IBM has made improvements to TM: Transaction Manager and DB: Database Manager:

• IMS TM provides secure network communication; integrates with customer environments, and scales with enterprise technology.
  
  
• IMS DB provides a programmer interface and utilizes dynamic definitions; Java can be used for application development.

IBM supports IMS in order that advancements in hardware can be used to achieve improvements in price performance by leveraging an existing investment in applications and data. According to customer satisfaction surveys, organizational enterprise has been maintaining and developing new IMS applications. IBM reports that since 2008 the top 10 percent of IMS customers have significantly increased their IMS database processing.¹

SYS-ED IMS Training Services

SYS-ED offers challenging "hands-on" IMS training for motivated programmers who are willing to work. Our 30 years experience as IMS consultants in systems programming, database administration, and application development provides us with a unique perspective and IBM mainframe systems software skillset to teach a new generation of information technology personnel. Our staff of system consultant instructors and CETi Technology Partners worked on several first generation IMS projects. It affords the privilege to explain and highlight why the software works or in some situations doesn’t work as advertised. That is why IBM and other software companies have used our instructors to teach their current generation of software developers. SYS-ED's training services are highly valued in maintaining existing IMS systems and integrating IMS with web enablement technologies. Students are welcome to ask the inevitable questions which come up back on the job.

Our instructors specialize in addressing design issues and analyzing an existing investment in IMS database applications. Whether it's IMS Database Design, IMS DB DL/1 Application Programming, IMS DC and Message Format Services Programming, IMS Performance and Tuning, IMS Recovery and Restart or IMS Utilities, we encourage students to bring in the specifications of their own projects for discussion and analysis. We also teach the longstanding add-on products and third party utilities such as IMS File-AID, ADF-II, and  IMS MTO.

IBM's mainframe information technology service encompasses both commercial and open source software. It's foundation is to simplify, collaborate, reuse, and standardize. SYS-ED's IMS course offerings, educational consultancy, training programs, and websites have been designed to add value-added service to IBM's information agenda and cloud computing initiative:

1- Delivery of content through multiple delivery medium as part of a collaborative environment for integrating data at a business level.

2- Student hand-outs, reference guides, and validation assessment for training human resources that leverage existing investments in software infrastructure.

3- Application development accelerators in the form of industry and client-specific training aids, examples, templates, and data modeling.

4- Support services in the form of technology updates, knowledge base, answers to questions, and tailored documentation in hybrid and interrelated information technology.

Courseware - Superior by Design

SYS-ED's IMS courseware incorporates industry standard content and consultancy derived techniques for structured design, data modeling, coding, debugging, and optimization techniques. The principles of adult learning are applied to content, interpreting, and translating subject matter into performance objectives, narrative descriptions, and diagrams which explain the design, program logic and underlying architecture. The courseware has been designed to utilize a variety of presentation formats: textual, tabular, diagrammatic, bullet point, and code snippets. We review documented coding standards and then have the client select the examples, sample programs, and exercises from our courseware library. If necessary, we will create new ones and also provide skeleton programs. With the intermixing and hybrid implementations of open standards and IBM systems software, reference material, which explains and demonstrates is fundamental to an effective learning experience.

Upon completion of a private instructor-led course at the client location, it is standard policy to organize content for future utilization in a web-based training infrastructure.