At the SHARE User Event — an annual gathering of mainframe users — IBM announced on Feb. 13 enhancements to software that are designed to enable professionals to more easily program, manage and administer a mainframe system — as well as to increasingly automate the development and deployment of applications for the mainframe environment.

IBM continues to roll out the mainframe's powerful graphical user interface, integrating simple point-and-click controls that manage the system's performance and resource availability. These graphical tools are for the first time available in Chinese and many other languages, enabling IBM to more easily meet customer demand in emerging markets.