As many of you know, we've been paying significant attention to the decades-only configuration complexity we've created over the decades. We're taking big steps in Simplification and part of that is a look at the myriad of knobs, options, and defaults we have in z/OS. There are other parts of Simplification too - for instance, ensuring that we have APIs and commands which can get at configuration information. As you can guess, this is an undertaking that won't be done in a single z/OS release.
Simplification is something the entire IBM z/OS stack (and ecosystem, I hope!) is looking at, but I'm going to keep my focus on the actual z/OS operating system itself, at this point.
Many of you have helped us with this endeavor by sharing your z/OS and middleware configuration with us. We've needed to understand better how you were configuring our products so that we could make some informed decisions. That shared information has been very helpful, and we were grateful to have it! From analysis of that data, we've been able to make some decisions about functional removals, default changes, internalizations (where the ability for you to change a value has been removed, and it is an internal setting which is not longer "reachable" by an option you can control).
As we settle on our decisions on what to simplify, we've been issuing Statements of Direction to give you early information. We've come to the point where we have so many Statements of Direction that we need to start to consolidate them. In addition, we are also seeing that some changes we'd like to make really don't raise to the level of doing an official Statement of Direction, so we need to get those known too. Plus, we also want to gather even wider feedback on our proposals in case there is someone somewhere who has a significant need for a capability we are removing, and there is no acceptable replacement.
<my_upgrade_hat>
I'm well aware one of the biggest challenges to z/OS upgrade is when we remove a function that you were using. Early notification of its removal is very helpful. After all, many of the upgrade actions to get to z/OS 3.1 or 3.2 have been well known for years, and can be done on your pre-3.1 or pre-3.2 systems. The last thing I want to see is a slowdown in our upgrade momentum, after it has been on the upswing for many years now.
</my_upgrade_hat>
With all the above information in mind, we've created a IBM Community for Simplification. In that community we are consolidating Statements of Direction, and also providing other items which are not issued in Statements of Direction. I'd like to recommend that all z/OS administrators, especially those involved in z/OS upgrades, to follow this Community.
Here's how to do that:
- Go to ibm.biz/zsimplification . Login with your IBM id. You should see a "Join" button on the right hand side. This will make you a member of the Simplification community.
- In the Simplification community, you'll see a blog entry called "IBM z/OS Simplification: Planned Changes and Customer Actions". Click on that blog to see a concise and updated list of what we are planning to change.
- These changes are sorted into categories and dates, since we likely will have many that need to be organized. z/OS system programmers (and Networking, and Security admins...) probably have certain areas which they are responsible for.
- Scroll around in the blog to see the one-line descriptions in each of the categories to see if you have an opinion or want to see more about it.
- Click on "Follow" to get updates to this consolidated blog post.
- Each category has a Discussion Thread Link associated with it. Click on that thread link to get to a conversation which has additional details about the proposed change. You can reply with what you think, or ask for more information. These replies are monitored by the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in that area, so your feedback is appreciated and is going to the right team.
- Click on "Settings" on the far right to set up your notification preference. With this, you can indicate for the Simplification community how you want to be notified of activities, in the fashion you want, and in the frequency you want. (For me, because I'm very interested what is happening for this Simplification community I get direct emails in real time...)
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