IBM today announced 10 new software products to help companies lower application management costs by optimizing the System z mainframe for more workloads, such as data analytics, collaborative application development, application maintenance and other key business processes.

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Given System z's ability to reduce costs through server consolidation, IBM and the industry have aggressively extended the breadth of new workloads for the mainframe via 3,800 z/OS-based and 3,000 Linux-based applications. The unique ability of the mainframe to host many application services on one system has helped System z achieve one of the industry's lowest application costs per user. Minimal application costs are important for companies which rely on multiple applications to run their business.

The new products span IBM's software portfolio to provide a range of benefits for System z customers. The benefits include optimal application connectivity, productivity, security and data management.

The new offerings complement IBM's recent announcement of seven integrated hardware, software and services packages -- IBM System z Solution Editions -- to help customers deploy new enterprise workloads, such as data warehousing, electronic payments and disaster recovery.

  The new products include:
  --  IMS 11 provides direct SQL access to IMS data from any distributed
      platform. This simplifies and speeds the process of connecting
      applications and data, while also enabling easier data replication and
      change capture processes. Enhanced Java support expands the number of
      developers available to support IMS applications and business
      services.

  --  New products from WebSphere to enhance business process management,
      connectivity and integration including: WebSphere Process Server for
      z/OS V7, IBM WebSphere ILOG Business Rule Management Systems,
      WebSphere MQ for z/OS V7.0.1, WebSphere Message Broker for z/OS V7.0,
      and IBM Problem Determination Tools V10. These products are designed
      to help clients discover insights that enable innovation, maximize the
      value of business interactions, and optimize productivity and
      resources. For a full list and description of the new WebSphere
      products visit: www.ibm.com/smartwork/businessagility

  To help clients cut application maintenance costs, IBM offers:
  --  IBM Rational Developer for System z version 7.6 provides a modern GUI
      development environment, to increase developer productivity and lower
      the costs associated with maintaining and building multi-platform
      applications. The new offering helps attract next-generation workers,
      consolidates multi-language development into a single environment and
      dramatically reduces CPU usage of up to 50 percent, minimizing budget
      expenditures.
  --  IBM Rational Team Concert for System z version 2.0 uses a new common
      repository to help teams to work together, share assets, automate
      processes and deliver software faster. The software expedites response
      times and cuts costs by consolidating disparate development team
      infrastructures and automating software development across multiple
      platforms, which is important for tiered applications.

  --  An enhanced set of IBM Rational Compilers for C/C++, COBOL and PL/I
      reduce application MIP requirements, while increasing developer
      productivity and reducing both capital expense and overall development
      costs.

To help clients gain better insights about enterprise assets and lower network management costs, IBM offers:

  --  Tivoli Asset Discovery for z/OS removes unused and obsolete software
      and helps determine software usage to plan effectively for the future
      and to run smarter systems.
  --  IBM Tivoli NetView for z/OS 5.4 improves network and automation
      control for data centers and change management. It provides an
      understanding of how network availability and events impact the
      business, helping customers deliver smarter, more automated systems.

  --  IBM Tivoli zSecure provides a mainframe security solution for
      automated analysis and reporting of mainframe events and compliance
      dashboards that lower auditing costs helping companies run a smarter
      more cost effective system.

Telcordia, Sodifrance and HVB Unicredit are among the companies worldwide already benefiting from the long-term economics of the System z platform.

"Telcordia's data systems are designed to provide consistently high throughput all the time. Each system averages five million transactions per day, supporting an average of 250 gigabytes of active data," said Paul Gandolfo, a senior technical specialist in application development and performance at Telcordia. "Our customers bet their businesses on the services we provide, and we bet our service performance and reliability on IBM's Information Management System. Downtime is not an option."

"Building an agile development team requires a multiplatform approach and Sodifrance uses Rational Developer for System z and Rational Team Concert for System z to help application teams synchronize their efforts and improve collaboration," said Hugh Smith, project manager of Sodifrance. "Rational on System z offers a powerful and valuable combination for any company that wants to boost its development team's productivity."

"Programmers that are using Rational Developer for System z have found that development is more comfortable than with our existing set of development tools," says Almut Geiger of HVB Unicredit. "Debugging in particular is much faster. Features like syntax checking, content assist, multiple views and error identification make development easier. For example, when there were coding errors before, a developer had to find the correct line number in the code and then try to determine what was wrong with the code. Now they just click on an icon, and they are led directly to the position of the error. It takes people some time to get familiar with a new environment, but when they become familiar with Rational Developer for System z, we are seeing an estimated 15 percent increase in development efficiency and a 10 percent increase in testing efficiency."

For more information of System z, visit http://www.ibm.com/mainframe

For more information about System z software, visit http://www.ibm.com/software/os/systemz

  Contact:

  Mylissa Tsai
  IBM Media Relations
  Phone: (917) 472-3680
  Email: tsaim@us.ibm.com

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact: tsaim@us.ibm.com

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SOURCE: IBM