I am happy to report that Wang COBOL is alive and well at numerous sites around
the world. Although the population of legacy Wang VS sites is now very small,
the new generation of Wang VS, running mostly on Dell PowerEdge servers under
Linux, is growing, with at least 70 sold to date in 11 countries.

The New VS, also called the VS22000 family, is a 100% seamless virtualization of
the Wang VS machine. It runs the VS Operating System, all Wang utilities, all
language processors, the PACE database system, and all user applications, all
with zero conversion. It is a true VS, just freed from proprietary Wang
hardware.

It's also the official new generation of the Wang VS, with participation,
support and certification from Compucom (successor to Getronics North America,
which was successor to Wang Global, originally Wang Laboratories).

The New VS easily supports user populations up to about 500 Lightspeed PCs or up
to about 1,000 using other workstation emulators. A new VS OS supporing twice
those numbers is in test and should be released this year.

Performance in the New VS line ranges up to 240% of the legacy high-end VS18950
released in 1999. In Wang's "FAST" benchmark system, that's a FAST rating of
about 15,000 versus the VS18950's rating of 6,300.

At any of the performance tiers the New VS performs file I/O much faster than
any legacy VS, resulting in improvements in backups and file-intensive
operations such as reports and massive updates.

The New VS virtualizes not only the VS machine but all the essential IO
Coprocessors (IOCs) as well. I/O subsystems that now operate virtually include
SCSI, Universal Serial IOC, 802.3, RSF, async and mag tape. Physical Wang SCSI
disk drives are directly supported as well as a wider range of physical mag tape
technologies than was ever supported in the legacy line.

WSN (Wang's networking system) now operates over IP networks, as does RSF
(Wang's VS clustering technology).

The New VS even accommodates legacy "928" devices -- legacy workstations,
printers, TCBs and WACS. It does this by means of a microcode-loadable PCI
Universal Serial IOC and external legacy APAs for connecting devices by coax,
twisted pair or fiber.

Upgrade to the New VS is comparable to upgrade of the system unit in earlier VS
models. No conversion is required, just restoring or copying VS volumes into
the New VS, configuring, and IPLing. The fastest New VS install was the first
one sold, in 2005. It was installed, accepted and put into production in less
than one day. Most installs take a but longer but involve none of the time,
cost or risks of conversions to other platforms. No conversion on the planet to
any other platform offers comparable speed and lack of risk.

The VS community has long recognized the Wang VS as the friendliest and most
efficient mainframe class platform to program, administer and use. It typically
requires far fewer programming and operations staff than IBM mainframes.

70 New VS systems have been sold in 11 countries and the number continues to
grow. It has been difficult to contact surviving Wang VS sites because not even
Wang was able to keep track of all the VS systems in use. Since Getronics
announced end of support for the legacy VS in 2008 and designated TransVirtual
Systems as the exclusive reseller of Wang VS system software and support, it's
now pretty much of a no-brainer for anyone still using a legacy VS to contact
TVS and move up to the fully viable, reliable, efficient New VS.

The New VS is also a viable platform for those who have never used a Wang VS but
wish to adopt a mainframe-class platform that is more affordable and much less
costly to operate than an IBM mainframe. It is a candidate for porting COBOL,
RPG II and PL/I applications from other platforms as well as for development of
new applications.

Wang's Professional Application Creation Environment (PACE)is a powerful 4GL and
database useful for rapid development of applications. PACE utilizes the native
Wang VS transaction processing features to provide rollback recovery and
transaction delineation. Wang COBOL also supports transaction processing. PACE
supports Host Language Interface programming in COBOL and RPG II for application
behavior more complex than can be done without programming. Straightforward
PACE apps are created and mained with zero programming, entirely through its
menu-based Data Dictionary and Application Builder.

There were about 30,000 Wang VS systems extant at its height in the 1980s, in
every conceivable industry and in many government organizations at all levels.
There were Wang VS systems on U.S. Navy ships and in all U.S. State Department
facilities worldwide. A third party software catalog last published by Wang in
1989 listed 900 pages of offerings.

The Wang VS has been tne enterprise system in many companies and organizations
up to and larger than $500 million/year in annual sales volume and up to several
thousands of employees. It has performed for concurrent VS user populations up
to about 500 Lightspeed users and up to about 1,000 non-Lightspeed users. The
New VS will soon support twice those numbers.

The legacy and New VS offers clustering technology that provides for shared disk
volumes, cross-logon, and allocation of Job and Print classes to nodes in the
cluster for automatic routing of submitted Jobs and printing of Print Jobs. Up
to 16 VS systems can be clustered. The VS supports distributed database
operations across the cluster with two-phase commit.

There is also a way to use Wang COBOL natively in Unix (IBM's AIX and HP's
HP/UX). It is called COBOL ReSource. It provides a VS-like environment and
supports VS argument passing by reference. It contains the VS Procedure
Language, COBOL 85 and the essential VS utilities. Soft recoverable files are
supported, although the PACE database system is not.

Anyone interested can Google for "Wang VS", "Transvirtual Systems", "COBOL
ReSource", can contact me, or visit the following websites:

www.tjunker.com
www.transvirtualsystems.com
www.lsnvs.com
www.cobolresource.com

Thomas Junker
V.P., TransVirtual Systems
and
proprietor of The Unofficial Wang VS Information Center website
and
agent for COBOL ReSource