The ZIIP chip - food for thought

IBM have just announced that later in 2006 they will release a new specialist engine - the $125,000 ZIIP chip - dedicated to accelerating specific DB2 data processing - particuarly in the ERP, CRM Business Intelligence worlds. Coupled with a new web-friendly release of DB2, IBM appear to be keeping the pressure on to get Enterprises rethinking their mainframe strategies - back to centralisation and de-duplication - read more at http://www.mainframe-upgrade.com/article-ibm-ziip-chip.php .


WH 2006
http://www.mainframe-upgrade.com/

virtualization

The acronymization can do your head in, and new wordage is rife, but “virtualization” could be one to keep your cynical head away from. There are a lot of vendors vying for your attention with this word, and yes there is hype in the press but if you start at the top and take a cool look at IBMs standpoint then you will quickly see this is something to be taken very seriously. Virtualization, in its broad sense, is about decoupling processing from the technicalities of the platforms on which it is being hosted. In the “bring back the mainframe, all is forgiven” new world we find ourselves in, this can mean Virtual networks running on the z9 or zSERIES Mainframe – with everything sucked back in to the place that is most secure and powerful. With things like Integrated Facilities for Linux and Specialist Java Execution environments zAAPs running on their own partitions – who needs all that massively distributed architecture ? Hipersockets can give you virtual TCP/IP at mainframe address move speeds – keep an eye on this one ! Learn more at MainframeUpgrade
A good paper to read on this is from SOFTWARE STRATEGIES . Also look at IBMs view .

WH
http://www.mainframe-upgrade.com/

Business Integration

The upper echelons of the enterprise world are talking serious service orientated architecture and BUSINESS INTEGRATION. BI is the tectonic plate shift that’s been slowly on the up for some time now and it shows that sanity is returning to Enterprise Computing. They said mainframes would die, they said COBOL would die but they were wrong.There are many core legacy applications, developed over many years in large businesses and most of the established big players around the world could not begin to consider re-engineering these core applications. It is widely accepted now that it would not provide a cost benefit. The philosophy behind Business Integration accepts this and instead focuses on flexible, scaleable and secure access to this base functionality, within an overall framework that integrates systems, data, applications, processes and people inside and outside the organisation. Much more on this ...

WH
http://www.mainframe-upgrade.com/