Open Mainframe Project Announces Major Technical Milestone with Zowe's Longer Term Support V2 Release

Zowe LTS V2 increases product stability, security and interoperability and ensures longevity compatibility with the Conformance and Conformant Support Provider Programs

SAN FRANCISCO, May 26, 2022 – The Open Mainframe Project announced today that Zowe, an open source software framework for the mainframe that strengthens integration with modern enterprise applications, marks a major technical milestone with the Long Term Support (LTS) V2 release. The second version, which comes 2 years after the first LTS release, will offer vendors and customers product stability, security, interoperability as well as easy installation and upgraded features.

“As organizations expand their hybrid cloud workloads, the Zowe framework evolves to address critical architectural requirements,” said Rose Sakach, Chair of the Zowe Technical Advisory Committee and Product Manager at Broadcom. “Since its launch in 2018, Zowe has become a foundational enabler to businesses’ hybrid IT strategy. The LTS V2 Release will continue to strengthen this value with developer-friendly features and benefits.”

Benefits of the LTS V2 include:

• Stability: Organizations can confidently adopt the technology for enterprise use and upgrade when appropriate for their environment, minimizing the risk of disruption.
• Interoperability: Zowe consumers can be assured LTS-conformant extensions have adapted to and support LTS features.
• Longevity: Zowe is designed for years of use and plans are in place for continued updates and support.

Open Mainframe Project launched Zowe, the first-ever open source project based on z/OS, in 2018 to serve as an integration platform for the next generation of administration, management and development tools on z/OS mainframes.  The Zowe framework uses the latest web technologies among products and solutions from multiple vendors. Zowe enables developers to use familiar, industry-standard, open source tools to access mainframe resources and services.

Feedback and interest in Zowe have been noteworthy. Since January 2022, Zowe has more than:

• 130,000 downloads
• 87,000 page views and 16,000 visitors of zowe.org
• 520 contributors

Key features of Zowe LTS V2 include:

• More security features built in to ensure data and user credentials are always encrypted and safe.
• A new daemon mode delivering performance improvements for the command line interface.
• The time to value to configure Zowe is faster and easier.
• There is more engagement and collaboration between team members using Zowe for modern DevOps at scale.
• New APIs created by the community

For more features, click here.

“Zowe continues to innovate as a direct result of the contributions, leadership and passion of the global open source community,” said John Mertic, Director of Program Management for the Linux Foundation and Open Mainframe Project. “Zowe shows no sign of slowing momentum and the LTS V2 release demonstrates our commitment to interoperability, stability and security.”

Other Zowe Updates

• Zowe Chat, a new incubator project that extends z/OS use by focusing on working with mainframes from chat clients such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Mattermost (with extensibility for other solutions). A set of commonly used scenarios will be provided, and the framework will be extensible so sites can add new scenarios. Similar to other Zowe core packages, the chat framework will be extensible by vendor tools, bringing an integrated user experience for more elaborate cross-vendor scenarios. Read more about it here.

• Zowe IntelliJ Plugin , a new incubator project that provides access to the mainframe from IDEs like IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm and more. Launched by IBA Group, the IntelliJ IDEA plug-in leverages z/OSMF to interact with mainframe data sets and USS files, which enables those familiar with these IDEs to comfortably work with the mainframe just like other projects. This integration will improve the efficiency and overall happiness of IntelliJ enthusiasts now working on the mainframe. Learn more in this blog.

• Zowe was recognized as the Best DevOps for Mainframe Award in this year’s DevOps Dozen competition. It was selected over a number of commercial vendor offerings, reflecting a widespread appreciation for the value of an open source solution for the mainframe. Learn more.

The Zowe Conformance Program is Updated with LTS V2 Guidelines

Aimed to build a vendor-neutral ecosystem around Zowe, Open Mainframe Project’s Zowe Conformance Program launched in 2020.  The program has helped Open Mainframe Project members such as ASG Technologies, BMC, Broadcom, IBM, Micro Focus, Phoenix Software International, and Rocket Software incorporate Zowe with new and existing products that enable integration of mainframe applications and data across the enterprise.

To date, 75 products have implemented extensions based on the Zowe framework and earned these members conformance badges

Additional Resources:

• Zowe GitHub Repository
• Zowe Convenience Build Download
• Getting Started documentation site 
• Open Mainframe Project’s I am a Mainframer Podcast

About the Open Mainframe Project

The Open Mainframe Project is intended to serve as a focal point for deployment and use of Linux and Open Source in a mainframe computing environment. With a vision of Open Source on the Mainframe as the standard for enterprise class systems and applications, the project’s mission is to Build community and adoption of Open Source on the mainframe by eliminating barriers to Open Source adoption on the mainframe, demonstrating value of the mainframe on technical and business levels, and strengthening collaboration points and resources for the community to thrive. Learn more about the project at https://www.openmainframeproject.org.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

###