(OK, so I was hoping the title would rhyme, but I'll make do.)
It was so wonderful to see the new product, IBM Z Distribution for Zowe V1.0 (product number 5698-ZWE) is on Shopz. Right now it is in the CBPDO offering, but very shortly it will be in ServerPac. If you get it in ServerPac, and choose to maintain and upgrade it separately from z/OS, I'd strongly recommend a "product ServerPac" *.
Here's six quick comments on this new product:
1. The two FMIDs in this product are: AZWE001 (IBM ZOWE Distribution) and HAL9C00 (SDK for Node.js z/OS V12, which is the runtime prereq). Yes, this means that this product is SMP/E installable and maintainable!
2. 5698-ZWE is a zero-cost product. However, you should also consider its accompanying Subscription and Support 5698-ZWF which has a fee, should you wish IBM to provide you support on 5698-ZWE. However, there is another consideration: do note that if 5698-ZWE is a prereq for another IBM product, and you have the S&S for that other product, this would also include the S&S for 5698-ZWE.
3. AZWE001 contains all three of the Zowe technologies: Zowe API Mediation Layer, Zowe Application Framework, and Zowe Command Line Interface.
4. We do recognize that many customers were not allowed to pull code from the Open Mainframe Project directly (https://github.com/zowe), and preferred to use an official distribution obtainable from Shopz. For those customers, this new product should help you become a Zowe user.
5. As you probably know, Zowe does have a dependency on z/OSMF but since I know that many folks are actively activating z/OSMF I hope this will not be a concern. I was impressed at SHARE in Ft. Worth how many folks were either running z/OSMF today within their enterprise somewhere, or were actively moving to it and would be there shortly. Zowe is just another reason to get z/OSMF up and running, because other functions need z/OSMF as well.
6. If you want to get a look at the Zowe docs, go here: https://docs.zowe.org/stable/
* Reminder: a "product ServerPac" is simply a group of products of your choosing, which do not contain the z/OS product itself. Thus, making it an excellent choice for easily just getting a couple of program products that you want to maintain separately from the operating system.
I hope that having a Zowe distribution now available in a "traditional" format and avenue that some of our customers have asked for, makes Zowe usage easier for folks. I was very happy to see that Zowe was a popular topic in discussion at SHARE in Ft. Worth (as well as z/OSMF).
-Marna