IBM Enhances Solutions for Medium-Sized S/390 Enterprises.

FISHKILL, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 9, 1998--IBM has announced the planned fourth quarter general availability of the desk-side S/390 Integrated Server, continuing its commitment to provide growing S/390 businesses with cost-effective computing solutions. IBM also plans to make available later this year a new release of the VSE/ESA operating system as well as an OS/390 Automated UNIX System Option for VM, VSE and OS/390.

"Our customers have asked us to continue arming them with the tools they need to harness S/390's proven strengths for enterprise computing," said Ying Chu, director of the IBM S/390 Division's new VM and VSE Business Unit. "To this end, IBM has established the S/390 VM and VSE Business Unit, which is dedicated to providing growing businesses with the latest enterprise computing solutions."

S/390 Integrated Server

The S/390 Integrated Server, the smallest unit in the S/390 family of products, will provide customers with a cost-effective platform to execute S/390-based applications for production or application development purposes.

Powered by a CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) processor, the Integrated Server will support current levels of OS/390 as well as the MVS/ESA, VM/ESA, and VSE/ESA operating systems. The server will feature 256 MB (megabytes or million bytes) of integrated S/390 memory as well as 36 GB (gigabytes or billion bytes) of usable disk space, expandable to up to 255 GB of available RAID-5 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) storage.

The Integrated Server will enable customers to run traditional applications and conduct e-business through products such as the WebSphere Application Server (formerly Domino Go Webserver). With several PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) I/O ports and ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) slots, customers will be able to plug in a wide array of devices into the system, including printers, Local Area Networks and Wide Area Networks.

The S/390 Integrated Server complements the S/390 Multiprise 2000 Server family and will provide a cost-effective and manageable platform for consolidating workloads from multiple servers. The Integrated Server will be available through S/390 Business Partners.

VSE/ESA Version 2 Release 4

IBM plans to make VSE/ESA Version 2 Release 4 available to a limited number of customers by the end of 1998, with general availability expected in mid-1999. New content includes CICS Transaction Server for VSE/ESA Version 1 Release 1, a significant new version of CICS; security management and other enhancements to help customers leverage the latest tools for conducting e-business.

- CICS Transaction Server -- The CICS Transaction Server for VSE/ESA will help businesses implement business-critical e-business and client/server enterprise solutions across multiple platforms. This new version of CICS provides increased affinity with CICS on OS/390, improved reliability and availability and growth capabilities. Major functional enhancements include Storage Protection, extensive Virtual Storage Constraint Relief, Shared Data Tables, External Call Interface (EXCI) and Resource Definition Online (RDO) for files.

- Security Management -- IBM plans to announce later this year an additional security product to provide enterprise security, management and control tools for VSE/ESA customers. VSE/ESA V.2 Rel.4 will offer a basic security manager for sign-on operations and transaction security for e-business.

Earlier this year, IBM announced other enhancements to the VSE/ESA operating system including improved TCP/IP performance and the addition of a Network File System (NFS) feature. NFS provides server support for the NFS Version 2 protocol, available for the OS/390, AIX and OS/2 operating systems, and enables an VSE/ESA system to act as a file server. That means that PCs, UNIX servers or any other systems that have the NFS V.2 client function installed can access VSE/VSAM files, VSE/ESA Library files and VSE/POWER queues as easily as if those files resided on the user's system.

VSE/ESA offers high-performance transaction and batch computing capabilities that are simple and cost-effective, and very well suited to the needs of medium-sized enterprises. VSE/ESA continues to be enhanced to provide industry-standard client/server computing and improved affinity with OS/390 for common applications and procedures.

Enhancements to VM/ESA

IBM also announced earlier this month that it intends to introduce a new version of ADSM (ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager) for VM/ESA. ADSM is an advanced storage management solution that includes comprehensive central management of multiple servers, lights-out server automation and remote help desk support. These new capabilities are designed to enhance system ease-of-use, while meeting customer requirements for protecting ever-increasing amounts of data in the most cost-effective manner.

VM/ESA is known for its high performance, interactive computing and its ability to run other operating system environments as "guests." Since each user appears to have all of the resources of a virtual computing system dedicated to their work, VM provides personalized computing for interactive use, test, development and production of business critical applications.

Software and applications available from other vendors for the VM/ESA platform provide a rich suite of solutions for industrial-strength Web serving, e-business and business computing.

VM/ESA Version 2 Release 3, made available in early 1998, offers Java support, more UNIX interfaces for easier application development and deployment, and TCP/IP support.

Auto UNIX System

IBM will make available later this year an OS/390 delivery option that provides VM and VSE customers with the ability to run UNIX-based applications on the S/390 platform. The OS/390 Automated UNIX System Option for VM, VSE and OS/390 is a new, easy-to-use solution for growing businesses that want to use UNIX-based functions and applications not available on VM or VSE. In addition to providing an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) and a UNIX command shell interface to OS/390 system functions, DB2 and MQ Series, this option will allow VM and VSE customers to run UNIX-based applications including Lotus Notes and, in future releases, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications such as Baan. For e-business capabilities, the OS/390 Automated UNIX System Option for VM/VSE and OS/390 will provide Web content hosting using the WebSphere Application Server and secure network computing applications using Java or the C/C++ compiler. Customers will also have the ability to develop, port and run generalized UNIX interactive applications and workloads that take advantage of the OS/390 UNIX Hierarchical File System (HFS) and DB2. Connectivity to VM and VSE systems is enabled with TCP/IP, VTAM or MQ Series. No OS/390 skills are required to design, install, operate or maintain the OS/390 Auto UNIX System Option for VM, VSE and OS/390.

EDITOR'S NOTE: IBM news releases and fact sheets are available on the Internet, via the IBM Home Page at http://www.ibm.com. S/390 releases and fact sheets are available via the S/390 Home Page at http://www.s390.ibm.com.

IBM, S/390, OS/390, S/390 Integrated Server, S/390 Multiprise 2000, MVS/ESA, VSE/ESA, VM/ESA, WebSphere Application Server, ADSM, CICS, DB2, OS/390 Automated UNIX System for VM, VSE and OS/390 and MQ Series are trademarks or registered trademarks of the IBM Corporation.

Lotus Notes and Domino are registered trademarks of Lotus Development Corporation.

Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems.

UNIX is a registered trademark of X/Open Limited.

All other brand names or products names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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