This is a very interesting discussion about the future of CMS (or the
lack there of) and I'd like to add a few things....and I want to make
clear at the start that I am a big fan of CMS and it's tool set and I
can see no really valid reason for IBM to spend time and money trying to
migrate current CMS usage (for whatever tasks) to another platform. As
some one already mentioned, if it ain't broken, don't try to fix it...
Two of the main issues that everyone seems to be most concerned about
are the following:
1) IBM/ISVs are no longer producing and/or supporting "applications" for
CMS and that IBM has basically "functionally stabilized" CMS. While
there may be fewer vertical market business focused applications being
developed for the CMS environment (applications like NOMAD or IBM's
OfficeVision), there are a number of *new* CMS-based applications being
produced by IBM and other vendors....e.g., the new IBM suite of VM
system management products (which are quite good), Mainstar's
Provisioning Expert, and (:shameless plug) V/Soft's encryption software
(http://www.vsoft-software.com/products.html) (:eshameless plug). Even
CA is updating their VM:Backup and Hidro products. And the new z/VM 5.3
release incorporates a CMS-based LDAP server.
While the application focus may have changed, the fact that CMS provides
a very efficient and flexible application development environment has
not. A number of us on this list can recall Jeff Savit's remarks that,
when he was with Merill Lynch and developing cross CMS-Unix
applications, the CMS side was always completed first, because the tools
were so much better. The one thing IBM could do today to spur this
growth would be to release a recent version of the PL/X compiler for
CMS, if they did that, CMS application development would explode (RSK
based servers would be everywhere).
2) learning CMS is either uninteresting or too difficult for people new
to the z/VM environment. I've been teaching a number of introductory
z/VM classes lately, both here in the US and abroad, and I can tell you
without fear of contradiction that the young folks that are beginning to
learn about z/VM are fascinated by the capabilities of CMS. It is very
easy to learn, especially if you are not a native speaker of English,
and the power and flexibility of the CMS toolset is simply amazing.
While the CMS environment has many new and unfamiliarly concepts to
young college IT graduates, they are very quick to grasp the usefulness
of tools like Rexx and CMS Pipelines; they're shocked by what can be
accomplished with resorting to coding in C....and very pleased. these
new college graduates, familiar with Perl, C/C++ and Python, get CMS,
Rexx, Xedit, and Pipes very quickly. One Chinese student in my class in
Shenzhen a few weeks ago announced that he was dropping Linux in favor
of CMS for new coding projects....
CMs is not dead (or even dying) and any ideas of trying to replace CMS
with Linux are simply a waste of time and money, imho. As a frequent
poster to this list frequently states "the right tool for the right job"
and in many cases under z/VM the right tool is simply CMS based.
Counter arguments welcome.
--
DJ
V/Soft
