Tocada de narices a SAS por parte de WPS:

A BLIGHTY BASED software outfit that is being sued by a big US company in a bid to shut it down has just scored a win with IBM. World Programming’s WPS software has been approved as ready for IBM’s Linux on its system z mainframes.

World Programming (WP) is being sued because its software supports the American software giant SAS Institute’s Statistical Analysis System (SAS) programming language. The nod from IBM means that users’ programs written using the SAS language can be run under Linux on IBM system z mainframes.

This is a poke in the eye for SAS Institute because it means that IBM mainframe users don’t have to use its software to run their applications under IBM’s z/OS.

Instead the IBM mainframe community can use Linux to run their SAS workloads.

The WPS software undercuts the SAS Institute on price which is one of the main reasons that the US giant has been trying to shut it down.

A WPS spokesman told us that the the software uses the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) hardware for IBM z9 and z10 mainframe systems. IFL provides the advantage of increased Linux performance while reducing operating and software licensing costs.

IBM’s thumbs up indicates that as far as Big Blue is concerned the little British company’s WPS software does the same things as SAS Institute’s far more expensive packages of z/OS based mainframe software, which is the message that the small outfit wants to get out. µ Saludos.