IBM announced new System z software to enable companies to drive down IT
costs while increasing business flexibility and improving service. IBM
announced it plans to release approximately 30 new software technology
enhancements in 2009 that extend the advantages of using System z as a
platform for developing, deploying and running today’s applications and
business data.

The announcement is part of IBM’s ongoing pursuit to help customers
simplify their environment and reduce costs by migrating scattered
applications and data onto a lower cost, more scalable and manageable
platform.

The software initiative spans IBM’s branded product lines for
application architecture, development, and delivery; business
intelligence and database management; transaction management and IT
service management.

Market adoption of System z as a platform for new applications is
demonstrated by the growth in ISV interest in the IBM mainframe. Over
the last year, more than 150 new ISVs have embraced the platform, and
more than 1,000 new vendor applications were added.

ISVs recently deploying applications on System z include SAP,
Chordiant, Temenos, i-flex, ACI, and Norkom.

Customers and ISVs continue to embrace System z

“Temenos sees the System z market as a major growth opportunity.
Temenos Core Banking, targeted at large domestic retail operations with
a SOA roadmap looking to gradually replace key ‘banking enterprise
services’, running on WebSphere on zOS fully exploits the specialty
engine architecture of System z,” said Greg Green, senior vice
president of Core Banking at Temenos. “In addition, T24 our flagship
universal banking platform with unparalleled breadth of functionality,
running on Linux and using DB2 for zOS, gives the bank extreme
flexibility on a modern architecture.”

For customers in the banking sector, IBM and SAP offer a reference
architecture for running for SAP Solutions on System z with IBM’s
WebSphere, Tivoli, and Information Management products. Customers can
download the guidelines on how to optimize SAP on System z based on
real-world experiences gained at large-scale SAP implementations at
major banks worldwide.

IBM today announced 12 of the 30 software products and enhancements for
System z.

For application architecture, development, and delivery:

— IBMRational System Architect v11.3 and Rational Focal Point for
Product and Portfolio Management v6.4enable better
decision-making and impact analysis using blueprints of
strategy, processes and IT infrastructure and their
inter-dependencies. The new capabilities will help maximize
budget and resources with critical business and IT
collaboration, and provide the enterprise planning and risk
analysis necessary for successful enterprise consolidation and
transformation initiatives.
— IBMRational Developer for System z v7.6helps improve developer
productivity, lowers training costs and reduces mainframe MIPs
consumption. The new version supplies integrations with
Rational Team Concert for System z v2.0, CICS v4.1, SCA, IBM
Problem Determination Tools and third party SCM solutions.
Together, these capabilities allow customers to use IBM’s
premier Integrated Developer Environment for accelerating
development of new workloads across multiple platforms and
languages on System z.
— IBMRational Team Concert for System z v2.0, based on the
IBMJazz technology platform, enables collaborative, agile
development among distributed and Mainframe development teams
building Java, C/C++, COBOL, PL/I, and EGL applications. The
preview version now integrates with IBM Rational Developer for
System z further strengthening support for building
cross-platform applications.

For business intelligence and new database technology, recently
announced and future IBM software products include:

— InfoSphere Warehouse for System z adds core data warehousing
and analytics capability to DB2 for z/OS, including optimized
multidimensional reporting and analysis. In addition it enables
universal access to clients such as Excel and Cognos.
— Cognos 8 BI for Linux on System z v8.4 now provides a single
view across virtually any data source.
— Thenext Version of DB2 for z/OSwill boost performance,
significantly lower administration and maintenance
requirements, while improving the efficiency of application
developers and database administrators.
— Available later this year,IMS 11 provides Open Database support
which makes interaction with other applications and databases
much simpler, faster, and more cost effective to implement.

For transaction management, recently announced IBM software products
include:

— CICS Transaction Server v4.1 delivers new features to help
organizations respond to the demands of increased regulatory
scrutiny, address changing demographics, and position
themselves to take advantage of new growth opportunities.
Existing CICS programs and resources can now participate in
mashups, Web 2.0 and other situational applications. The CICS
Explorer also simplifies the development and management of
traditional and modern applications for integrating with IBM
and third party tools.
— WebSphere Business Events v6.2.1 for z/OS helps businesses
detect, evaluate, and respond to the impact of business events
based on the discovery of actionable event patterns. Users now
have the ability to specify business events, and then capture
and emit them from a CICS application, without the need to
change the application.

For IT Service Management:

— Through multiple releases, Tivoli OMEGAMONprovides integrated
monitoring throughout the enterprise to assure the highest
quality application performance. It reduces labor intensive
analysis and speeds time to repair, often identifying potential
problems before they require investigation.
— TivoliSecurity Management for z/OShelps simplify security
administration and user management, establish security policy
controls, and automate auditing and compliance reporting. It
enhances overall security posture to reduce risks and improve
reliability, and minimizes costs with increased productivity
and operational efficiencies when consolidating security.
— TivoliKey Lifecycle Management for z/OS delivers platform
independent, extreme security for corporate information which
can be accessed by thousands of applications inside and outside
the enterprise, while combining automated management to
minimize required maintenance.
— TivoliWorkload Scheduler v8.5 now provides new, more
intelligent scheduling, boosting throughput with minimal human
intervention through increased automation.