Big Blue has announced a five year plan for making mainframes easier to use.

IBM is spending $100m over the next five years to make mainframe computers easier to programme and manage and to more fully automate how applications are developed and deployed. The big boxes are used by large companies to run directory services and for large databases.

The user interface for IBM's System Z mainframes will be simplified, and there will be automatic configuration checks to help avoid crashes.

IBM says it will develop new ways to manage software, making it easier to control costs.

Mainframe application development will also be simplified with more visual tools to make life easier for developers. ®

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