IBM System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP)

The IBM System z Application Assist Processors (zAAPs) is available on all IBM System z10, IBM System z9, IBM eServer zSeries 990 (z990) and IBM eServer zSeries 890 (z890) systems. The zAAP specialty engine provides an attractively priced execution environment for new web-based applications and SOA-based technologies, such as:

Java™ - for customers who desire the powerful integration advantages and traditional Qualities of Service of the IBM mainframe platform.

XML — for customers who desire cost effective XML parsing services on z/OS, z/OS XML System Services can exploit the zAAP for eligible XML workloads.

IBM System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP)

The IBM System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) is available on all System z10 and System z9 server. It is designed to help free-up general computing capacity and lower overall total cost of computing for select data and transaction processing workloads for business intelligence (BI), ERP and CRM, and select network encryption workloads on the mainframe.

Eligible workloads include portions of the following:

DB2 for z/OS V8 and DB2 9 for z/OS exploit the zIIP capability for portions of eligible data serving and utility workloads.

Some DB2 for z/OS utilities - A portion of DB2 for z/OS V8 utility functions used to maintain index maintenance structures (LOAD, REORG, and REBUILD INDEX) that typically run during batch, can be redirected to the zIIP. A portion of DB2 for z/OS V8 and DB2 9 DB2 utilities for sorting fixed-length records using IBM's memory object sorting technique can be eligible for the zIIP.

z/OS Communications Server exploits the zIIP for eligible IPSec network encryption workloads.
z/OS XML System Services is enabled to take additional advantage of the zIIP for eligible XML workloads.

z/OS Global Mirror (zGM, formerly XRC Extended Remote Copy) enables DFSMS SDM (System Data Mover) processing associated with zGM/XRC to be eligible for the zIIP

z/OS Global Mirror (zGM, formerly XRC Extended Remote Copy) is enhanced to allow most z/OS DFSMS SDM (System Data Mover) processing associated with zGM/XRC to be eligible to run on the zIIP. zIIP assisted z/OS Global Mirror can help provide better price performance and improved utilization of resources or can create server "white space" to be used for other projects at the mirrored site. This capability is available with: z/OS V1.10 (when available), or z/OS V1.9 with PTF UA39510 or z/OS V1.8 with PTF UA39509; IBM System Storage DS8000, or any storage controller, supporting z/OS Global Mirror; and IBM System z9 or System z10 server with zIIP(s).

z/OS Communications Server exploits the zIIP for select HiperSockets large message traffic

Please Note : zIIPs are very similar in concept to System z Application Assist Processors (zAAPs). Like the zAAPs; but unlike standard CPs, ICFs, and IFLs; the zIIP can do nothing on its own. They cannot execute an Initial Program Load and can only assist the general purpose Central Processor (CP) for the execution of eligible work.

Korean bank dumps Unix boxes for mainframes!

Seoul of a new machine - By Timothy Prickett Morgan

BC Card, the largest credit card processor in South Korea, is dumping its Unix servers, made by Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, and moving its processing applications to mainframes made by IBM.

No, time is not moving backwards on the Korean Peninsula. But BC Card, which is a coalition of 11 South Korean banks that handles credit card transactions for 2.62 million merchants and 40 million credit card holders in the country, has apparently had its fill of distributed Unix systems.

In fact, seeing the very low prices - comparatively speaking for mainframes, that is - for the Solution Edition mainframe bundles that IBM launched in August 2009, BC Card decided to move its transaction processing systems to these machines,

Including IBM's DB2 database, its CICS transaction monitor, the WebSphere application server, and the InfoSphere Replication Server for data integration, and Tivoli Workload Scheduler systems management tools.

As IBM explained it back in August, the Solution Edition bundles aim to have a price that is 50 to 80 per cent lower than buying mainframe hardware and software piecemeal at prevailing prices, and are designed specifically to have a premium over an HP Integrity server running HP-UX of no more than 20 per cent.

IBM says that what won BC Card over, in addition to the lower Solution Edition pricing, was the fact that the mainframes have utility pricing that lets customers activate and deactivate mainframe engines on demand and with software pricing that scales up and down with capacity. BC Card processes hundreds of millions of credit card transactions daily, and says that it can have very unpredictable workloads. The ability to cope with high transaction volumes and not fall over is why companies have been paying such a high premium for mainframes all these years; another is the grief that comes from porting applications off the mainframe.

Sources at IBM say that this is the first Unix-to-mainframe application migration in nearly a decade. That obviously does not count any workloads that were moved from Unix systems to Linux running natively on z/VM partitions on IBM's big iron. Neither IBM nor BC Card would provide details about the Unix systems being replaced or the capacity of the System z mainframes being dropped in to assume their role at BC Card.

The two would confirm is that HP and Sun boxes were displaced, and added that BC Card ran benchmark tests pitting mainframes against Unix boxen to stress test the setups for their security, availability, and capacity. As part of the switcheroo, BC Card has also hired Big Blue for consulting and system integration services.

The BC Card deal caps four large publicly admitted mainframe deals that IBM did in Korea in 2009, including sales at Kookmin Bank, Korean Air, and Korea Exchange Bank Card. IBM also announced a $5m mainframe deal with the First National Bank of Namibia, which has shelled out a total of $15m to get core banking moved into that African nation. Previously, FNB outsourced the data processing for its 400,000 customers to the First National Bank of South Africa. This is the first mainframe ever sold into Namibia, by the way.

In April, an Indian commercial bank, Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) Limited Bank, inked a seven year, $10m deal to create a credit card processing system based on the System z platform to support its 11 million customers. This was similarly the first mainframe deployed at a bank in India, according to IBM. Banks in China and Russia have also bought mainframes in recent years, and they do so because of the I/O capabilities of the machinery. The Bank of China has a mainframe getup that hosts 400 million accounts, has a 3 billion transaction history database, and runs at over 10,000 transactions per second.

Of course, for every bank in an emerging market you can find installing a mainframe, you can probably find one in a mature market that is being displaced by Unix, Windows, or Linux iron. The real issue is can IBM get a net gain in mainframe customers, boost revenues, and keep a talent pool of mainframers around to keep these machines humming. Ironically, as IBM expands the mainframe's appeal by lowering its costs, it may be hampered by a lack of techies with deep mainframe experience.

At the premium that IBM is charging for mainframes - even after Solution Edition bundle pricing - tuning and tweaking and babysitting are not optional. They are economic necessities, and sometimes, customers prefer to be lazy and get cheaper iron they don't have to tune so much to get bang for the buck. That doesn't make one way or the other right or wrong. That's just the way it is. ®

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup : Chetan Bhagat

Don’t just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful.

Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order. There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup.

There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions. Life is one of those races in nursery school where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth.

If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same is with life where health and relationships are the marble.

Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die. ……………….

One thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. Life is not meant to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here.

We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up?………….

It's ok, bunk a few classes, scoring low in couple of papers, goof up a few interviews, take leave from work, fall in love, little fights with your spouse. We are people, not programmed devices........."

"Don't be serious, be sincere,."!!

Hope we accept this genuineness, apply in our life and also encourage to others!!!

Grow with Mainframes - In the world of data processing, there is nothing more reliable than Mainframes.

Any seminar on careers in software begins with the nearly cliché sounding warning that "technology is changing so rapidly... what you learn today is obsolete tomorrow... ."

Probably true for some - client-server, networking, web. But, apparently, for the oldest elephants of Information Technology obsolete is not in the dictionary.

Commencing from the IBM 701 of 1952 to the IBM eServer zSeries 990 of 2003, Mainframes have come a long way in the world of data processing. And, for those looking for a career option in Mainframes, the future is rosy.

Reliability factor : Let's analyse why Mainframes will always be in demand and what opportunities they present career-wise. One of the most fundamental reasons is the reliability factor. Mainframes are not as susceptible to virus attacks as the emerging fourth-generation languages or open systems. Businesses like banking, retail, money markets and insurance, for instance, where huge data is processed every minute and where each failure can prove fatal to business, will never trust any other machine.

Mainframes are the software equivalent of Rolex in watches, or the Rolls Royce in cars. It seldom fails, and there is nothing more reliable.

Computation capacity : Another major factor in favour of Mainframes is the enormous computation capacity, which is surprising for something created over five decades ago and still ahead of most of the latest machines.

Most Fortune Corporations globally have, use and intend to continue Mainframes. Old giants like Ford and GE, which started with Mainframes, have stuck to them for obvious reasons. Another reason why we can bet on the eternal existence of these power horses is the potential cost of migration - for a machine with billions of lines of code, moving to client-server systems will cost phenomenally, a reason why companies corrected the Y2K bug than replace them.

Given the staying prowess of the Mainframes, the career options are also very stable. And since most of the Fortune companies employ their services, almost all major IT Service Providers work on them. Among bigger Indian players, TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Satyam provide jobs on Mainframes, not to mention IBM itself, where one can look to working in the Research Department.

Options aplenty : "The market for Mainframes is very strong. There are lots of requirements for maintenance in Mainframe systems. The options in legacy systems are especially very lucrative," says Muralidhar Kumanduri, Associate Manager, Accenture Services.

Mainframe systems are considered aged and not many of the present generation software engineers are well versed with the technicalities of Mainframes. The natural dearth of resources in terms of human skill when it comes to maintenance of the Mainframe systems creates great demand.

The skills required to work on Mainframes are largely COBOL, CICS and DB2.

"Customer Information Control System (CICS), a front-end application, is a very hot option. About 65 per cent of business market employs Mainframes," says Vikas Kumar, a senior software engineer and module leader with a major IT firm, who has been working on Mainframes for more than three years.

"Resumes claiming experience in Mainframes get at least two major calls everyday," says Mr. Vikas, stressing the saleability of the field. A search on Monster.com or Naukri.com gives a good indication of the kind of demand for expertise in Mainframes.

Contrary to the myth that a job in Mainframes maintenance is boring and monotonous, Shiva K., a project leader, says, "once you get in, it adds a lot of value to your career and you have a feeling of having entered into the strata of the elite. It is both challenging and interesting."

Majority of the jobs are in to maintenance, while a small, but significant chunk of jobs are into

applications.

Applicants are hired. Starting as developers, they go up to the level of Project Managers. Indian software companies that frequently come up with openings in Mainframes are Infosys, Kanbay, Masteck, Polaris, Satyam, Wipro, Visualsoft, among others.

"The market for Mainframes will not see the downtrend. It is highly reliable and widely used," says Ayyappa Nagubandi, Chief Software Architect of TrulyIntelligent Technologies. "Unlike other software areas, it is not easy to make transition to Mainframe systems from other fields. This is because technology related to Mainframes is vast and one needs a certain level of expertise to start a career in the field. One should have a good grounding in COBOL to get going."

Where to learn? : There are very few institutions that provide genuine coaching on Mainframes. The Keane School of Excellence, at IIIT, Hyderabad, offers a certificate course in software technologies covering Mainframes.

But candidates making a foray into Mainframes should be extremely cautious about choosing the right kind of institute that offers an exhaustive course. If not a certificate course from premier institutes, one should, at least, opt for a training course from reputed and reliable institutes.