About Us

Contents

• Our Mission
• Who Belongs?
• How can you benefit from ASAP?
• Canons of Conduct
• IBM Product Introduction
• Where can you contact ASAP?
• Board of Directors

Our Mission

To provide a world class organization that promotes knowledge, idea sharing, and creates an atmosphere where our membership can leverage learned best-of-breed practices to better manage their enterprise automation systems.

ASAP, also known as the TWS Users Conference Inc., is an independent entity established for businesses holding a TWS license to share ideas on TWS installation, applications and problem solving discoveries.

ASAP is a volunteer, user supported, not-for-profit organization which is managed by a volunteer board of directors (representatives of member companies) and administered by MeetingWorks. User and vendor sessions are presented at the conference through the generous donation of time, resource and talent of the TWS user community and their respective organizations.

Formerly established as a membership organization in 1992, ASAP has a two-fold purpose:

1. To exchange and disseminate information relative to TWS, global systems management and the IBM suite of automation products
2. To influence the direction, design and enhancement of the TWS product through a formal requirements process

To accomplish its purpose:

• ASAP publishes a quarterly newsletter
• Executes a formal product requirements process
• Holds an annual technical and informational user conference.

Members derive the great benefits through the formal and informal exchanges of information about TWS implementation and management experience at the conferences. Since each installation is unique, the conferences focus on common interests and opportunities in the areas of training, education, application, conversion, recovery, scheduling and management. Informal discussions of the various solutions provide members insight as to how these problems/opportunities might be approached and overcome. The members share those extremely important approaches which have led to the successful solution of problems.

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Who belongs?

Membership is comprised of Fortune 500 companies, non-profit corporations, educational institutions and government agencies. More than 1200 TWS schedulers, managers and programmers have attended ASAP conferences since its inception in 1990.

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How can you benefit from ASAP?

• Network with mainframe and distributed TWS users, TWS/z and related product users at an annual conference.
• Learn productive tips and techniques.
• Hear about TWS mainframe and distributed product trends and directions
• Influence the future of TWS product directions.

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Canons of Conduct

In order that ASAP may better achieve its purpose, the following Canons of Conduct are adopted and shall govern the conduct of all ASAP members, member representatives and attendees. All such members, member representatives and attendees in connection with all ASAP activities:

1. Must conduct themselves and their activities in a professional manner marked by integrity and spirit of fair play.
2. Must refrain from engaging in any activity which would violate the proprietary rights of their employers, ASAP, or any other person or organization.
3. Must abide by the by-laws and policies of ASAP.
4. Must properly register and display appropriate credentials at ASAP activities.
5. Must not engage in sales activity, including direct or indirect solicitation, or conduct any other activity contrary to the purpose or policies of ASAP.
6. Must not distribute any materials or post displays of any kind at ASAP activities without prior approval of an officer of ASAP.
7. Must not engage in any form of personnel recruiting or using ASAP facilities or resources.
8. Must not use the ASAP name other than in the conduct of ASAP business as determined by the Directors.
9. Must not use the ASAP membership list or any part thereof except in the conduct of ASAP business as determined by the Board
10. Must restrict the use of ASAP documents and other data to the purposes defined by the ASAP Board of Directors or ASAP policies

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IBM Product Introduction

A Brief History of TWS/z Products

The primary focus of ASAP, TWS/z products were initially developed in 1976 at the IBM Nordic Laboratories in Sweden and introduced worldwide in 1979 as OPC, an online scheduler, planning and control tool for DP operations. In 1987 OPC/A, a total rewrite and restructure, provided major new enhancements including: improved system management integration, security, control, performance and automation and graphics. TWS/z (1991), takes DP operations a major step forward. A key component of SystemView, TWS/z is IBM's strategic workload scheduler. Surpassing the 1,000 customer milestone in 1991, TWS/z proved it's acceptance in the DP business community worldwide. In 1997 TWS/z became part of the Tivoli family of products for Systems Management, continuing to bring new functions to users; major news were the Sysplex enablement and several usability enhancements. At the same time Tivoli started working on a true end-to-end workload management solution based on Tivoli OPC and Tivoli Workload Scheduler.

Tivoli Workload Scheduler (TWS/d)

The predecessor to Tivoli Workload Scheduler, Maestro was introduced to the market by Unison Software in 1985 as a tool for the Hewlett Packard MPE (HP3000) operating environment. After gaining dominant market share in the MPE space, Maestro was ported to UNIX in 1993 and then to Windows NT a few years later. 1995 marked the birth of a graphical user interface for Maestro.

During this expansion into heterogeneous environments Maestro also achieved leadership in distributed market share. Groundbreaking integration with SAP R/3 and other ERP applications through the mid-nineties established Unison and Maestro as a visionary and technical trailblazer in the world of job scheduling. In 1997, Unison Software merged with Tivoli Systems Inc. and the Maestro product (now know as Tivoli Workload Scheduler) was integrated into the Tivoli Systems Management family of products.

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Where can you contact ASAP?

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Board of Directors

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