OpenExtensions for z/VM

Because OpenExtensions services are part of the standard z/VM package, z/VM offers the best of both worlds: UNIX and z/VM. "Really?" you ask... "UNIX and z/VM...together?"

OpenExtensions services (also known as UNIX services) are an important element of the open and distributed computing strategy

With the important features of OpenExtensions services, z/VM combines:

• The personal power of the workstation
• The flexibility of open systems and

• The strength of VM to create a new information environment for the future.

Because the workstation is becoming more powerful, users are becoming more powerful, and demanding more. Increasingly, information systems are user-driven. Even where some central management is essential to an enterprise, its value must be demonstrated to users.

The workstation user is increasingly self-sufficient. A growing number of application packages are available on Windows, OS/2, UNIX, and other platforms. User interfaces are becoming easier to use and at the same time more sophisticated. An increasing amount of information is becoming accessible through CD-ROM technology and telephony.

Yet many workstation users find the need to work together with other users, to share and be part of a network of resources. Linked today with LAN servers and groupware,tomorrow's users will need access to even more information and applications. The workstation user will expect this network of services to be managed elsewhere, freeing the user to be more creative and productive.

One of the original characteristics of the UNIX world was its spirit of freeware and the sharing of ideas. Gradually, users and manufacturers began to standardize these ideas so that everyone could have a common foundation to build on--a world of products adhering to a set of common or open interfaces.

In the world of open systems, an enterprise using systems that conform to the standard interfaces can exchange or reuse applications, data, and skills on the conforming operating system of any manufacturer.

This world of open systems promises the freedom to design a network of resources best suited to present needs--in terms of capability, performance, and cost--with assurance that the current investment in applications and data will be portable to the new configurations of the future.

Today, a remarkably large number of business enterprises, worldwide, depend on the strength of one particular operating system for the critical information processing of bank account balances, product orders, personnel records, payroll checks, progress reports, insurance claims, operating plans, and other information. While making plans to move applications and data to the optimum location in a network, the large, growing business depends more than ever on the dynamic strength of the third building block in our new information environment: VM - now the integrated core of z/VM.

z/VM offers large-scale, high-performance transaction, interactive, and batch computing on a scale unmatched by smaller and less sophisticated operating systems. Moreover, z/VM offers tools for managing, analyzing, controlling, and optimizing applications and data, and, through its SystemView architecture, a single view of a network and a way to manage it.

Among the strengths of z/VM are:

• The efficient sharing of system resources, including access to high-speed, large-volume storage devices and high-speed printers. (The typical z/VM system handles many billions of bytes of storage with millions of requests for data access per day.)
• Sophisticated data backup and archival facilities.
• Thousands of application solutions from IBM and other vendors.
• The ability to handle a large number of interactive use
• Extensive security and auditing features.
• The ability to take advantage of IBM's System/390 processors and architecture, including the ESCON architecture.
• Recoverability and system integrity features.
• An outstanding record of reliability and service.

z/VM and its OpenExtensions services combine the personal power of the workstation, the flexibility of open systems, and the strength of z/VM into a new environment. Offering new, open interfaces for applications and interactive users, OpenExtensions for z/VM services support and foster a superenvironment of larger operating systems or servers and of distributed systems and workstations that share common interfaces.

• With z/VM, your enterprise has the industrial strength long associated with VM while gaining access to applications and data in multivendor systems.
• Your enterprise can create client/server applications primarily developed at workstation systems. At the same time, many new application solutions will become available, developed by vendors, application integrators, and possibly by users at the workstations within your enterprise.
• Applications you create or buy that conform to UNIX standards can be moved with relative ease among conforming computer systems.
• With z/VM, your existing investment in VM applications and data is protected and even enhanced. Meanwhile, new applications will have access to existing data.

Using OpenExtensions for z/VM services,

• Users can switch back and forth between the VM CMS interface and the OpenExtensions shell interface.
• UNIX-skilled users can interact with z/VM using a familiar set of standard commands and utilities.
• VM-skilled users can interact with z/VM using familiar CMS commands and interactive menus to create and manage hierarchical file system files and to copy data back and forth between VM data sets and files.
• Application programmers can code using a standard C language interface and, after making appropriate design decisions, also take advantage of proprietary VM programming interfaces.

Now your enterprise can use the recognized capabilities of z/VM as a powerful platform within an open and expanding environment of computing resources.