IMS – Information Management System – has been around for quite some time. In fact it’ll be 42 in August. What IMS professionals need is some way of ensuring they keep up-to-date with what IMS can do. One easy way is for IMS professionals to join the Virtual IMS Connection user group at www.virtualims.com. This user group has virtual meetings every other month, so that members can watch presentations without needing to leave their office.

Even though everyone’s signed non-disclosure agreements, there’s lots of buzz about IBM’s latest mainframe announcement. We thought it would be called the z11, but now we think it will be zNext or zEnterprise System, but whatever it’s called, when it’s announced on the 22 July (the date everyone’s guessing), people are going to say, “Wow!”