IBM, International Business Machines Corporation, a giant on the market, has just disclosed that they are going to release a newer version of their operating system that was intended for their zSeries. The new OS has better security modules installed and it's a lot more efficient than the previous version. I will detail this, later on.

IBM's mainframes are used by a lot of important corporations so this announcement comes as good news for everyone, and the new OS will probably be a big success, with IBM already recording a growth on the mainframe market.

OK, so what is the zSeries? They are IBM mainframes that first appeared on the market in the year 2000 and that use the z/ Architecture (which is actually an upgrade of the older ESA/390). Of course, these mainframes have their own operating system, the z/OS that enables the user to get as much as possible out of their machines.

Security has always been a priority for the IBM corporation, because of the nature of their customers. As seen on eWeek, the IBM people have announced the Tivoli zSecure manager for RACF z/VM which not only improves security for the whole mainframe but also helps reduce processing time. So, this is great, better security and operations done even faster! This new security system provides automation of security administration and audit process in the virtual audit process of the virtual mainframe environment, as IBM officials have stated for eWeek.

And this security boost is not all there is to this new OS - what came to me as one of the best parts is the fact that with the new improvements brought by it, now a total number of 1.728 mainframe engines will act as ONE, as the IBM people have said. All this is due to the fact that the new z/OS image can support a maximum of 54 engines (and considering that a Parallel Sysplex cluster is filled at max capacity, with 32 systems).