With the latest release of OS/390, the operating system that runs IBM’s flagship S/390 mainframes, the company is girding its loins to defend its position as the primary enterprise systems vendor for large corporations the world. With e-commerce taking off at modest rates in the Western economies, but nonetheless driving a significant portion of the growth in the computer business, there is a lot at stake for IBM – perhaps tens of billions of dollars. There’s no shortage of Unix and NT hardware and software vendors – including, of course, IBM itself – who are eager to steal that e-commerce business away from the IBM mainframe division. So the programmers at IBM have been coding their fingers to the bone to keep modernizing that classic MVS operating system.

By Timothy Prickett Morgan

Two years ago, with the first version of OS/390, IBM packaged up the most popular elements of its MVS mainframe environment and made it cheaper for customers to buy the bundle rather than purchase all the programs separately. (OS/390 is still considerably more expensive than a bare bones MVS setup, however.) There wasn’t much programming involved in the initial OS/390, except to make it easier and faster to install the behemoth MVS and its related systems programs. Last year, IBM announced OS/390 Version 2, adding internet and application development features to OS/390, including standard HTTP and Lotus Domino web servers and a Unix shell that makes OS/390 officially a variant of Unix, albeit one of the stranger implementations. OS/390 Version 2.5, which was announced on February 24, is another step in the right direction for IBM. OS/390 2.5, which will be available on March 27, and the forthcoming 2.6 release, due on September 25, will bring the IBM mainframe environment up to speed in the e-commerce world. This will go a long way toward making the several thousand big mainframe shops in the world more confident that they can put their e-commerce applications on a S/390 platform rather than jumping ship to big Unix or, for the brave few, clustered NT servers.

New Business

Whether or not these enhancements can help IBM gain new mainframe business rather than just retaining current installations remains to be seen. With the new release, IBM is still touting its server consolidation initiative, which proposes that S/390s can replace the banks of Unix and NT servers that share space in the glass house. And it has announced several new features that the company claims will make it more attractive for companies to rehost their print, file and application serving jobs from Unix and NT to OS/390. (OS/390 can support many Windows NT Server applications if they are recompiled on the mainframe using Bristol Technologies’ Wind/U application environment and Unix is supported through IBM’s Unix System Services.) Skeptics will point out that such server consolidations are unlikely, given the exorbitant costs of IBM mainframe hardware and software compared to Unix and NT set-ups. But IBM can always drag out the International Technology Group cost-of-ownership studies to say mainframes are cheaper, when common sense and market forces have always proven otherwise. What can be honestly said is that it is much easier (if not always less costly) to pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to lease an IBM mainframe and pay for IBM’s OS/390 operating system, DB2 data base and CICS transaction monitor than it is to move S/390 applications to another platform. Mainframe customers with excess capacity on their machines – say, after they are done using auxiliary machines for Year 2000 conversions – might do well to consolidate print and file serving on these machines, especially if they own them. For all but the largest companies, server consolidation means buying a big Unix box or praying for a truly scalable NT server. Lotus Domino 4.6, the same release of Domino that IBM has just announced for the AS/400, comes free with OS/390. The mainframe, like the AS/400, is still one release behind NT and Unix environments, which can use Domino 5.0, and includes e-commerce and general performance enhancements. OS/390 2.6 will, IBM hopes, include Domino 5.0. In the fine print of the announcements for both the AS/400 and the S/390, IBM admits that its native Domino implementation for those platforms includes all the same Lotus groupware as is available for the NT and Unix platforms. But it concedes that the Domino Go server is actually just a rehash of its OS/390 Internet Connection Secure Server with a different name on it. However, the new OS/390 Domino server can support up to 3,000 concurrent web users, a ten-fold improvement over the prior ICSS web server. The OS/390 Domino Go server also provides support for Java JDK 1.1 and for digital certificates. IBM has gutted OS/390’s Unix System Services to reduce the amount of CPU, memory and disk space this Unix shell requires to support Unix applications on the S/390. IBM has also tweaked the S/390 C++ compiler so it also eats less system resources and can support more concurrent application threads. These Unix enhancements are part of IBM’s server consolidation efforts. So is the new OS/390 Print Server, which does exactly what the name suggests. The Print Server has three major components. IP PrintWay is a print spooler that uses IBM’s improved TCP/IP networking software or direct socket printing to route print jobs from other servers or clients through the mainframe and out to mainframe-attached printers. IP PrintWay replaces IBM’s TCP/IP Network Print Facility, which IBM says was too slow. It will also probably kill IBM’s SNA Print Services Facility, which performed a similar function. The OS/390 Print Server also includes a program called NetSpool, which can take output from CICS or IMS and route it to the mainframe print spooler without any changes in application code. The Print Server also includes the OS/390 Print Interface, which provides a standard TCP/IP LPD interface directly into the mainframe spooler; this will let applications talk directly to the spooler rather than have to go through the IP PrintWay, which should speed things up considerably. The new OS/390 Security Server extends the MVS RACF security software, which is among the most rock-solid in the world, with an internet firewall, triple DES data encryption, and DCE and LDAP directory support. The data encryption software runs on the built-in cryptographic processors that come in 9672-RX4 and -RX5 servers. IBM has also done a major overhaul on its TCP/IP networking software for OS/390, which is now called the eNetwork Communications Server. (Come the revolution, first, kill all the marketers. The lawyers can wait.) IBM says the new TCP/IP stack, as well as its Telnet 3270 emulation software, are a lot snappier, but isn’t specific about performance improvements.

Web serving

The eNetwork Communications Server also has support for what IBM calls very high demand web serving – for example, like the kind IBM mainframes support at the Olympics – as well as support for ATM networks. Lastly, the new DNS server can use the new TCP/IP stack to spread DNS workloads across S/390 systems connected by a parallel sysplex. Big Blue has also added support for 10/100 megabit Fast Ethernet and ATM protocols on its Open Systems Adapters, which are akin to the IPCS cards used in AS/400s and which also just got that support. The fast OSA cards are only available for the most recent two generations of S/390 9672s and the Multiprise 2000 baby mainframes. Prices for OS/390 2.5 range from $98,790 to over $2.5m, depending on the size of the system it runs on. Mainframe shops can rent OS/390 2.5 for $2,060 to $52,560 a month. IBM is charging extra for the OS/390 Print Server, which costs $3,660 to $93,290 or $77 to $1,945 a month. In September, the next release of OS/390 will come out. It will include support for the Domino Go 5.0 server, an object component broker (now in beta) and performance enhancements for parallel sysplex clusters, TCP/IP communications, Network File System and Distributed File System and the OS/390 Unix shell.