Openedition MVS: the System, the Strategy, the Significance: Part III — Observations and Conclusions

BILL CARICO AND WILLEM J. VAN DER ZEL INTEROPERABILITY INSIGHTS OpenEdition MVS: The System, the Strategy, the Significance: Part III — Observations and Conclusions

HE PERILS OF OPEN SYSTEMS Many companies have met If the quest for open systems can be called a movement, then the move to "open systems" X/Open (now part of the OPEN GROUP) has clearly become the with limited success. T movement's most visible advocate. X/Open is dedicated to the However, OpenEdition advancement of open systems. Regarding the numerous setbacks experienced MVS's ascendancy by the "open systems" movement thus far, X/Open's World Wide Web home into the UNIX limelight page includes the following candid admissions that set the stage for the ascen- provides a viable option dancy of OpenEdition MVS into the UNIX limelight: for many organizations.

"...Contributing to the slow implementation Oracle software. The problems began when a of open systems in the recent past, however, system crash resulted in the "unrecoverable have been a fragmented operating system loss of one-and-a-half-days worth of business environment and confusion about standards data"! Dissatisfied with HP's handling of the for linking those disparate systems together. situation, not to mention the stress and diffi- Users have been confronted with a number of culty experienced explaining to superiors how different "open" operating systems, each so much critical business data could have been offering its own features and benefits. They lost, the manager decided to exercise his rights have also faced a bewildering array of graphi- as a user of "open systems" by replacing the HP cal user interfaces (GUIs), application inter- system with one from DEC. faces, connectivity schemes, and distributed- Though it cost several hundred thousand dol- processing architectures. In fact, users typically lars to re-host the company applications, this spend more of their budget dollars on this "inte- was deemed a prudent move under the gration factor" than on the computer systems circumstances. But problems compounded as themselves during the course of a given year." soon as the DEC equipment arrived, because the Oracle-based business applications failed to So contrary to the claims found in vendor run on the new system. In a state of panic, the glossies, ads, articles, and vendor-funded manager contacted Oracle, who then informed not-so-white papers, the much vaunted open him that his company's applications use unique systems movement heretofore has been met Oracle features that only work when Oracle is with limited success. Even for those companies running under HP-UX. Oracle couldn't offer the with highly-skilled staff, open systems same features in its DEC version, because remains a precarious undertaking, and has DEC's version of UNIX is different from HP's been a waste of money for many. version. Not surprisingly, when asked to pro- For example, one unsuspecting CIO vide free services to help the customer migrate thought he had purchased an "open system" the applications, Oracle declined, stating it after buying Hewlett-Packard (HP) hardware, would have told the customer the port wouldn't the HP-UX (UNIX) operating system, and have worked had they had been asked.

OPEN SYSTEMS, CLOSED DISCUSSION but too often, discussion of IT strategy ensues non-proprietary standards are in the best UNIX vendors are far from being models of before taking time to agree on exactly what interest of users. That is emphatically not candor when discussing true UNIX limita- the terms being used really mean. It is not true... [as illustrated by] typical non-pro- tions, especially in the areas of performance enough merely to agree that access to infor- prietary standards such as CCITT fax and scalability.This explains why so many mation needs to be more flexible, users need standard or the television standard. They UNIX projects have resulted in utter disaster. to be empowered, applications need to be took a long time to establish and have Pe r fo rmance pro blems occur reg u l a rly on developed more quickly and be more portable been frozen in place for years. Because high-end servers, so much that vendors of once deployed, systems need to be interopera- they were set by committees, they fixed open systems do everything possible to pre- ble, or companies need competitive advan- technology at a lowest-common-denomi- vent open discussion. For example, Oracle's tage. The details must be provided. nator level and have stifled continued Software License and Services Agreement, La c k of detail has caused many to fail whi l e technological development..." under section 7.1 titled Non-Disclosure, para- chasing the fads called cli e n t / s e r ver and open graph two,states "Customer shall not disclose s y s t e m s , or "open cl i e n t / s e rver solutions." In d e e d , ven d o r s may talk about openness and the results of any benchmark tests of the In c re a s i n g l y, those launching swe eping IT promise to adopt industry standards, but ar e Programs to any third party without Oracle's cha n g es have put both their companies and their their actions consistent with their prom i s e s ? prior written approval." A sales representative ca re e r s at risk. Ven d o r s hyping open systems Vendors continue to add unique features to for Oracle told ACTS that such app r oval must clo s e l y res e m b le politicians who deliver stirrin g UNIX to differentiate their versions from each come from the CEO, and is rarely granted. sp e e c hes about wha t needs to cha n g e but pro- other to protect market share. In September Customers are naive if they don't anticipate vide vot e r s with little or no details on how to get 19 9 5 , DEC CEO Robert Pal m e r , in his keyn o t e performance problems when they enter into a fr om point A to point B. The prob lem is com- speech at UNIX Expo '95, made yet another license agreement that prohibits free and open pounded because so many IT strate gists and earnest appeal for UNIX unity: "The industry discussion of a product's performance. In con- te ch n o l o gy decision-maker s simply fol l o w the paid lip service to the need for standards, but trast, MVS performance and scalability has cr owd and do not think for themselves , rely i n g the evidence shows that we have failed." always been op e n l y discussed and debat e d in on wha t they think others are doing. The prob lem lies in the fact that for ven d o rs , public forums. IBM and its user community open systems rep resents potential tension conduct multiple conferences yearly where PORTING BETWEEN PLATFORMS be t w een two conflicting goals. The path to customers are free to speak about problems Ven d o r s of UNIX var iants almost all cla i m openness culminates in systems becoming a and other technical issues. th e y support mul t i - v endor environments and tr ue commodity, so a completely standardi ze d that porting of open systems applications is UNIX would become a commodity product. In IN PURSUIT OF A DEFINITION assured. It is more accurate to say that porting So wh at ex a c t ly is an open system? app l i c a tions from one UNIX var iant to another Figure 1: UNIX-Based Operating Systems Grappling to nail down a definition, Xephon is a possibility, not a guarantee. Company Limited, a world-wide research and A port may even be easy if the app l i c at i o n publishing firm based in Newbury, England, was written in C, pr ovided the app l i c at i o n Vendor Name of OS in October 1994, surveyed 455 executives, st a yed within the boundaries set for th in accept - Sun SunOS and Solaris asking them to define the term open, as in ed de facto and de jure standards for UNIX. Hewlett-Packard HP-UX "open systems." Only four definitions were Ho wever , ea s e - o f - p o r ting is ultimate l y deter- the same: "not prop ri e t a ry " , "n o n - p ro p ri e t a ry " , mined by the app l i c a tion's use of UNIX ser- IBM AIX, OpenEdition MVS "platform independent", and "not sure". Each vi c e s , and the degree these services are softwar e of these answers was given by two people. extensions developed apa r t from any standards AT&T GIS Unix-MPRAS Every other definition was unique. Eighteen th a t are unique to that ver sion of UNIX code. OSF OSF/1 responses were sarcastic, such as "a buzzword Since porting applications from one version DEC Ultrix and to sell products" and "a silly term having no of UNIX can be met with varying degrees of DEC OSF/1 technical meaning, just marketing hype." difficulty, the majority of UNIX variants are Pyramid DC/OSx In an attempt to classify the definitions, more accurate l y labeled as "closed" operati n g Hitachi Data Systems HI-OSF/1-M Xephon came up with three distinct cate- systems. Fig u r e 1 provides a partial list of Amdahl UTS gories: portability, interoperability, and adher- UNIX variants. ence to non-prop ri e t a r y standards. Of the Tandem NonStop UX remaining responses that could be classified THE VENDOR'S DILEMMA Data General DG-UX under these three headings, interoperability The r e is a ver y fundamental question people Sequoia Systems Topix came in first with 40 percent of the responses, should be asking, "is standardization always Sequent Dynix/pcx portability was second with 33 percent, non- a good thing?" ACTS contends that de facto Apple A/UX proprietary standards third with 25 percent, s t a n d a rds that are well documented and and only 3 percent of the respondents cited all allow vendors to innovate freely serve the Novell Unixware (sold to SCO 9/95) three aspects in their definition. computer industry much better than legislated (de jure) standards. Cray Research, Inc. UNICOS THE COST OF VAGUENESS Very little is written about the downside of Santa Cruz Operations SCO-Unix, Xenix, Vagueness and lack of clarity can extract a open systems and legislated standards. One UnixWare, toll. Detail begins by defining the terminology exception is Charles Ferguson’s and Charles OpenServer used.Too many trends are described using Morris' 1993 book "Computer Wars", which Silicon Graphics (SGI) IRIX buzzwords that do not have widely agreed- contains this warning: Siemans/Nixdorf SINIX upon definitions and lack any signifi c a n t Tenon Intersystems Mach Ten detail. People use bu z z wo rds to give the "For many years, computer users and Freeware LINUX appearance of being in touch with the times, even industry experts have argued that

TECHNICAL SUPPORT JUNE 1996 INTEROPERABILITY INSIGHTS a commodity market , whe r e the same product is in UNIX. This is the time for all UNIX ven - "... Today as Windows NT approaches avai l a ble from many source s , the most common do r s and UNIX adherents in the user com- its fir st birth d a y, Mi c r osoft's most ambitious way to differentiate a product at that point is munity to rally to the cause of UNIX and p roject has affected the cl i e n t / s e rve r by lowering the price; price wars become contribute to positioning UNIX as a sta- m a rket far less — and potentially more common, and prof it margins all but disapp e a r . ble, proven and reliable operating systems pro fo u n d l y — than industry observe rs On the other hand, ha ving the option of addi n g solution that offers significant ad van t a ges originally predicted. functional extensions to a product becomes a over other platfo r ms including the RAM- means of offe ring added va l u e, j u s t i f y i n g h u n gry new kid on the bl o ck fro m "Except for some lame installations that got higher pri c e s , as well as deterring an installed- Microsoft (Windows NT). suckered into Microsoft LAN Manager, most base of customers from swi t c hing ven d o rs . "The Foundation has been founded in sites use NT only as an application server," Mi c r osoft certa i n l y isn't willing to let standards the belief that the software industry needs said John Faig, senior research analyst of sl o w its momentum, and it's easy to underst a n d a viable al t e rn at i ve operating system for wo rk group computing strat egies at Met why UNIX ven d o r s have been dragging their m i s s i o n - c ritical high-end serve rs. Th e Group, Inc. in Westport, Conn. The reasons, feet on crea ting a single UNIX. [proposed] Win d o ws NT platform may be Faig said, ar e app l i c at i o n s , st ab i l i t y , and tested Many UNIX vendors are also competing in suitable for some situations,but UNIX has sc a l a bility — and the lack thereo f . "Sure, so m e the highly competitive PC marketplace, and established a track record for precisely of Microsoft's hallmark accounts have rol l e d don't want to see their UNIX platforms go the this environment. There is no reason for out two or even three dozen servers , but that' s way of the PC. In commodity market research u s e rs to jump ship to the costlier far from being thorou g h l y tested. And until it is, and development cut backs are inevitable as M i c rosoft Wi n d ows NT plat fo rm just there is no way Microsoft can guarantee NT p ro fit margins evap o rat e. As pro fits are because of the GUI interface and ease of will stay up 99.9 percent of the time," he said. sq u e e ze d , in n o vation is great l y hindered as use.The operating system ker nel and the Microsoft begs to differ. funds for R&D begin to dry up. For companies st a bility of the operating system in running "Today, Microsoft internally runs well over losing market share, their fate is to go out of mission-critical systems ought to be the 1,000 NT servers and will use it to run our business or be acquired . Even with UNIX far determining factor in the selection of the business," said Rich a rd To n g, M i c ro s o f t ' s fr om being a commodity, ven d o r s are pres s u re d operating system for such servers. ge n e ral manager for Business Systems fr om yet another direction — devel o p m e n t "L a c k of effec t i ve competition for the Division, marketing. "Besides, the real issue costs increase as they port products to dozens of Mi c r osoft Win d o ws NT operating system is not how many servers our customers are di f fer ent UNIX systems. For exa m p l e , it is ver y could be lethal for the rest of the softwar e running but how many users does each NT exp e n s i ve to kee p Orac le7 running on more in d u s t r y. Not only is the operating systems server support — and the average is 500. than 80 distinct platfo r ms and more than 40 dif- ma r ket for the cli e n t / s e r ver marketplace at "W e have quite a few accounts who consider fer ent ver sions for UNIX. st a k e, but left unche c ked , Mi c r osoft's threa t- NT to be extremely reliable and who bet their When a vendor's future no longer depends ening dominance in this market could spell business on it every day. National Westminster on R&D breakthroughs, the competitive edge di r e consequences for all other softwar e Bank in London relies on NT to pass more swings to companies that have superior utilities and app l i c a tions devel o p e rs . " than 4 million credit-card transactions each marketing clout. month. And if that isn't mission-critical, I It is ver y important to note that the prec e d i n g don't know what is," Tong said. WHO WILL DRIVE THE ENTERPRISE? st a tements we re not comparing UNIX to Finding the claims of 500 users per NT The UNIX Foundation was formed in July MVS, but Windows NT. UNIX has many server hard to believe, ACTS looked into the 1995 as a not-for- p ro f it organ i z a tion to prom o t e strengths when compared to NT, but ne i t h e r M i c rosoft claims by contacting Nat i o n a l the use and development of the UNIX operati n g system rivals MVS as a rel i a ble , st a ble , and Westminister Bank (NatWest) in July 1995. s y s t e m , and to "counter the impending proven alternative. A reliable source at the bank told ACTS that onslaught of Microsoft’s Windows NT mar- Indeed, there are many who say "Forget the NT project was in serious trouble and was keting effort." Quoting from its mission state- about UNIX, forget about MVS. Microsoft's being cut back. The project had been headed ment, posted as a WWW home page to recruit Windows NT is the system of the future!" by a Microsoft "champion" who had recently members, the Foundation hopes to educate Such naive thinking prevailed at National left the company. The contact confirmed that others about: Westminister Bank of England, resulting in a the bank indeed had grandiose plans for NT, horror story of major proportions. and was in fact using NT for a corporate card "...the stability, proven track record and system where corporations settle small bills cost-effectiveness of the UNIX operating NT HORROR STORY through NatWest and then pay a single month- system vis-a-vis the new Microsoft Win d ow s Mi c r osoft has squandered a golden opportu - ly charge. The system did process about 4 mil- NT platfo r m in the market p l a c e . The UNIX nity to demonstrate its leadership qualific at i o n s . lion transactions per month, but was a data- Fou n d a tion has been for med to fill up a per- Microsoft's dismal performance on behalf of entry-type application that did not run in real ce i ved vacuum in the marketing of UNIX. wha t is prob a bly its largest corpo r ate customer time. Since this was the application that the While Windows NT and OS/2 ha ve stron g il l u s t rates why customers should exe rc i s e M i c rosoft exe c u t ive told C l i e n t / S e rve r and aggres s i ve parents pushing for their extreme caution when choosing a platform. Journal was mission-critical, ACTS inquired p roge ny's accep t a n c e, UNIX si n g u l a r ly ACTS began fo l l owing the story after as to how many mission-critical online credit has led an orph a n - l i k e exi s t e n c e . The sale spotting an art i cl e, "Running on NT," card applications are still processed on the of USL by AT&T to Novell and the subse- by Rochelle Gardner in C o m p u t e r wo rld's mainframe.The answer is 7 million transac- quent anemic UNIX-re l ated marke t i n g C l i e n t / S e rver Jo u rn a l , August 1994, p age tions every day! ACTS also learned that the efforts by Novell has led to a perilous 20. The art i cle highlighted diffe rences of number of users on each NT server averaged decline for the once dominant,open ,o per- opinion between Microsoft and a re s e a rch between 20 and 30. NatWest confirmed there ating system. However, the emergence of a n a lyst rega rding the cap abilities of NT. were a couple of office-type systems with the Internet as the computer te l e c o m mu n i - H e re are a few ex c e rpts that will set the close to 500 users per server, but explained ca tions standard has rej u v enated interest s t age for wh at fo l l ow s : that these systems experienced very light traf-

TECHNICAL SUPPORT JUNE 1996 INTEROPERABILITY INSIGHTS fic between the users and the server in order to Now that these projects have progressed Microsystems all rely heavily on mainframes operate at that level. fr om whe r e the "rub ber meets the sky" to whe r e to run their own businesses. If taking the By Sep t e m b e r, details of the Nat West the "rubber meets the road," the painful fact is mainframe and throwing it on the junk heap disaster wer e starting to leak out. England's that Microsoft was unable to deliver on its were really such a great idea, these vendors Business Ag e ma gazine feat u r ed a story in their commitments. Despite all of the well-wishers would be first in line to do so. Such a move Se ptember 1995 issue titled "I Was a Softwar e writing about Windows NT, NT is at best a would convincingly prove their claims that Sl a ve." The arti c le claims NatW est's woe s distant blip on the radar screen when compared mainframes are obsolete technology. be gan after a coup in the computer depa rt m e n t technically to MVS. In any honest, head-to- Intel has tried for years to become self- al l o wed some Microsoft zealots to take over . head comparison with either MVS or UNIX reliant on their own x86 systems and two s u p p o rting any heavy-duty wo rk l o a d, i t years ago, Intel's CEO, Andy Grove, was cited "...It may seem incred i b le that the future would be generous even to call Windows NT by the New York Times as stating Intel had just of bran c h banking at NatW est rests on a a fledgling operating system. bought its last mainfra m e, yet Intel has piece of softwar e, but increa s i n g l y the tail is u p graded its mainframes twice since that wagging the dog. The rot set in last yea r NOVELL'S ABOUT-FACE bogus public declaration. The fact remains when the bank's then deputy chief exec u t i ve What about Novell? Consistent with ACTS' that while Intel makes great microprocessors, ... overs a w a coup in the computer depa r t- predictions, Novell has struggled over the last the company relies heavily on mainframes to ment ... Out went his top three IT direc t o rs , two years to deliver on the promises it made run its own business. ea c h one resistant to the lure of Gate s for UNIX. On September 20, 1995, Novell Being misled by hype-sters can be both mania. In came a group of zealots prom i s - shocked users by announcing a new UNIX time-consuming and expensive. One company ing a new dawn for bran c h banking based alliance between Novell, HP, and SCO, Inc., spent more than two yea r s eval u a ting a strate gy on the Win d o ws NT system. The leader of with plans to eventually merge their three to move all applications to midrange and the zealots said he counted Bill Gates among respective versions of UNIX into one. desktop systems. A large portion of that time his frie n d s , and he assured the bank's top To summari ze, SCO purchased the was spent investigating a UNIX-based hard- br ass that Gates was committed to helping UN I X Wa r e business from Novell who in turn wa re plat fo rm from AT&T GIS, s e l e c t e d co rp o r ate customers and would make sure has taken a minority equity position in SCO. because this plat fo rm is re n owned in the Nat W est got its new bran c h systems. NT SCO plans to merge its SCO OpenServer sys- UNIX world for its reliability and serviceabil- was to for m the heart of a revol u t i o n , givi n g tem and Novell's UNIXWar e. The merged sys- ity features. They also selected Oracle as the te l l e r s and other bran c h staff instant infor - tem will be a UNIX var iant designed to run on RDBMS for UNIX. Rigorous testing ensued. ma tion on customers, the bank's prod u c t s , Intel-based proc e s s o r s while maintaining inter- The hardware had to be upgraded to twice its and the latest financial advi c e. " fac e - l e vel compatibility with HP-UX. HP, in originally-projected size, but still could not tu rn , will pursue development of an Intel handle the company's test transaction work- The arti c le repo r ts that "NatW est is wedd e d pro c e s s o r -based 64-bit UNIX operating system. load.The last straw came when they discov- to a poorly supported piece of Micro s o f t HP and Novell will wor k together to devel o p ered that to make engineering changes to the s o f t wa re," and, c o n t ra ry to the official line and integrate seve ral netwo rking pro d u c t s hardware, which used Intel 486 processor put out by the bank's public relations people, be t w een HP-UX and NetWar e. Thinking opti- chips, would require the entire box be down "behind the scenes things are likened to the mi s t i c a l l y, if these ven d o r s bring the scalabi l i t y , for several hours longer than they could toler- Titanic after hitting the iceb e rg." Trials at st ab i l i t y , and managea bility of these products up ate in their production environment. They 21 bra n ches are perfo rming miserably, s o to par with MVS, then they will one day repr e- decided to cut their losses and have since set mu ch that the bank is refusing any inter- sent legit i m a te alternat i ves to OpenEdition the downsizing project aside.The expensive v i ews with the press. The leader of the pro - MV S . Wor king in alliances, if they can be sus- lesson learned was that terms like reliability M i c rosoft zealots has since quit. ta i n e d , has the additional benefit of allowi n g and scalability appear in most brochures, but According to Business Age, the NT project alliance partn e r s to share res e a r ch and devel o p - they don't always mean the same thing. will cost more than $300 million (U.S.), and ment costs. The customer must eval u a te both calls for 30,000 users to eve n t u a l ly ru n sh o rt - t e r m and long-term implications of these WHO WILL DRIVE THE ENTERPRISE? Win d o ws NT at 2,500 bran c hes. The bank mus t st r ate gie s , as well as the likelihood that they will With so many app a r ent choices and the decide whether to wait for Microsoft to over- su c c e e d . Is Novell's move to dump UNIX an st a k es so high, those considering putting their haul NT, or to scrap the project and start over. admission that it could not pull together the for tunes into the hands of any one ven d o r , IB M "If (Nat West) scraps the pro j e c t , then fr agmented UNIX market? Per h ap s , but a more in cl u d e d , should look ver y caref u l l y befor e tak- customers will end up receiving substandard li ke l y exp l a n a tion is that Novell has decided to ing the leap. ACTS has observed dozens of cus- s e rvice well into the next millennium. If focus more res o u r ces on its NetWar e operati n g tomer exp e r iences that indicate that neither (they) hang on to Microsoft's promises of a system to stem further market - s h a r e erosion at Ne t Wa r e, Win d o ws NT, or traditional UNIX is better Win d o ws NT in the new yea r , cu s t o m e r s the hand's of Win d o ws NT. rea d y to compete with MVS to satisfy the heavy will not see a fully operational system in every demands of large enterpr ise computing. branch before the year 2000 — three years WHAT SYSTEMS DO MAJOR later than planned." VENDORS USE? A BRIDGE TO THE FUTURE In February 1996, similar problems with Many vendors peddling mainframe alterna- E l e c t ronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS), Windows NT had surfaced at Commonwealth tives follow a "do as I say, not as I do" philos- among others, is rel ying on the S/390 platfo r m Bank of Australia (CBA). In July 1993, CBA ophy, because they are quick to suggest others to play a major role in the company's distribu t e d touted its plans to nove from OS/2 to NT. Now scrap their mainframe while clinging to their env i ro n m e n t , both now and into the future. CBA had fired its NT zealot in the face of own. Even though terms like reliability and "E n a bling MVS with DCE and POSIX will pro- implementation failures and runaway costs. scalability appear in marketing literature, they vide our customers with a brid g e to the future," ACTS is still searching for a ligitimate NT simply don't mean the same thing from one st a tes John Wol fe rt , te ch n o l o gy manager , ED S implementation running hundreds of users, platform to the next,or from one vendor to the Op e r ating Services Group. "We are putting the doing mission-critical work. n ext. Intel, H ewlett Pa ck a rd, and Sun in t u i t i ve GUI interface on the desktop whi l e

TECHNICAL SUPPORT JUNE 1996 INTEROPERABILITY INSIGHTS pr oviding a seamless computer infras t ru c t u r e demands for storage crea ted by mul t i - m e d i a a re cert a i n ly not complaining about the behind the scenes. The POSIX standards and app l i c at i o n s , st o r age devi c e s , and automate d better prices! OSF DCE techn o l o gy will help us provide the ba c kup proc e d u r es for the typical MVS system With the 1995 IBM announcement of the vision of fully integrated computer res o u rc e over see many gig abytes (GB), even terabyt e s PC Server 500 S/390, targeted initially to access anywh e r e, any t i m e ," he says . (TB) of data. Fred Moore, co rp o r ate vice pres i - become an application development and test- EDS has been involved with the MVS DCE dent of strat egic planning at Storage ing platform for software vendors, these sys- since 1992. Wolfert's group was involved in an Tech n o l o gy Corp. , cites internal surveys that tems could become extremely att ra c t i ve as Early Customer Involvement Program (ECIP) in d i c a te 75 percent of large-scale proc e s s o rs , small server s offer ing substantial growth and for MVS DCE with the IBM Toronto Labs. He when used as the prim a r y server on a network , dep e n d ab i l i t y .People are revisiting their defi- explained that EDS got involved with MVS su p p o r t in the vicinity of 60GB of data . nition of a mainframe now that S/390 comes DCE to support a customer application that Nu m e r ous large companies have broke n on a chip or on a micro-channel card for the required access to CAD [Computer Aided th r ough to the terabyt e - l e vel. For exa m p l e , an PC. The Server 500 S/390, including soft- Design] data on multiple pl at fo r ms in mul t i p l e exec u t i ve at MCI Commun i c a tions Corp. told ware, sells for less than $100,000 and has CAD form a ts. The data was cla s s i f ied as sensi- ACTS that MCI has more than 50TB of data been tested with 30 database users (IMS and ti ve, therefore, DCE was chosen for its robust sp r ead across its data centers, and estimates that DB2) running various business applications, security features. Prior to this application, the to satisfy normal processing demands at least 50 TSO users doing program development, end-user engineer performed a 20-plus step 15TB of that data is 'in flight' at all times. To and as many as 140 CICS users doing simple process to find, move, and translate the data help others understand just how big a terabyt e business transactions. for their use.This application is now in pro- of data rea l l y is, Mo o r e estimates a terabyte of On the high end, the S/390 product line still duction, with two MVS images configured te xt on paper would consume 42,500 tree s . offers large water-cooled systems, but IBM into a DCE cell. The MVS platfo r m perform s Fu rt h e rm o r e, at 12 cha ra c t e r s per inch, 1TB of has supplemented its S/390 offerings with both client and server functions. da ta in a straight line would circle the earth 56 new CMOS-based processors that cost less to Wolfert reports that EDS has written its times and stret c h 1.4 million miles. make yet are rapidly closing the perform a n c e own DCE application server code specifically OpenEdition MVS will help prove to skep- gap and catc hing up to wate r -cooled proc e s s o rs . to meet the customer re q u i rements. "Th e tics that mainframes may have been emotion- In addition, CMOS processors can use up to POSIX standards and OSF DCE technology ally and politically maligned, but have never 97 percent less energy. Parallel S/390 proces- are key components of our globalization strat- been tech n i c a l ly misaligned or obsolete. sors have also been added. egy to fully integrate the MVS platform into Quite the contrary; there has never been a MVS OpenEdition will be a player on all of the client/server architecture," he says. worse time to try to abandon the mainframe in these platforms. As mentioned previously, light of the need for a high-powered server.A mainframes are designed to handle thousands THE ESSENTIAL BUILDING BLOCK client/server approach is of no value unless of I/Os per second, while the biggest UNIX In today's world of telecommunications and clients can access the necessary data. Much servers heretofore handle only hundreds of multi-media applications,the demand for data of the data used to run both the private and I/Os per second. American Airlines, soon is virtually exploding. For example, the trend public sectors comes from transaction pro- after installing new CMOS S/390 servers, has been for the next breakthrough in messag- cessing environments, and since 1975, MVS experienced peak transaction rates in excess ing to consume successively more resources has been the industry's premier transaction of 4,100 per second, with no problems, during than the messaging technology it replaced. processing system. a fare war when transaction loads were 30 per- For example, on today's popular email system, To handle this onslaught of data, S/390 par- cent above average. if a user types for one minute at 50 words per allel query servers and transaction processors minute, the resulting text-only email message can be configured into what IBM calls a ENTERPRISE SERVERS occupies about 250 bytes of storage. By com- Parallel Sysplex to help with voluminous data If necessary, for those operating in fashion- parison, creating a one-minute message using mining queries and high volume transaction conscious circles,it may be prudent to discon- voice technology requires roughly 1,000 times and messaging rates. In this role, MVS will tinue using the word "mainframe" altogether more storage (.25MB). A full-motion video continue to out-perform any data server and and call these systems "Enterprise Servers." message requires about .75MB of storage per transaction server on the market, at least for Regardless of what you call it, the S/390 has frame and generates 30 frames per second. At the next five years, and give the lowest cost become the corn e rstone of successful this rate, one minute of uncompressed full- per user with several hundred users active. client/server computing strategies for large motion video will occupy ap p rox i m at e ly organizations. OpenEdition MVS becomes the 1.32GB of storage. Even compressing the MAINFRAME RESURGENCE ul t i m a te networ k server , pr oviding the networ k- video to 1/100 of its original size, sending a The 1994 and 1995 surge of mainframe sales ing capa c i t y , sp e e d , and the added advan t a ge one-minute video message would still occupy su rp r ised many a pundit, many of whom still th a t it can carry all the protocols possible .For 33,750 times more storage than what could are unwilling to admit that their predictions the data base and distributed data base clients, be created in one minute typing a text-only were wrong. Similarly, the content and tone OpenEdition MVS is a cross-platform intelli- email message! conveyed in so many articles indicates that the gent server. Novell's popular NetWare and P C s ,m i c ro p ro c e s s o rs ,L A N s ,n o t ebook com- vast majority of journalists still haven't fig- IBM's OS/2 LAN Server are both supported. pu t e rs , et c. , ar e each wonderful tools in their ured out that so many products being billed as Customers often have to learn the hard way own rig h t , and when used prop e r ly can be of mainframe alternatives simply do not compete that while PCs can now store gigabytes of data grea t val u e . However , the computing needs of with MVS on a functional level. on hard disks, it is another thing to be able to an organ i z a tion of less than 100 users are vas t l y Mainframe computing capacity is in greater manage that much data efficiently. One auto- di f fer ent than an organ i z a tion with sever al hun- demand than it has ever been, fueled in part m o t ive manu fa c t u rer brought in a new dr ed or sever al thousand users, so careful con- by the increase in netwo rked computing. Windows PC-based application for use by 300 si d e r ation should be given to blending the rig h t M a i n f rame hardwa re prices have been employees (indeed a small system by MVS systems toget h e r . For exa m p l e , in the large l owe red and images consolidated causing standards). They needed a good server, and o rga n i z at i o n , even befo re the insat i abl e revenues to drop considerably, but customers subsequently selected an Intel dual-Pentium

TECHNICAL SUPPORT JUNE 1996 INTEROPERABILITY INSIGHTS system configured with four 1GB disk drives. Soon thereafter, three of OPENEDITION MVS: A MILESTONE the four drives failed at the same time.The good news was that the fail- IN COMPUTING ACHIEVEMENT ing drives had been backed up to tape.The bad news was that it took If user departments are buying applications to run on UNIX, or are more than six hours to restore the data after replacing the bad disk dri- insisting on using a UNIX environment, OpenEdition MVS is UNIX. ves. The worse news was this occurred after the programs formatting The key points of differentiation are quality, proper code, no trapdoors, the new drives ran for 16 hours solid. no viruses, worms, or other distractions. Removing these distractions People say PCs will improve, and that's true . But even though pundits means the industry can get on with the job of computing. marvel at the advances of desktop computers, the stark reality remains To the client/server devotee, it is no exaggeration to describe MVS that in many organizations, data and workload demands are simply as the super-server. It makes sense to let the desktop computer handle growing faster than the abilities of PC hardware and software. While user-interface logic, and as much of the application development load microprocessor-based technology is extremely valuable, it's important as is feasible, but the centralized large server's role is to keep the rest to know where its limitations lie. of the work manageable while keeping costs down. For those who have al re a d y depl o yed UNIX platfo rm s , OpenEdition MVS brings the disci- CENTRALIZATION BACK IN VOGUE pl i n e s and tools necessary to develop distributed applications and to Xephon conducts a monthly user information exchange, called better manage the distributed environment. IBEX, with more than 400 member companies. Trends from 1992 to Joe Zemke, president of Amdahl Corporation, while addressing the 1995 show decentralization of IS to be on the decrease. See Figure 2. September 1995 Amdahl User Group Meeting in San Francisco, told In 1992, 82 percent of companies repo r ted having end-user depa rt m e n t s customers, "OpenEdition MVS will dominate the high-end market- with their own IS systems, compared to 72 percent in 1993, 66 percent place for the next 10 years." Considering Amdahl has almost 15 years in 1994, and 57 percent in 1995. Another IBEX trend shows that tech- experience marketing a mainframe version of UNIX, plus the fact that nical support staff at the aver age installation has increased by 13 perce n t Sun Microsystems formed an alliance to gain access to Amdahl's UN I X since 1989, which translates to a steady 2 percent to 3 percent growth ad vancements for the mainfram e , this was indeed a well qualifie d and each successive year. Furthermore, when asked to rate which standards perhaps surprising endorsement. are most important to their business, SNA has topped the poll for six Largely, executives of hardware companies that build mainframes straight years, and SQL is in second place. TCP/IP has been rising have done a poor job of defending their turf. Obviously, they chose to quickly to prominence, and is now in third place. believe the popular thinking rather than their own technologists. What is attracting people back to the centralized computing model? When asked how customers should proceed with OpenEdition MVS, The ret u r n can be att ri b uted largel y to the over all superio r ity of systems Mark Renfer, S/390 Brand Manager for IBM Canada in Toronto, management tools available for MVS. Many companies have become replied, "First, customers should plan to enable OpenEdition with disenchanted with the high costs of managing client/server and open MVS 5.2.2 and satisfy themselves that this re a l ly is UNIX. systems, and want to return to an environment where costs are lower OpenEdition should be part of every MVS refresh. Second, start with and more predictable. For example, initiatives like SystemView and a moderately sized UNIX application to gain some experience with co n fo r ming system management products provide a plethora of effec t i ve OpenEdition. Third, but probably most importantly, customers should and efficient controls for MVS that extend to OpenEdition MVS, and challenge their application vendors to provide OpenEdition solutions. to a lesser degree, to the distributed multi-vendor environment as well. If a UNIX application is not supported under OpenEdition, then the Many end users running on decentralized and separately-managed customer should ask 'why not?'" systems are discover ing the superio r ity of mainframe backup and support With all of the pressure on so many organizations to bring UNIX capabilities as their data bases grow. into their environment,at a low cost,IBM's move to combine MVS and The trend today is to re-centralize code serving and data integrity UNIX is a very timely one. From this point forward, the destiny of responsibilities,passing them back to a central (server) location. User's OpenEdition MVS will be determined by IBM's marketing and sales want to preserve their view of the data, and are less interested in efforts. Since it's not the best technology that wins the day, IBM must becoming system administrators and integrators. quickly discern what the market will buy and clearly articulate to customers why OpenEdition MVS opens up so many opportunities and provides so many advantages. ts Figure 2: Decline in Decentralization

Bill Carico has more than 20 years of experience in the computer industry. He is co-founder and president of ACTS Corporation, which specializes in consulting and education. For more information, visit http:/www.actscorp.com.

Willem J. van der Zel is a member of the ACTS advisory board and a recog- nized authority on UNIX, especially in the graphics arena. He also has several years of experience working with MVS. Before becoming an independent consultant in 1994, Willem worked for IBM for 13 years, as a systems engineer and in various technical support roles.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT JUNE 1996