History of IBM Mainframe Operating Systems

History Of IBM Mainframe Operating Systems

The history of operating systems running on IBM mainframes is a notable chapter of history of mainframe operating systems, because of IBM's long-standing position as the world's largest hardware supplier of mainframe computers.

Arguably the operating systems which IBM supplied to customers for use on its early mainframes have seldom been very innovative, except for the virtual machine systems beginning with CP67. But the company's well-known reputation for preferring proven technology has generally given potential users the confidence to adopt new IBM systems fairly quickly. IBM's current mainframe operating systems, z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE, and z/TPF, are backwards compatible successors to operating systems introduced in the 1960s, although of course they have been improved in many ways.

Both IBM-supplied operating systems and those supplied by others are discussed here, if notably used on IBM mainframes.

History of IBM mainframe operating systems
Early mainframe computers
  • GM OS & GM-NAA I/O (1955)
  • BESYS (1957)
  • UMES (1958)
  • SOS (1959)
  • IBSYS (1960)
  • CTSS (1961)
S/360 and successors
  • BOS/360 (1965)
  • TOS/360 (1965)
  • TSS/360 (1967)
  • MTS (1967)
  • ORVYL (1967)
  • MUSIC (1972)
    • MUSIC/SP (1985)
DOS/360 and successors (1966)
  • DOS/VS (1972)
  • DOS/VSE (1980s)
  • VSE/SP late (1980s)
  • VSE/ESA (1991)
  • z/VSE (2005)
OS/360 and successors (1966)
  • MFT (1966)
  • MFT II (1968)
    • OS/VS1 (1972)
    • OS/VS1 BPE
  • MVT (1967)
    • 65MP
    • OS/VS2R1 (SVS) (1972)
    • MVS (OS/VS2R2 and later) (1974)
      • MVS/SE (1978)
      • MVS/SE 2 (1979)
      • MVS/SP Version 1 (1980)
      • MVS/XA (1983)
      • MVS/ESA (1988)
      • OS/390 (1995)
      • z/OS (2000)
VM line
  • CP-40/CMS (1967)
  • CP-67/CMS (1967)
  • VP/CSS (1968)
  • VM/370 (1972)
  • VM/BSE (BSEPP)
  • VM/SE (SEPP)
  • VM/SP (1980)
  • VM/XA MA (1984)
  • VM/XA SF (1985)
  • VM/XA SP (1988)
  • VM/ESA (1990)
  • z/VM (2000)
TPF line
  • ACP (1967)
  • TPF (1979)
  • z/TPF (2005)
UNIX and Unix-like
  • UTS (1981)
  • AIX/370 (1990)
  • AIX/ESA (1991)
  • MVS/ESA OpenEdition (1993)
  • OS/390 UNIX System Services (1996)
  • Linux (1999)
  • z/OS UNIX System Services (2001)
  • OpenSolaris (2008)

Read more about History Of IBM Mainframe Operating Systems:  Before System/360, Early Time-sharing and Virtual Machine Systems, System/360 Operating Systems, System/370 and Virtual Memory Operating Systems

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