• 1974

Software Description

Multiple Virtual Storage, more commonly called MVS, was the most commonly used operating system on the System/370 and System/390 IBM mainframe computers. It was developed by IBM, but is unrelated to IBM's other mainframe operating systems, e.g., VSE, VM. First released in 1974, MVS was extended by program products with new names multiple times, first to MVS/SE (System Extension), next to MVS/SP (System Product) Version 1, next to MVS/XA (eXtended Architecture), next to MVS/ESA (Enterprise Systems Architecture), next to OS/390 and finally to z/OS (when 64-bit support was added with the zSeries models). IBM added Unix support (originally called OPEN EDITION) in MVS/SP V4.3 and has obtained POSIX and Unix certifications at several different levels. MVS's core remains fundamentally the same operating system. By design, programs written for MVS run on z/OS without modification.