Basic Information of Open MVS
“Mainframe environment”, which by default means “IBM Mainframe”, you need to have a basic idea of the IBM mainframe operating system. Today, it is know as MVS, which expands to Multiple Virtual Storage.
The MVS operating system has evolved over many years and has adapted to the changing technology and modern day requirements. Since the user base of MVS is very large, a change is not easy to Implement. The costs of the Mainframes are very high and the customer base is mostly made up of long-term customers with huge application and large databases to support. Most of these applications are also ‘Mission Critical’ applications. It is therefore imperative that any change to MVS also be backward compatible.
MVS is designed to work with many hundreds of users working together, located in the same locality or across continents. The MVS operating System was created by IBM and is said to ‘propriety’ OS. It has the capacity to supports a large number of peripherals like disks, tapes, printers, Network devices etc. The applications on these “Legacy systems” are typically where there is a huge amount of data and a large user base. Examples are Banking sector, Insurance Sector, Newspapers, Material & Inventory, Airlines, Credit Card System, Billing, Accounting, Shipping and others. Company’s that own these mainframes are typically those that are very big inherently or have to deal with vast amounts of data, which has to be processed fast.
