The internet, and more specifically web-based commerce is so central to IBM Corp’s mainframe business, or at least it hopes it will be, that it chose Internet World in Los Angeles to announce a clutch of updates to its OS/390 program yesterday. Release 3 of OS/390 – what used to be called MVS – is due March 28. The Internet Connection Secure Server for OS/390, which came out last fall, has been integrated with the Workload manager load- balancing software. At the moment it works with a single system running the server, but parallel Sysplex support will arrive by the year-end, according to Susan Puglia, Systems/390 director for emerging technologies and industry business. The OS/390 Internet BonusPak II contains more sample web pages for developers to play with and OS/390 will also get cryptographic hardware support using IBM’s PowerPC G3 chip in late spring and a firewall in late fall. The Net.Commerce electronic shopping mall framework will be ready late spring also. IBM Network Station Manager, the server software for booting and firing down applets to its network computers arrives March 28. Puglia said IBM is not currently working on booting any NC other than its own Network Stations right now. Net.Data for OS/390, the web-based database interface, is in beta from this month. As far as Java support goes, the beta program is now underway for OS/390, but general availability won’t happen until IBM gets Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.1, which Sun duly announced yesterday as well. However, the Java virtual machine (JVM) is not yet integrated into the operating system itself, which is IBM’s plan, but there’s no word on when that will happen. There are also internet gateways to CICS, IMS, MQSeries and DB2, among others, in Release 3. Release 4.0 is due in the fall, adding performance analysis enhancements, more programming tools and better TCP/IP performance.
