Adoption of open-source tools is increasing across most enterprises, and mainframe organizations are no exception, thanks largely to the work of the Open Mainframe Project.

BMC is a member of that project and leverages Zowe, the open source IBM^® z/OS^® framework, to connect BMC AMI core services, helping facilitate your use of open source tools and services. We are pleased to announce that we have increased our integration with the Zowe API Mediation layer and have recently earned Zowe Conformant status for our Common REST API.

For those unfamiliar with it, Zowe aims to make the mainframe open, simple, and familiar. Zowe helps developers better interact with z/OS with easy-to-use modern interfaces, available out-of-the-box or through plug-ins and extensions created by clients and third-party vendors. Zowe enables mainframers to discover and consume z/OS services more easily and helps ensure common functionality and interoperability. Achieving conformance means that users can be more confident that the software they use will deliver the experience they want.

The Common REST API allows registration with the Zowe service catalog, enabling BMC AMI Ops Monitor data to be used in an open way. It has been evaluated against the following areas to earn the Conformity Badge:

• Service ID requirements
• Discoverability of the REST API service
• Formats of requests, responses, and API documentation
• Gateway URL conventions
• Need for semantic versioning
• Requirements for WebSockets usage

The above areas of conformity are required minimums; however, there is also a Preferred level of conformity. We have achieved the “preferred” level of conformance by demonstrating our abilities to accept the Zowe JWT token in the cookie and support dynamic registration of the API.

You can read more about the testing requirements in the Zowe API Mediation Layer test evaluation guide. If you are a current BMC customer and would like to learn how to get these enhancements, please see the Technical Bulletin located here.

BMC is proud to be a part of the Open Mainframe Project and we’re actively working on more contributions for the open-source community. For more details about our participation, click here.

As software companies compete in the race to quickly develop innovative solutions with better performance and availability, Agile processes are an imperative. Pioneered in 2001 by a team of forward-thinking software developers, the Agile methodology sought to overcome significant drawbacks of the aging Waterfall approach to development. Among those obstacles were delayed testing, the difficulty of introducing code changes to latest version, and the extended duration between new product ideation and eventual return on investment.

Today, Agile is the norm, and for good reason. With focused teams conducting sprints and adding functionalities to applications on an iterative basis, these new software development practices have reduced the time-to-market from years to months and sometimes days. In addition, the cyclical nature of continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) facilitates more change management in the process, resulting in improved product iterations to better achieve requirements. There’s no denying that Agile is an objective improvement over preceding development methods, but it also requires a key ingredient to accomplish its goals—customer feedback.

Calling All Customers

At BMC, customers are a critical part of our continued innovation. In our effort to help run and reinvent your businesses with better technology, we rely on thoughtful feedback to drive forward-thinking development. This feedback makes our solutions stronger, more reliable, and ultimately, a more valuable investment in your app infrastructure.

Whether a new software version or a simple feature enhancement, involving our customers in the development process achieves the following:

• Ensures we continue to provide precise value in what we develop
• Helps us avoid convoluting our products with features you won’t use
• Demonstrates that we actively listen to our customers and design solutions based on marketplace needs and business objectives which in turn, preserves the relevance of BMC
• Forces us to continually answer the critical question of how our products are helping to solve marketplace need and make your business more efficient and successful in this time of doing even more IT work with even less IT resources

These aren’t just tenets of our own mission at BMC—they’re a vital part of any Agile development initiative. In the Waterfall approach, customers couldn’t actively provide input or conduct testing until the delivery of a complete solution, sometimes years after its request. As a result, development teams risked missing the software’s intended purpose and exceeding the budget, many times by a wide margin. The issues that plagued the Waterfall methodology are a lesser threat today at BMC. Our new customer engagement programs and wider rollout of our customer portal are invaluable to our Run & Reinvent initiative.

BMC’s MainView Validation Programs

With the power of customer feedback in mind, and in light of our mission to modernize the mainframe and make it a source of technological innovation in the decades to come, I’m happy to share that we have just opened two, new customer validation programs for BMC MainView:

• MainView Continuous Beta Program
• MainView User Experience Improvement Program

The MainView Continuous Beta program is one-stop shopping for all MainView products, while the MainView User Experience Improvement program concentrates on the changes to the way customers use and experience the MainView family of products.

Having valuable customer input into the development of new features, functionality and products is vital for not only fostering continued innovation, but also to ensure we’re best meeting the needs of our customers. We look forward to having you a part of these programs very soon!