Open Mainframe Project Announces Major Technical Milestone with Zowe’s Long Term Support Release
- The LTS Release and Zowe V1 Conformance Program supports product stability, security and interoperability
- Open Mainframe Project continues momentum with two new global members and new COBOL resources
- Open Mainframe Project will have sessions at the Open Source Summit on June 29-July 2
SAN FRANCISCO, June 24, 2020: The Open Mainframe Project (OMP) announced today that Zowe, an open source software framework for the mainframe that strengthens integration with modern enterprise applications, marks a major technical milestone with the first Long Term Support (LTS) release. The Zowe LTS release will offer vendors and customers product stability, security, interoperability as well as easy installation and upgrades.
OMP launched Zowe, the first-ever open source project based on z/OS, in 2018 to serve as an integration platform for the next generation of administration, management and development tools on z/OS mainframes. The Zowe framework uses the latest web technologies among products and solutions from multiple vendors. Zowe enables developers to use familiar, industry-standard, open source tools to access mainframe resources and services.
“Mainframes are the foundation of businesses in every industry,” said John Mertic, Director of Program Management for the Linux Foundation and Open Mainframe Project. “Zowe continues to evolve rapidly due to numerous contributions from the open source community. The LTS release is our first major step into longevity and security that will offer innovative possibilities for the next generation of products and solutions.”
Benefits of the Zowe LTS release include:
- Stability: Organizations can confidently adopt the technology for enterprise use and upgrade when appropriate for their environment, minimizing the risk of disruption
- Interoperability: Zowe consumers can be assured LTS-conformant extensions have adapted to and support LTS features
- Longevity: Zowe is designed for years of use and plans are in place for continued updates and support
- Ease of Use: Mainframe System Administrators can use standard z/OS processes to install and upgrade Zowe z/OS components including SMP/E, Unix Shell Scripts, and z/OSMF workflows
- Smaller Footprint: The updated install process leverages standard z/OS technology. In addition to being more intuitive, by eliminating optional services at install time the process lowers the number of configuration changes required for software updates and reduces the complexity of the Zowe footprint
The Zowe Conformance Program is Updated with LTS Guidelines
Aimed to build a vendor-neutral ecosystem around Zowe, Open Mainframe Project’s Zowe Conformance Program launched last year. The program has helped Open Mainframe Project members such as Broadcom, IBM, Phoenix Software and Rocket Software incorporate Zowe with new and existing products that enable integration of mainframe applications and data across the enterprise. To date, more than 28 products have implemented extensions based on the Zowe framework and earned these members conformance badges.
“The extensible nature of Zowe offers an infinite number of pluggable products, processes and services,” said Leonard J Santalucia, Chair of the Open Mainframe Governing Board and CTO of Vicom Infinity. “Extenders can creatively address business challenges with their own service APIs, web applications or drive product actions from off-platform using a command line plug-in. Consumers of these extensions need the same assurance that they are stable, reliable, interoperable, and consistent with core Zowe. The updated Zowe Conformance Program does just that.”
Read the entire article on the Open Mainframe Project Website