IBM gives S/390 an ebusiness edge

IBM has added ebusiness enhancements to its S/390 mainframe, including high-level encryption support, XML recognition and extended high-speed networking capabilities.

IBM has added ebusiness enhancements to its S/390 mainframe, including high-level encryption support, XML recognition and extended high-speed networking capabilities.

These features, included in version 2.9 of OS/390, aim to enable users to reduce the number of servers required for ecommerce applications.

Mark Lillycrop, director of research at analyst Xephon, said: "IBM's focus is to improve web access and transactional access for ecommerce. It has improved the size, scalability and availability of its S/390 mainframe, which has a large base of legacy applications."

Jurgen Ley, head of IBM's S/390 programme, said demand for processing power is rising because of enterprise resource planning, hardware consolidation, applications development and in particular, ebusiness.

IBM aims to protect internet transactions with features such as pluggable cryptographic co-processor cards that add 2,048bit RSA signature generation capability. This is the highest level of encryption allowed under US export rules. Such levels of security are essential in ecommerce and banking and finance. The addition of a shared hierarchical file system will allow up to 32 S/390 machines to update the same database.

Martin Brampton, chief analyst at Bloor Research, said the ability to link S/390s to access large farms of data is important in areas such as data warehouses and customer relationship management where vast quantities of data need to be processed.