Five Minute Briefing - Data Center
January 24, 2011
Five Minute Briefing - Data Center: January 24, 2011. Published in conjunction with SHARE Inc., a bi-weekly report geared to the needs of data center professionals.
News Flashes
Application Security, Inc., a provider of database security, risk and compliance solutions, and NEON Enterprise Software, a provider of mainframe solutions, have announced a strategic alliance to deliver enterprise security solutions for monitoring database activity on the mainframe. The "compliance tidal wave" that has been hitting IT is now crashing on the mainframe, Josh Shaul, vice president product management, AppSec, tells 5 Minute Briefing. As open systems have succeeded in becoming "much more locked down," regulators are naturally expanding the breadth of their audits to include mainframes to ensure that proper controls are there as well, he explains. And while it is very hard to hack into mainframe systems, Shaul notes, for authorized users the potential for abuse exists on the mainframe in the same way as it does in distributed systems.
BMC Software announced a workload automation solution that enables business users to manage their own workloads without requiring the intervention of IT departments. The new tool, BMC Control-M Self Service, enables users check the status of their work, make workload processing changes for their business transactions and access a service catalog of predefined workloads. "BMC Control-M Self Service is arming business users with more control over their IT environment," says Bill Miller, president of mainframe service management for BMC Software. "The lines between IT and business users are being blurred and BMC is seeking to provide a clear vision with easy-to-use tools that empower them to play a leading role in delivering their end product."
Symantec Corp. has introduced two new appliances designed to provide customers with a more flexible delivery model for its data protection, storage management and security solutions. The Symantec FileStore N8300 is a scale-out, clustered network attached storage (NAS) appliance designed to help customers address the business challenges associated with building out cloud storage, managing large volumes of data and controlling the associated storage costs. The NetBackup 5200 appliance series helps customers expand their data protection infrastructure with an all-in-one hardware and software backup solution that integrates deduplication to reduce storage.
3X Systems has released version 3.0 of its 500 and Tera Series remote backup appliances, capable of automatically backing up Microsoft Windows-based servers, workstations, and laptops over the internet to a central storage device that delivers data protection and disaster recovery capabilities. The new features in version 3.0 of the appliances provide more flexibility for users, Alan Arman, CEO, 3X, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "You utilize one console to back up your servers, your virtual environment, your laptops in the field, and back up remote offices, all managed under a policy-based back up. That saves administrators quite a bit of time."
IBM announced bullish fourth-quarter and 2010 year-end results for software and solutions sales, marking an acceleration in the resurgence from the recent economic slump. The company said its fourth-quarter net income was $5.3 billion, an increase of 9% over $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009. Total revenues for the fourth quarter of 2010 were $29 billion, an increase of 7%. Revenues from System z mainframe server products increased 69% compared with the year-ago period. Total delivery of System z computing power, as measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), increased 58%.
IBM has announced a new tool feature designed to provide improved data access by simplifying and automating the process of cloning entire IBM IMS subsystems or databases. The IBM IMS Cloning Tool employs storage processor fast-replication facilities to clone IMS systems and refresh databases. IMS Cloning Tool simplifies, automates, and speeds up IMS system cloning and database refresh operations, while at the same time using fewer CPU, I/O, and storage resources than traditional methods by offloading the copy process to the storage processor.
Veryant, a COBOL-to-Java vendor, has released vCOBOL Enterprise, a platform to migrate legacy COBOL applications off IBM mainframes. vCOBOL includes an optimized compiler and COBOL-to-Java runtime technology. "vCOBOL software's strong compatibility with legacy COBOL dialects, combined with the ability to natively call COBOL programs directly from Java it enables, makes the technology a natural choice for mainframe modernization initiatives," Dovid Lubin, vice president of technical operations for Veryant, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
News From SHARE
By Steve Guendert, Ph.D,SHARE Deputy DirectorWithout a doubt, Cloud Computing is the hottest topic in information technology today. At the October Gartner Symposium/ITxpo held in Orlando, FL, Gartner identified Cloud Computing as the #1 (of 10) strategic technology for 2011. Gartner specifically stated "Cloud computing services exist along a spectrum from open public to closed private. The next three years will see the delivery of a range of cloud service approaches that fall between these two extremes. Vendors will offer packaged private cloud implementations that deliver the vendor's public cloud service technologies (software and/or hardware) and methodologies (i.e., best practices to build and run the service) in a form that can be implemented inside the consumer's enterprise. Many will also offer management services to remotely manage the cloud service implementation."
Think About It
Considering Moving Off IMS? Think Again