Allan L. Scherr

A new approach to business processes

This paper presents a methodology for analyzing and designing the processes that an enterprise uses to conduct its business. The methodology builds upon traditional approaches to business process definition by adding the dimension of peoples accountabilities: their roles, relationships, and agreements. The approach presented allows for unique insights into customer satisfaction, employee empowerment, and quality. It also provides a basis for spanning the concerns of both business people and information technologists responsible for providing business process automation.

Distributed data processing

Today there is a wide range of choice for configuring the data processing facilities of an organization--centralized systems, decentralized systems, small computers, and networks of communicating computers--for distributed data processing. This paper considers the factors that relate to organizations and their data processing requirements and to the various possible data processing configurations. Price-performance ratio, organizational needs, and other factors that recommend the flexibility of distributed data processing are discussed in detail. Also discussed are possible distributed data processing architectures, choice criteria, communications, and application and operating system design principles.

The evolution of the MVS operating system

The mechanization of computer operations and the extension of hardware functions are seen as the basic purposes of an operating system. An operating system must fulfill those purposes while providing stability and continuity to its users. Starting with the data processing environment of twenty-five years ago, this paper describes the forces that led to the development of the OS/360 system design and then traces the evolution which led to todays MVS system.

SAA distributed processing

Discussed are motivations for distributed versus centralized data processing, the relative advantages of each, and the trade-offs involved as they relate to Systems Application Architecture (SAA). Presented is a taxonomy of the various approaches to designing applications to operate in a distributed manner. SAA support for these modes is described. The management of an enterprise-wide network of systems is discussed.

Functional structure of IBM virtual storage operating systems: part II: OS/VS2-2 concepts and philosophies

The largest IBM programming effort since the introduction of OS/360, the virtual storage operating system OS/VS2-2 has been designed to integrate efficient support for interactive, data base, and data communications applications. Discussed from the point of view of its designers are tradeoffs, options, and objectives of the architectural features related to system parallelism, main storage exploitation, system resource allocation, and system recovery.

Structures for networks of systems

This paper describes how systems will be.interconnected in the future, the roles that they will play, and the trade-offs that affect these roles. Starting with a general model for structuring a network of systems, general trade-offs in cost and performance are discussed relative to where functions are placed in the network. Several general principles for data and function placement in a network of systems are derived from these trade-offs. The optimal roles for each of several layers of a network of systems are discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn regarding the design of future networks of systems.

Time-sharing for OS

The objective of the Time Sharing Option (TSO) was to provide a general purpose time-sharing capability within the existing framework of the System/360 Operating System.

The design of IBM OS/VS2 release 2

The purpose of this paper is to give some insight into the design of IBM OS/VS2, rather than cover individual features of the release. Included are the overall objectives for the design, some of the systems key architectural features, and how these relate to the environments that the system is intended to be used in. The major objective is to show how the design of the system fits together and to provide an insight into the rationale of the design.

A perspective on communications and computing

Presented is an essay on the dynamics of the relationships between communications and computing. Movement of computer applications from the back office to the front office, from batch to on-line data processing, is illustrated and conclusions are drawn regarding communications protocols, network management, application and data base design, and system generality. The influence and requirements of several new technologies are presented, inlcuding those of microprocessors and teleconferencing.

Interactive systems -product design consideration

There exists today a wide spectrum of interactive systems products ranging from stand-alone minicomputers to time sharing systems integrated into large-scale general-purpose systems. This paper examines the need for such a variety of implementations and discusses design parameters, implementation techniques, and trade-offs arising from the ways in which such systems are used.