CA Aims To Redefine The MainframeCA Aims To Redefine The Mainframe

CA's Mainframe Software Management Console

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For decades, mainframe software has been defined by green screens and increasingly archaic applications written in Cobol. CA is looking to help change that as the IT management software company embarks on likely the largest makeover ever of its mainframe software line.

CA's mainframe overhaul will be a multiyear process introducing a number of languages and user interfaces not often associated with mainframes, including Java, C++, and beginning with browser-based software akin to InstallShield. That software acts as CA's first deliverable on its new mainframe strategy, which CA calls Mainframe 2.0. "It's not the mainframe your dad bought," Chris O'Malley, executive VP of CA's mainframe business, said in an interview.

Growing MIPS Point To Mainframe Health

Despite repeated proclamations of its death, the mainframe is still going strong. While some applications are still shifting from mainframes to distributed servers, CA says it has seen 20% annual compounded growth in MIPS (million instructions per second, a common measure of mainframe workload) since the bottom of the mainframe market in 2000. Its mainframe revenue was actually growing as of the quarter ended Dec. 31.

However, that stability comes at a time when the average age of workers maintaining mainframes is between 55 and 62. Today's incoming workers aren't armed with the necessary skills to pick up the slack, and even companies with critical applications running on mainframes aren't hiring experienced workers to take the place of those nearing retirement age. Mainframe interfaces and applications are often archaic by today's standards.

"You've got this conundrum of an environment where you need people who have been around for 30 years to maintain these key systems, so there has to be something done rapidly to simplify, to make the mainframe be the equal -- from the user interface, from the simplicity of accomplishing tasks -- to any other platform," O'Malley said.

The problem with the current mainframe environment, according to O'Malley, is that there's no "intuitive window into it" for young IT pros. In most cases, there's no graphical user interface. Even simple tasks often require complex scripts written in obscure commands, and many of the applications running on mainframes are written in decades-old Cobol code.

CA's first Mainframe 2.0 release, Mainframe Software Manager, is one part InstallShield for the mainframe, one part Windows Update. Mainframe Software Manager is a browser-based GUI toolkit written in Java and Google Web Toolkit that allows IT pros to download and install mainframe software and informs them when updates are available.

At launch, 45 of CA's mainframe products will be supported by Mainframe Software Manager, with more expected later. That might not sound sexy, but compared with the installation and update processes of the past, it puts mainframes on a much more level playing field with distributed servers.

In addition, CA has simplified the installation model for 143 of its mainframe products so that customers no longer have to build a physical tape with the software on it in order for the software to be installed on the mainframe.

CA also is announcing that it's integrating with IBM's Health Checker software, which was designed to monitor and manage IBM mainframe software configurations for optimal performance. Health Checker, introduced in 2006, also has a graphical user interface and is part of IBM's own mainframe modernization effort. CA has come out with "100-plus" monitoring and management features for CA products, and will double that number by May.

May Is Mainframe Month

Each May over the next few years, CA intends to introduce new mainframe software that will become a platform of common services from which companies can maintain and manage their mainframes (and their CA software) comprehensively.

CA will introduce a deployment platform in 2010, followed by a configuration platform in 2011. These are important steps to help give CA more consistency across its product line, which today is a mishmash of acquired and homegrown products, many of which haven't changed much in years and share few commonalities.

The mainframe market evolved in such a way that companies developed products to support individual tasks like scheduling, operations, tape management, and more. In a world of distributed servers and retiring mainframe workers, however, many of those roles are going the way of the dinosaur, and CA's vast product line needs to keep up with the times. As part of CA's Mainframe 2.0 strategy, the company is working on simplifying the use of its products by disconnecting them from their current user interfaces. "We need to realign the user interfaces to the roles of 2009 and beyond," O'Malley said, noting that the company will have more to say about that at the upcoming SHARE conference in August.

Earlier, CA also promised to develop new products with an eye toward automation and more set pre-configurations and enlist partners in out-tasking to help with the installation and maintenance of mainframes.

CA has been handed a window of opportunity to capitalize on its strategy with a flailing economy and recent IT trends. Many projects to move workloads to distributed servers are stalled because of the recession (not that mainframes aren't suffering either, as IBM saw a 19% decrease in System Z revenue last quarter) and a number of shifts toward virtualization and energy efficiency echo long-held benefits of the mainframe.

However, accomplishing a grand vision of homegrown software development is a new tack for CA, which was long reviled as "the place where software goes to die," as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison once said.

A Fresh Crop Of Developers To Tackle Mainframe Software

As part of its Mainframe 2.0 initiative, the company has hired about 120 younger developers in its development center in Prague to build software that can bring CA up to speed, and it's continuing to hire. According to CA, those younger developers have been vital to CA's strategy and have helped CA redefine what it thinks it can do with mainframe software.

Including the new software development team in Prague, CA has drastically overhauled its development organization, management structure, and development processes, creating among other things a virtual organization that pulls from all product groups to invest in common underlying services. CA will have to continue delivering if it hopes to repair its old image.

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