BMC has upgraded 23 of its mainframe service management applications so that they will support version 10 DB2 databases running on System z9 and z10 mainframe servers, noted Robin Reddick, BMC director of marketing for mainframe service management.

"Customers want to move to DB2 version 10 more quickly than they have wanted to for past releases of DB2 because of IBM's promise of cost reductions," Reddick said.

Recent System z servers have Integrated Information Processors (), co-processors that can take over some of the processing from the main CPU, saving money for customers paying for their systems by MIPS (million instructions per second).

When IBM introduced version 10 of DB2 for z/OS in 2010, it promised customers that upgrading to this version of 10 percent, thanks in part to DB2's use of these co-processors. Even greater gains in performance would be possible, IBM promised, if the customer would be willing to do some fine-tuning of the system.

These BMC packages, some of which also use the zIIP co-processors, will help customers do this fine-tuning, Reddick said.