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ATERAS Announces ADABAS/Natural Migration Strategy to DB2, Oracle, SQL Server/COBOL, C# & VB.NET

2007-04-11T22:06:00.000-07:00

ATERAS Announces ADABAS/Natural Migration Strategy to DB2, Oracle, SQL Server/COBOL, C# & VB.NET

News release

DALLAS, March 29 - ATERAS, a leading provider of fully automated legacy migration and modernization solutions, today announced its ADABAS/Natural conversion solution strategy that will enable organizations to migrate ADABAS databases and Natural applications to relational databases such as DB2, Oracle, or SQL Server using its automation technology DB-Shuttle(TM). Natural can be converted to COBOL, C# or VB.NET. The ADABAS/Natural conversion solution product offering helps organizations automatically migrate applications to modern, open technologies and database management systems. When an ADABAS/Natural migration is complete, a client will have functionally equivalent, seamlessly integrated applications, with Web capability that provides a reduced cost structure, improved business agility and applications that are SOA enabled and able to take advantage of new technical capabilities.

The ADABAS/Natural conversion solution product is another component in the overall DB-Shuttle Strategy, which includes: comprehensive IT assessments, database and data migrations and application migrations. The ATERAS solution ensures that the migration of ADABAS/Natural will be completed in a timely, cost effective and low risk manner. Our solution includes no system level software, no "black box" processing, no perpetuation of ADABAS, no additional execution overhead, no functional changes from an end-user perspective, and no license fees. The ATERAS solution provides for the complete replacement of ADABAS/Natural to newer relational technology databases and newer robust languages using highly automated tools and a comprehensive, streamlined and very mature process. The ADABAS/Natural conversion solution is designed to maintain comparable or improved application response times of the converted applications in the target environment and to ensure scalability, reliability and performance. The resulting conversion solution is a 3-tier architecture consisting of a User Interface Layer, Business Layer and Data Access Layer for each converted program.

"Providing an ADABAS/Natural migration solution is an important addition to our DB-Shuttle automation technology suite of products. There is a high demand for ATERAS to provide an ADABAS solution -- doing so will widen our product offering and customer base. Globally, ATERAS has had many successes with its other solutions (IDMS, IMS) that convert older applications and databases to new technologies," states Scott Miller, president and chief executive officer of ATERAS.

About ATERAS

ATERAS has supported global enterprises for over 20 years, offering state of the art services to our clients by modernizing and migrating legacy systems to the most current IT environments. The patent-pending DB Shuttle(TM) automation technology provides everything from comprehensive assessments of existing IT environments to fully automated conversions. Migration of mission critical applications and databases can be either mainframe to mainframe or mainframe to distributed platforms utilizing the .NET Framework. ATERAS delivers these solutions by working through leading systems integrators and alliance partners in markets including: Insurance, Financial Services, Healthcare, Government and Universities, both domestically and globally. For more information on ATERAS' solutions visit http://www.ateras.com/ .

Contact: ATERAS
Anna Stamatelatos
Vice President Sales & Marketing
469.385.7236

Website: http://www.ateras.com

IBM to Help Banks Improve the Consumer Experience

2007-04-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

IBM Opens New Centers to Help Banks Improve the Consumer Experience

Apr 11, 2007

Acting on consumer and market research, IBM today launched three new Banking Centers of Excellence (BCOE) to help financial services clients modernize aging computing systems and meet the needs of banking consumers.

The BCOE is a direct response to the many global business challenges banks face...Two primary roadblocks banks face in trying to better understand the customer experience are aging banking application systems that don't easily share information across banking channels and traditional customer relationship management practices that focus more on functional services like loyalty and retention programs...

Read the full news report from here @ Sys Con

Vienna Insurance Provider Saves Millions by Migrating from Mainframes

2007-04-11T21:55:00.000-07:00

Vienna District Health Insurance Provider Saves Millions by Migrating Applications from Mainframe

NEWBURY, England & ROCKVILLE, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 3, 2007--Micro Focus(R) (LSE:MCRO.L), a leader in enterprise application management and modernization solutions, today announced that Vienna, Austria, health insurance provider Wiener Gebietskrankenkasse (WGKK) has successfully switched over from its Unisys 2200 mainframe to IBM System p hardware running AIX, saving WGKK many millions of euros in IT costs. In addition, ongoing annual IT operating costs have been dramatically reduced and are now just 5 percent of the operating costs of the mainframe.

Read the full press release from here @ Insurance News Net

Paymaster Saves 300,000 GBP Per Year by Modernizing Core Banking Systems

2007-04-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

Paymaster Saves 300,000 GBP Per Year by Modernizing Core Banking Systems

10/04/2007

Press release Via: Business Wire

Micro Focus(R) (LSE.MCRO.L), a leading provider of enterprise application management and modernization solutions, today announces that Paymaster, one of the largest providers of outsourced financial services in the United Kingdom, has successfully used Micro Focus application modernization technology to move its core legacy applications from a VME mainframe to a new Windows server.

Paymaster's operating costs have been reduced by 300,000 GBP per annum and banking processes are now running ten to 30 times faster.

The migration was conducted by migration partner Transoft (a Micro Focus Migration and Transformation Consortium (MTC) member) and completed within budget in just ten months.

Paymaster now anticipates an even better return on investment (ROI) than the 11 month ROI originally projected.

Additionally, Paymaster has been able to improve levels of system availability and security, while reusing its core application code and data to minimize risk and expense.

The application modernization initiative was prompted in June 2005, when Fujitsu announced its plans to withdraw support for its Trimetra mainframe line by the end of April 2006.

Paymaster's mission-critical banking suite was the last remaining application on its Trimetra mainframe and running such an important system on an unsupported platform was not an option for Paymaster.

By moving to a Windows server, the company has not just eliminated this problem, it has also dramatically improved batch performance and job automation, enabling its evening batch to complete three hours earlier.

"The savings we have been able to make of around 300,000 pounds per annum gave us our expected return on investment in just ten months.

However, the performance improvements took us by surprise, with our batch processes completing 10 to 30 times faster running under Micro Focus COBOL on a small two CPU server.

The project has been a total success for us and has given us the confidence to really drive ahead with further developments," said Ralph Tigwell, chief technology officer, Paymaster.

"We are pleased to assist Paymaster in its application modernization strategy," said Stuart McGill, chief technology officer at Micro Focus.

"Too many companies, unlike Paymaster, underestimate the value of their core systems when looking at ways to improve operational efficiency and business agility." About Paymaster Paymaster (1836) Ltd (previously the Office of the Paymaster General) is one of the largest providers of outsourced financial services in the UK.

Established in 1836 to co-ordinate the payment functions for public sector organisations, in particular pensions and payroll administration, Paymaster became part of Hogg Robinson plc in 1997 and subsequently Xafinity Ltd in July 2005.
Since 1997 it has provided services for both public and private sector companies.
Paymaster provides pensions administration and payroll services for some of the largest schemes in the UK.

It covers all aspects of DB and DC pension scheme and annuity administration.

Its pension payroll services make payments totalling more than GBP 7 billion to over 1.5 million pensioners and their dependants, in 189 countries throughout the world.
About Micro Focus Micro Focus provides innovative software that allows companies to dramatically improve the business value of their enterprise applications.

Micro Focus Enterprise Application Modernization and Management software enables customers business applications to respond rapidly to market changes and embrace modern architectures with reduced cost and risk.

For additional information please visit www.microfocus.com.

The very latest perspectives, expertise and developments from Customers, Partners and Micro Focus are under one roof at Micro Focus World 2007.
For more information visit: www.microfocusworld.com.

IBM ends 31-bit z/OS mainframe support

2007-04-11T21:41:00.000-07:00

IBM ends 31-bit z/OS mainframe support

By Mark Fontecchio, 11 Apr 2007 | SearchDataCenter.com

IBM stopped supporting 31-bit z/OS on the mainframe on the first of this month.

Jim Rhyne, chief architect for enterprise software at IBM, said some companies are able to strike deals to extend IBM support for 31-bit z/OS. But for the most part, Rhyne said that IBM has given customers plenty of time to migrate off z/OS 1.4 and 1.5, as the end-of-service announcement was made in August of 2003.

Read the full news report from here @ Search Data Center

SAS Brings Enterprise Intelligence Platform to IBM System z

2007-04-11T21:37:00.000-07:00

SAS Brings Enterprise Intelligence Platform to IBM System z

11 Apr 2007

SAS has tightly integrated its Enterprise Intelligence Platform – which includes data integration, intelligence storage, business intelligence and analytics software – with the IBM System z mainframe.

In addition, the introduction of sub-capacity pricing provides SAS mainframe customers with a cost-effective way of adding new workloads and new applications to the System z platform, says this news report.

Read the full news report from here @ ebizQ

Viador's R1/ReportWizard for IBM Mainframes -- Web-Based Reporting, Charting on IBM z/OS

2007-04-10T06:46:00.000-07:00

Viador Announces R1/ReportWizard for IBM Mainframes -- Web-Based, Easy, Open, Secure, Scalable Reporting and Charting Native on IBM z/OS

Press release

SUNNYVALE, CA -- April 02, 2007 -- Viador Inc.™ today announced the release of Viador R1/ReportWizard for IBM™ Mainframes to complement its existing ReportOne Business Intelligence product suite. ReportOne (R1) is a new J2EE-based product line that includes the R1/ReportWizard for SQL reporting and the R1/Analyzer for OLAP analysis. R1/ReportWizard provides reporting capabilities directly from any supported web browser, accessing a variety of relational data sources including IBM DB2™. Executives, business analysts, and other knowledge workers will gain immediate insights into their data, and increased productivity from this new Viador product.

Viador R1/ReportWizard provides true full-function web-based reporting capability, without the need for any extra client-installed or downloaded software (an area of critical security and administration concern to many corporations). With this capability, users are able to easily create data views, interactively analyze them, drill into detail, and produce charts, using any supported web browser. Viador R1/ReportWizard is ideally suited to the needs of IBM mainframe customers, due to its architecture, ease of use, security, and minimal support requirements; it can scale up to support thousands of users with enterprise-class performance. Because it is completely web-based, users can easily share insights they derive with the help of R1/ReportWizard by simply granting another user secure, auditable access to the URL of the report that they are viewing. Unlike many other products, Viador requires no additional software to create or use R1/ReportWizard reports.

R1/ReportWizard is the latest product of Viador's new native J2EE-based complete product suite, running on Windows, UNIX, Linux, and now IBM z/OS. It is built with a zero-footprint DHTML interface, open APIs, and offers a JSR168-compliant portlet to integrate with industry standard portals, such as the IBM WebSphere™ Portal. R1/ReportWizard integrates with numerous IBM products, features, and functions, such as IBM WebSphere, IBM DB2™, IBM z/OS™, IBM RACF™, and IBM zAAP™.

The R1/ReportWizard architecture is fully compliant with all relevant open standards, such as JAAS security and XML. Viador products leverage the strength of J2EE and its rich universe of supporting products; as a result, Viador can offer unmatched scalability and future-compatibility for R1/ReportWizard. Designed for ease of installation, administration, deployment, and use, R1/ReportWizard enables very rapid return on investment (ROI) and low total cost of ownership (TCO).

"We are pleased to offer industry-leading Business Intelligence products to the IBM mainframe community," said Ben Connors, President of Viador. "With Viador R1/ReportWizard, users can have unparalleled ease of use, open architecture, and scalability to securely access IBM DB2 and a variety of data sources. Because it runs natively on the IBM z/OS operating system, users leverage all of the scalability, security, and reliability that IBM mainframes are known for."

"We have helped multiple customers successfully use Viador solutions for secure large-scale deployments, both within their organizations and through the firewall," said Loyal Pridgen, President of IndigeTech in Richmond, VA. "Now that Viador products run natively on IBM mainframes, these deployments can grow to substantial scale."

Availability

Viador R1/ReportWizard is available immediately on a worldwide basis. It is delivered globally both through Viador and through Viador channel partners.

About Viador Inc.

Viador Inc. combines proven experience, technology and partnerships to deliver Business Intelligence for leading businesses and organizations worldwide. Viador offers industry-leading BI development tools for SI/ISV partners and Enterprise customers by providing a platform that is highly customizable, allows the addition of new features on demand, requires zero client maintenance, offers quick and reliable deployment, and the industry's lowest TCO. Viador is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, USA. For more information, contact Viador at (408) 992-6000, Fax (408) 992-6001, email press@viador.com, or visit the Viador website at www.viador.com.

Viador, R1/ReportWizard, and the Viador logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Viador Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Media Contact for Viador:
Viador Inc.
(408) 992-6000

SOURCE: Viador

CA to Unveil New Workload Automation Family

2007-04-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

CA to Unveil New Workload Automation Family

Matt Hamblen, April 09, 2007 (Computerworld)

CA Inc. today is set to unveil a new line of job scheduling tools that includes a Web portal and four updated offerings.

The new CA Workload Automation family includes mainframe and distributed tools from CA and the former Cybermation Inc., which CA acquired in May 2006, said Jim Anderson, director of workload product management at CA.

Read the full news report from here @ Computer World

Virtualization in the SMB Environment

2007-04-10T06:39:00.000-07:00

Virtualization in the SMB Environment

April 09, 2007

Virtualization has long been the domain of large enterprises. Beginning with time-sharing technology on massive mainframes, virtualization required large data centers and larger IT budgets. The advent of high-performance workstations and servers based on Windows, Linux and similar technologies brought the benefits of virtualization to small- and mid-size businesses that might have only a limited IT staff and an even more limited budget.

Read the full news article from here @ DABCC

Archaic, Legacy IT systems prevent banks tailoring products

2007-04-10T06:33:00.000-07:00

'Archaic' IT systems prevent banks tailoring products

By Tash Shifrin

The IT systems of UK banks are too archaic to allow tailoring and targeting of financial products to key consumer groups such as women, analysts have warned.

A report from Accenture says: “UK banks struggle to even identify which customers are at these stages. Often banks do not hold the relevant information. But even when they do they are often unable to access their data in a way that allows them to create appropriate products and services.” The reason? Bank IT systems were typically based on 1960s-era mainframes. “...there is only so much you get from 40-year-old technology...”

Read the full news report from here @ Computer World, UK

IBM Encourages Customers to Bring BI Back to the Mainframe

2007-04-05T08:06:00.000-07:00

IBM Encourages Customers to Bring BI Back to the Mainframe

By Stephen Swoyer, 4/4/2007

IBM is pursuing a number of pricing stratagems to make the mainframe a more affordable proposition on both hardware and software. One such is its zSeries Integrated Information Processor, or zIIP. zIIP is in essence a software license that lets customers host data-intensive workloads often associated with business intelligence (BI) or data warehousing (DW) on z/OS at a substantially reduced cost. IBM hopes with this effort to reverse the exodus from mainframes and to recast the System z as an alternative to distributed Windows, Unix, and Linux systems for BI and DW.

zIIPs were conceived with four primary scenarios in mind: remote JDBC and ODBC access to DB2 on z/OS; BI queries; parallel query processing; and DB2 utilities processing.

Read the full news report from here @ Enterprise Systems

IBM Opens Up System Z Mainframe To SOAs

2007-04-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

IBM Opens Up System Z Mainframe To SOAs

By Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek, April 5, 2007

IBM is expanding the Z Mainframe server's capabilities by allowing it to process XML documents and their attachments, such as graphic files, that are traveling in a SOAP packet, thus making the System z mainframe friendly to service-oriented architectures.

IBM's strategy for opening up its high-end computing workhorse revolves around the company's CICS (Customer Information Control System) software, which is IBM's transaction server for developing, running, and managing transaction applications on the mainframe.

Read the full news report from here @ Information Week

Anchor Software Announces Faster Mainframe Solution

2007-04-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

Anchor Software Announces Faster Mainframe Solution in Response to CASS™ Cycle L Requirements Degraded Processing Speed Due to Required Use of DPV™ is Addressed

Press release

Anchor Software, LLC, a leading provider of data processing software for postal processing, data quality, direct marketing and document design, today announced its ability to improve processing speeds in answer to IBM Mainframe performance degradation issues related to CASS Cycle L requirements to run DPV and LACSLink™.

Plano, TX March 23, 2007 -- Anchor Software, LLC, a leading provider of data processing software for postal processing, data quality, direct marketing and document design, today announced its ability to improve processing speeds in answer to IBM Mainframe performance degradation issues related to CASS Cycle L requirements to run DPV and LACSLink™.

Per United States Postal Service® (USPS®) regulations, CASS Certified™ software for Cycle L must be shipped by software vendors prior to May 1, 2007, and must be used by mailers no later than August 1, 2007. With CASS Cycle L, mailers must use DPV and LACSLink to be eligible for postal automation discounts. When processing with DPV, Mainframe users have experienced as much as an 80% speed degradation.

Processing speeds on servers running MS Windows and UNIX operating systems are much faster than most Mainframes. To take advantage of this performance increase while processing on Mainframes, in addition to offering Anchor Software's MaxCASS™ to process strictly on Mainframes, MaxCASS is now available to run in a seamless Distributed Processing environment via TCP/IP connection to any number of remote servers. Using this unique capability, jobs are launched, monitored and completed on the Mainframe platform, but the "matching engine" process is performed on the remote servers. In benchmark tests of this Distributed Processing alternative, results have consistently shown that processing speeds can increase by more than 10 times versus running in a traditional Mainframe environment.

"Concerns of speed and other performance issues related to Cycle L will continue to be a major focus of our commitment to offering the marketplace alternative Mainframe software solutions. That initiative is part of our dedication to improve address quality in consideration of the USPS' mission to reduce Undelivered-As-Addressed (UAA) mail," said Gary Siegel, President of Anchor Software.

MaxCASS, when used in conjunction with its full complement of integrated features (DPV, DSF2™ RDI™, Geographic Coding, LACSLink, NCOALink®, and ANKLink™) helps maintain high quality address lists and achieve the lowest possible postage rates by ensuring addresses are accurate, current and conform to Postal Service™ standards.

About Anchor Software:
Anchor Software, LLC, based in Plano, Texas, is a leading provider of data processing software for the direct marketing industry. For more information, visit the Anchor Software website at www.AnchorComputerSoftware.com.
For licensing information, please call 800-237-1921, or email Sales(at)AnchorComputerSoftware.com.

Anchor Software, LLC is a non-exclusive licensee of the United States Postal Service®. MaxCASS and MaxMover are trademarks owned by Anchor Software. The following trademarks are owned by the United States Postal Service: ANKLink, CASS, CASS Certified, DPV, DSF2 LACSLink, NCOALink, Postal Service, RDI, United States Postal Service and USPS. AD# 4.07.

Unix is nipping at the mainframe's heels

2007-04-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

Unix is nipping at the mainframe's heels

Mar 07, 2007

By Manek Dubash, Techworld

Mainframes seem so last century to many but that hasn't stopped the mainframe division of IBM soldiering on -- and making quite a success of the business, if the company is to be believed. But many potential customers are eschewing big iron, and many existing ones are migrating away from it in favour of cheaper Unix-based platforms.

Read the full news report from here @ Tech World

IBM VSE mainframe operating system gets upgrade

2007-04-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

IBM VSE mainframe operating system gets upgrade

By Mark Fontecchio, 21 Mar 2007 | SearchDataCenter.com

IBM has upgraded the VSE mainframe operating system to include storage, security and networking improvements, as well as introduced pricing schemes to lower mainframe software licensing costs.

With z/VSE 4.1, IBM has introduced pricing with a so-called subcapacity measurement tool. Using this, mainframers can pay for the MIPS that they use on z/VSE, rather than being charged for how many total MIPS are on the box. The z/VSE 4.1 is now generally available.

Read the full news report from here @ Tech Target

Mainframe offers big bucks in India

2007-04-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

Mainframe offers big bucks in India

R Raghavendra, 13 Mar, 2007, TIMES NEWS NETWORK India

BANGALORE: Crash courses in Mainframe computing are enabling people to make big bucks fast. A student from India with a mediocre non-computing academic background, after completing a six-month course, is now earning $140,000 in US. Another candidate, a hotel management student, completed a mainframes systems management and is earning 25,000 US$ lakh per annum in India.

Mainframes are high-end servers are creating a huge requirement for talent across companies in India. And the reason is simple: A high-end Mainframe machine is like this one box that replaces over 70 servers, says this article.

Read the full news article from here @ India Times

Keeping the mainframe alive - IBM on the move

2007-04-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

Keeping the mainframe alive

By Aaron Tan, ZDNet Asia, March 06 2007

IBM's long-standing mainframe has come under siege from cheaper rivals that provide similar levels of reliability, but Big Blue is sparing no effort to ensure the platform stays relevant.

Rajnish Arora, research director of enterprise servers and workstations research at IDC Asia-Pacific, noted that the mainframe has come under "competitive threat" from Unix because of improving scalability and virtualization technologies that are now available at a lower cost.

The IDC analyst, however, noted that IBM has not been standing still.

Read the full news report from here @ ZD Net Asia

DB2 for Mainframes Gets Native XML with V9.1 Release

2007-04-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

DB2 for Mainframes Gets Native XML with V9.1 Release

Published: March 6, 2007, by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Having divulged its plans for the improvement of its three key operating system platforms for the mainframe, IBM this week completed the hat trick by getting the "Viper" edition of its database management system, sold as DB2 9.1, up and running on its mainframes. Like the Viper release for Windows, Unix, and Linux servers--which is a code base that is distinct from the DB2 that runs on mainframes--DB2 9.1 for z/OS supports native XML document as well as relational data formats.

Read the full news story from IT Jungle

IBM touts mainframes to India, Russia & China

2007-04-01T11:41:00.000-07:00

IBM touts mainframes to India, Russia & China

By Bryan Betts, Channel Register, UK - 10 Mar 2007

IBM is trying to sell mainframes to companies in India, Russia and China, promoting them as ways to reduce power and cooling costs. It said that the power grid in places such as Mumbai is strained from severe server sprawl, especially of Windows servers...

Big Blue claimed that moving parts of its System z mainframe development to labs in these three countries has given it a greater insight into the needs of companies in emerging markets.

Read the full news report from here @ Channel Register, Uk

Burroughs, Unisys Reminisced...

2007-04-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

Old memories: Burroughs Corporation

By Mauricio Freitas, @ Geek Zone, New Zealand

A brief reminiscence of Unisys by a former employee (In 1986 Burroughs bought Sperry Corporation and created Unisys. )

As Mauricio correctly mentions, Unisys was such a huge force in the industry that is really surprising very few people in today's computer industry seem to know anything about it. From what I recall, there are quite a few large companies in the travel and hospitality industry ( for which I was a software salesman for a couple of years in Europe!) that are still running on Unisys systems...

Will be useful to keep a watch on Unisys...

Is there a mainframe skills shortage?

2007-04-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Is there a mainframe skills shortage?

Joe Clabby, 28 Mar 2007

"I've got a lot of respect for much of the market research that Gartner produces -- but in this case I believe that Gartner is just plain wrong. In a recent research note, "Impact of Generational IT Skill Shift on Legacy Applications", Gartner suggests that a pending, projected decrease in mainframe-skilled individuals may be a reason to migrate to other, "more-modern application platforms".

The logic is that as baby-boomer mainframe coders and administrators leave the workforce over the next five to seven years, mainframe shops (particularly the smaller ones) are going to have great difficulty managing their mainframe environments or maintaining legacy COBOL code. Thus, IT executives should start planning to go to other platforms"...

However, Joe does not feel the analysis and logic are not correct. Read the full article from here to know his perspectives @ Tech Target

SOA-based software change management for mainframes

2007-04-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

SOA-based software change management for mainframes

Pradeep Bhanot, 27 Mar 2007

Despite the proliferation of computers of every size, mainframes still house most of the world's data. An estimated 200 billion lines of COBOL that run the world's financial services, banking and insurance centers. The mature software change management processes that manage these massive mainframe applications set a high standard for the distributed systems that surround them.

New application development, however, increasingly leverages newer technologies such as Linux for z, Java, XML and Web services. This presents a software change management (SCM) challenge...

Read the full news report from here @ Tech Target

Legacy Systems Blog Started

2007-04-01T11:11:00.000-07:00

Legacy systems blog started at Legacy.in