Agile maintenance of the z/OS software products

Today, the agile software development is getting more and more important. However, to reach the agile development of applications, it is necessary to have an agile environment which, apart from the operating system, covers the application server, databases and other IT components, which we altogether call middleware. Sometimes we need the newest version of the application server or database for the new functionality, so the system middleware has to be refreshed regularly to follow the newest versions, in other words, we need agility there as well. The other important reason to stay up to date with software versions is the manufacturer’s support of the software, which is critical in cases of software defect, because of which the business server is not going to work, or in cases of incompatibility of products. If the manufacturer no longer supports the product version we are working with, we cannot report and get help in solving the defect.

Software products’ migration to newer versions in mainframe environments need careful planning, intense testing of applications, and often system downtime is necessary. Those kinds of operations are often being postponed, because „there is always something more important to do“, which then leads to a slow down of the entire development cycle of business applications, as well as staying behind the latest and supported software versions.

On our projects we often had to migrate the z/OS environment from older to newer versions. That process is complicated and followed by numerous risks and our recommendation is to, if it is in any way possible, avoid situations like that.

CROZ’s mainframe experts have a very well-developed methodology for maintaining software products on the z/OS environment, which include setting up a software environment in a way that it’s easy to maintain.

If there is a need for help with software migration, our rich experience in similar projects can surely be helpful.

Do not forget:

• Support for DB2 for z/OS v10 expires on 30th of September 2017
• Support for CICS v4.1 expires on 30th of September 2017
• Support for WebSphere MQ for z/OS v7.1 expires on 6th of November 2017

If you still haven’t migrated to newer supported versions, now is the high time. If you need help, CROZ is here for you.