IBM sets up mainframe lab in Bangalore

Priya Padmanabhan






BANGALORE: IBM recently announced its intention to extend its reach into new
markets like India and China to promote mainframes and is also scaling down the

“big irons” to tap the mid-market segment.






Recently, Jim Stallings, head of Big Blue's mainframes business, who was here in
Bangalore, revealed to CyberMedia News that the company has also recently set up

a 35-member team in Bangalore that would look at mainframe development.






Reena Malangone, a senior IBM engineer from the USA, who recently relocated to
India to become the director, India Systems and Technology lab, will oversee the

research on mainframes.






“The development work of z/OS (the operating system of the mainframe) is shared
between Poughkeepsie in New York and Bangalore. Here at Bangalore, we contribute

towards development of job entry scheduler, service aids, Java/XML, porting of

Unix tools onto z/OS and distributed middleware areas of z/OS,” said Malangone.








Besides developing products that are deployed across the world, the team would
also provide critical support for local clients, in close collaboration with

IBM's sales team. “By having a local development center, in conjunction with the

sales team, we can also customize the products to the local market

requirements,” she added.






IBM is on a mission to ensure that mainframes remain relevant at a time when
enterprises are taking up grid computing and virtualization. The company

recently announced its z-9 Business-class mainframe for the mid-range market.








“We want to reach out to a much wider audience. That's why we have become more
affordable. Big companies are worried about security, disaster recovery,

business continuity and scaling their operations. Now you have even small and

medium companies looking for similar requirements,” said Stallings.






IBM has mainframe research labs in Russia, China, USA and now in India.





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