Hosted Hercules explored how people could learn and develop mainframe software without running their own mainframe environment. It used Hercules, software that emulates IBM mainframe hardware, to host operating systems such as MVS.
What the project achieved
A launch announcement dated 30 March 2009 reported an initial MVS proof of concept. A note on that announcement records that the trial succeeded and then closed. The later project account described support for multiple copies of the Hercules emulator and remote terminal access. It also reported a completed browser 3270 terminal: a web interface for interacting with mainframe applications.
The wider plan included creating user accounts automatically, submitting batch jobs and managing tapes and printed output. The account listed automatic account creation, batch-job submission and tape management as not started, and print-output handling as 70% complete. It did not describe a finished hosting service.
Following an old link
The hosted service is no longer available. This page preserves a description for readers following the old mainframe and Hercules links. It provides no login or connection to a running instance.
The current Open BPM direction concerns work, case and workflow management. Its proposed reference component is separate from this historical experiment.