The Open Mainframe Project has announced that Zowe, an open source software framework for the mainframe that strengthens integration with modern enterprise applications, has marked a technical milestone with the first Long Term Support (LTS) release.
The Open Mainframe Project launched Zowe, an open source project based on z/OS, in 2018 to serve as an integration platform for the next generation of administration, management and development tools on z/OS mainframes. The Zowe framework uses the latest web technologies among products and solutions from multiple vendors. Zowe enables developers to use familiar, industry-standard, open source tools to access mainframe resources and services.
“Mainframes are the foundation of businesses in every industry,” said John Mertic, director of program management for the Linux Foundation and Open Mainframe Project. “Zowe continues to evolve rapidly due to numerous contributions from the open source community. The LTS release is our first major step into longevity and security that will offer innovative possibilities for the next generation of products and solutions.”
Benefits of the Zowe LTS release include:
- Stability: Organizations can confidently adopt the technology for enterprise use and upgrade when appropriate for their environment, minimizing the risk of disruption
- Interoperability: Zowe consumers can be assured LTS-conformant extensions have adapted to and support LTS features
- Longevity: Zowe is designed for years of use and plans are in place for continued updates and support
- Ease of Use: Mainframe System Administrators can use standard z/OS processes to install and upgrade Zowe z/OS components including SMP/E, UNIX Shell Scripts, and z/OSMF workflows
- Smaller Footprint: The updated install process leverages standard z/OS technology. In addition to being more intuitive, by eliminating optional services at install time the process lowers the number of configuration changes required for software updates and reduces the complexity of the Zowe footprint
The Zowe Conformance Program is Updated with LTS Guidelines
To build a vendor-neutral ecosystem around Zowe, the Open Mainframe Project’s Zowe Conformance Program launched last year. The program has helped Open Mainframe Project members such as Broadcom, IBM, Phoenix Software,, and Rocket Software incorporate Zowe with new and existing products that enable integration of mainframe applications and data across the enterprise. To date, more than 28 products have implemented extensions based on the Zowe framework and earned these members conformance badges.
Each vendor follows the testing guidelines to ensure their offering is aligned with the conformance standards. For the LTS release, each extensible component’s test criteria were modified to allow exploitation of the new Zowe LTS capabilities. Applications that satisfy the new testing criteria requirements will earn a Zowe “V1” conformance badge as soon as they submit for / are approved for V1.
New products or solutions recently accepted into the updated Zowe Conformance Program include:
- CA SYSVIEW PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
- CA File Master Plus
- CA JCLCheck Workload Automation
- CA Endevor Bridge for Git
- IBM RSE API Plug-in for Zowe CLI v1.0.0
For more information about Zowe and the Open Mainframe Project, go to www.openmainframeproject.org.