these battle scars, it remains a powerful IT force that is nowhere near ready to hand over the keys to the castle. READ MORE >

(Byte and Switch) After six months in data centers, Brocade's high-performance storage area network director has that company bragging about rapid adoption and new customers. Claims of industry-leading port density, long-distance bandwidth, and energy efficiencies attributed to advanced chip design are proving to be marketplace winners. READ MORE >

(Beta Systems) The high-speed, bi-directional transferring of large data sets between open systems and z/OS file systems and applications or between z/OS servers has been enhanced with the introduction of Harbor HFT Server 2.4 on z/OS. Harbor HFT 2.4 products are hardware independent and are designed for moving encrypted data across server and client platforms. READ MORE >

Chats, Webinars, Seminars, Shows, and Other Happenings

March 9-15 -- Hannover, Germany - With more than 6,000 exhibitors and nearly 500,000 attendees, CeBIT Hannover is one of the world's biggest forums for information technology, hardware, software, and services. A wide variety of educational sessions, keynote addresses, and panel discussions cover technology trends and market analysis. LEARN MORE >

March 27-29 -- Orlando, Florida - The Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services Best Practices conference is designed for organizations looking for ways to create an architecture for interoperability across disparate systems. It will focus on the key steps for implementation, the role of Web services, new models for building applications, and return on investment. Discounts on registration costs are in effect until January 27. LEARN MORE >

April 7-11 -- Chattanooga, Tennessee - The WAVV user group annual conference offers more than 100 educational sessions focusing on the use of VSE, VM, and Linux on IBM mainframe computers. The event also includes a vendor exposition. LEARN MORE >

May 7-11 -- Tampa, Florida - The IDUG 2006 North American Conference is an educational forum for database users across all platforms. The educational program consists of 11 technical tracks, each focused on a particular facet of DB2 usage. IDUG, the International DB2 Users Group, manages several DB2 technology conferences each year. The North American conference is the largest. A vendor expo is included in the event. LEARN MORE >

June 12-16 -- Atlanta, Georgia - The Transaction & Messaging Technical Conference features the most current information on the CICS TS V3.1 and WebSphere MQ family of products including tips, techniques, and business integration solutions. The agenda includes hundreds of sessions, a product expo, and certification testing. LEARN MORE >