In an aggressive first step in its Mainframe 2.0 initiative, CA is upgrading 143 of its 166 mainframe management solutions, rolling out new mainframe management tools, and showing younger programmers that they can have good careers on the mainframe platform. The moves come at a time when mainframesonce thought to be a dying breedhave seen their popularity grow, with MIPS increasing rapidly since 2000. Mainframe vendors such as IBM and CA are aggressively pushing forward the mainframe as an alternative to more distributed environments.Two years ago, when Chris OMalley spoke at the CA World conference about mainframes, there were fewer than 150 people in attendance.
A year later, in November 2008, when OMalley, executive vice president and general manager of CAs Mainframe Business Unit, again spoke at CA World, 550 people crammed into a room that held 450, and more people had to be turned away at the doors.
It hasnt always been that way.
When I first started doing these events, four people, a milkman and a dog would show up, he said.
OMalley uses such episodes as last years CA World talk to illustrate what he says is a groundswell of interest in the mainframe platform.
[The mainframe has] been going through a steady revival since around 2000, when the Internet bubble burst, OMalley said in an interview. Now its accelerating.
Click here for a look at 50 years of mainframe innovation at IBM.
The global recession and the cost and management headaches associated with distributed systems have businesses rethinking the value of mainframes. Add in the work that IBM, CA and others, such as BMC Software and Compuware, have done to reduce the cost of the big machines while expanding the types of workloads that can run on them, and mainframes become an attractive alternative.
The economy has made people pause and look at their environments very hard, OMalley said. Mainframes are looking a lot more robust.
Mainframes were thought to be a dying breed in the 1990s, as distributed environments began to take hold. Their resurgence began about eight years ago, and now mainframe MIPS have quadrupled to 14 million since that time, OMalley said.
CA is making a major push in the mainframe agenda with its previously announced Mainframe 2.0 initiative, and the deliverables unveiled May 5 touch on numerous areas, from easing mainframe management and monitoring to attracting moreand youngerprogrammers to the mainframe platform.
In its first steps in Mainframe 2.0, CA upgraded 143 of its 166 mainframe management offerings, introduced a new management solution and highlighted its efforts to bring a new generation of young programmers into the mainframe realm, showing them that there is a strong future for mainframers.
OMalley said the offerings in Mainframe 2.0 are among the most significant advances in mainframe technology, with a key goal being to simplify the mainframe management tasks to make the big machines more attractive to both businesses and programmers.
CAs MSM (Mainframe Software Manager)which offers a browser-based interface implemented via the Google Web Toolkitaims to make it easier for users to simplify management of CA software on IBMs z/OS platform. The softwares Product Acquisition Service gives users transparent access to CA mainframe solutions and services, and installation and maintenance is eased via the Software Installation Service.
In addition, to attract younger programmers, much of the code for Mainframe 2.0 was developed by CA programmers from the same generation. In its literature supporting Mainframe 2.0, CA quotes several of its programmers who are in their 20s.
Both IBM and CA have been aggressive in courting younger programmers, letting them know that not only is mainframe programmer a strong career choice, but that the platform will be around a long time.
Part of what I need to do is show them that this platform was not dug out of some archaeological dig in Egypt, OMalley said.
He said CA came out with such a massive announcement in its first step of Mainframe 2.0 to catch peoples attentionboth businesses and programmersto let them know that the mainframe is healthy and strong.
Its important for customers to have confidence in the market, to see someone come out and battle it out with IBM, he said. Were proving to customers what can be done.
CA wanted to show people that there continues to be innovation on the platform, and that there is competition that will help the customer.
In a report issued May 6, Joe Clabby, an analyst with Clabby Analytics, said the mainframe business is booming, with MIPS growing rapidly since 2000. There doesnt seem to be a dearth of mainframe programmers, and many businesses are finding such people from within their own ranks, Clabby said.
The mainframe installed base is still very happy with its mainframe computing systems and is growing that base, Clabby wrote. Further, IBM has added dozens of net-new mainframe customers over the past few yearsincluding several who are running packaged Linux/SAP applications on mainframes. The adoptions of new Linux-based applications on mainframes indicates that IT buyers are starting to buy into the messaging that mainframes can handle new types of workloads.
He said IBM and CA have been the most aggressive in simplifying mainframe management, including IBM spending $100 million in its March to Simplification program to graphically enable existing mainframe management programsand to automate management functions in order to reduce human-related labor costs.
CA has taken a similar route, Clabby said, adding that he has seen demonstrations of CAs new mainframe management graphical users interfacesand can attest that CA is moving in the right direction when it comes to simplifying its products for next-generation mainframe managers and administrators.
BMC, Compuware and ASG also offer mainframe management tools, he said.
Clabby said CAs efforts make sense.
CAs effort to simplify the management of mainframe environments is far more than just taking its green-screen, command line-driven products and slapping on a Web browser front-end, he wrote. CA is spending big bucks to graphically improve its products, to centrally manage those products under a common umbrella, and to create common approaches so management facilities operate in a consistent way across its various mainframe management functions.
Such work by CA and others will go a long way in keeping businesses looking at the mainframe.
The efforts of mainframe solutions providers like CA and IBM continue to demonstrate that mainframes can be managed like UNIX and Windows environments, while fulfilling the most demanding requirements of even the most modern enterprises, Clabby wrote.
IT Infrastructure 
/ 2 
