I tend to eschew any SHARE session with an IBM executive, especially when it's billed as providing "trends and directions". But this was supposed to be an "open forum", and Susan Puglia was going to take questions from the floor. So I came to see if anybody was going to take the bull by the horns, so to speak.
Ah, but the lambs were silent, so we were treated to 40 minutes of high level marketing. But you should not get the impression that I came away unappreciative. She's not a bad speaker, and while she was short on detail I didn't detect much unjustifiable hyperbole either.
IBM has been hard at work transforming OS/390 for "e-business" and 24x7 operation. And there's been lots of movement back toward centralizing data management, mostly to hold down costs.
OS/390 release 2.5 does LDAP, by popular demand. LDAP is a standardized protocol used by network clients to find other users and services on the network. In Netware's implementation, LDAP interfaces with NDS. In OS/390's implementation, it rests on top of RACF. It is IBM's intention to track LDAP development; in LDAP version 3 directories will be able to communicate with each other. This could be a step toward single user signon.
IBM has been surprised by the number of Lotus Domino users. With Domino was ported to the OS/390 environment, IBM expected to have 50 users by the end of 1997. Instead, they got 120.
She asserted that "We recognize the need to improve the ease of use of OS/390." That's a really good thing, because it has become more than we can deal with comfortably. But things could be worse for us; we could be VM or VSE users. Puglia said in a lukewarm statement that VM and VSE support would continue - but don't look for lots of "growth enhancement".
Sounds to me like you VM and VSE guys should "accelerate your alternate enterprise enabler selection process".
Surprise! TPF is still here, after all these years. One system she talked about is operating at 5,400 transactions per second. There can't be many such customers, but I'll bet that each of them is an important one.