By William Fellows

IBM Corp will take further steps to make its S/390 mainframes more attractive as engines for e-business applications when it rolls out version 2.9 of OS/390 operating system next March. The release will include the Enterprise Java Beans-based Component Broker for building object-based transactional applications. It claims it already has three customers running early versions of the code on full-blown Parallel Sysplex environments.

2.9 will also include native file and print serving for Windows clients, text search support for XML documents and unicode, and additional Unix system services. IBM says the SMB-based NT tools will enable developers to write program code on NT boxes and implement them as OS/390 applications.

To build e-businesses using S/390, running a web site is a prerequisite. Of the 11,000 OS/390 licensees, 30% are estimated to be using the systems’ Unix features and a large percentage of these are doing web serving.

Early next year it will also make OS/390 available as a host for the SAP R/3 application server. Currently OS/390 supports the SAP database server while application server components run on an attached RS/6000. Beta support is expected by year-end. IBM explains that each ERP application requires a different kind of support. All of the Baan environment can already be hosted while PeopleSoft’s three-tier structure lends itself to running different modules on different servers.

As it has done on its other servers, IBM will seek to get supply chain, CRM and other business intelligence applications up on OS/390 following its ERP initiative. It has no supply chain or CRM software up on the mainframe yet.

Last month IBM cut OS/390 application license charges by 15% in an attempt to win more ISVs to the platform and to offer a more attractive S/390 price point for customers unable to wring enough performance out of Sun, HP or other Unix systems. It declined to say how effective the price cutting has been.

Meantime, IBM announces version 2.8 of the mainframe operating system today. In OS/390 2.8 IBM has renamed the security server SecureWay to reflect, it says, the growing importance of security features on the mainframe. SecureWay Communications Server for OS/390 provides Virtual IP Addressing (VIPA) takeover. VIPA enables real IP addresses for network connections to be associated with a pseudo address, assigned to an end-user in the S/390 server. If a connection fails, traffic is automatically routed to an alternate connection associated with the same VIPA.

OS/390 2.8 includes an enhanced internet firewall that can automatically handle cryptographic keys used in virtual private networks through the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) standard. eNetwork Communication Server for OS/390, a network management program, will also include support for IKE. eNetwork CS will also include Triple DES session-level encryption for those customers sticking with the IBM SNA protocol for their networks rather than moving to TCP/IP. The server will also include more stringent security for TN3270e clients coming in off a TCP/IP network trying to access SNA resources and applications that make use of them. The communications server offers better interoperability between SNA and TCP/IP clients so administrators can easily identify users on the network and see what is going on when they crash.

Also new is support for centralized management of digital key certificates belonging to server applications and support for LDAP version 3.

OS/390 2.8 will include a slew of obscure Unix shell enhancements that bring the Unix subsystem in OS/390 more on par with other industrial-strength Unix variants, all of which are aimed at making it easier to port and maintain applications designed for true Unix environments on OS/390 servers. OS/390 2.8 will also include IBM’s native mainframe search engine, formerly known as NetQuestion and only available in the Intelligent Miner data warehouse suite. These text search functions, now called OS/390 Text Search, will now be a part of OS/390.

The new OS/390 Print Server include printer data stream transforms that convert the HP-PCL and PostScript data streams commonly supported on non-mainframe applications (such as PeopleSoft or BaanERP) to the Advanced Function Printing (AFP) printer data stream IBM has always supported on its AS/400s and mainframes and the IBM printers that connect to them. The incompatibility of AFP with either PCL or PostScript is what makes it so hard for IBM to sell the Printing Systems division or for a vendor such as Xerox or Hewlett-Packard to buy it.

IBM is also creating a special data stream transformer to convert SAP R/3 output so it can be printed on any AFP-enabled printer. Presumably, the 600 or so customers running high-end ERP software from SAP or PeopleSoft on their S/390s are writing their own printer drivers, getting by in ASCII-emulation mode or using someone else’s printers at the moment, most likely Xerox’s very highly respected high-end printers. OS/390 Print Server will also include support for printers using the TCP/IP Simple Network Management Protocol, which will be able to manage both SNMP- enabled printers as well as those that are connected to the mainframe via IBM’s Print Services Facility V3 for OS/390.

OS/390 2.8 also includes support for the emerging Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), which is aimed at allowing any internet- connected device running a web browser to print to any printer it can find through IPP over the internet or over an extranet or intranet. OS/390 2.8 will include the same Network Neighborhood print server facilities that have already been added to OS/400 and AIX that enable these operating systems to look like Windows NT to a Windows client. The upshot is that end users working from Windows clients will not have to have any special software installed on their machines to link to and print to an IBM printer connected to a mainframe.

Looking to September 2000, IBM is warning customers that OS/390 3.0 – a 64-bit enabled version of OS/390, compared to the 31-bit version currently on the market – will make use of S/390 instructions that are not supported on many of its prior generations of mainframes. This 64-bit version of OS/390 is expected to run in S/390-mode and offer some performance enhancements over OS/390 2.8. But the new G7 processor that runs with the so-called OS/390 3.0 will also include a new native mode that, with program recompilations, will offer substantial performance improvements compared to OS/390 running on older iron. This G7 processor will likely draw rather heavily on Power4 Giga Processor design elements. Power4 is expected to be used in RS/6000s and AS/400s in the 2001 and 2002 timeframe.

IBM says that the September 2000 release of OS/390 will not run on ES/9000 9021, 9121 or 9221 processors. Nor will it run on 3090 or 4381 mainframes, or first generation 9672 E or P transaction Servers or 9672-RX1 Enterprise Servers. The OS/390 release in 2000 will run on G2 through G6 processors used in the 9672 and Multiprise lines as well as on P/390 and Integrated Server baby mainframes,