TurboHercules™ is the first commercial entity exclusively dedicated to Hercules, the well-known open source software implementation of the IBM mainframe architecture.  Throughout its ten years of existence, Hercules has been positioned as a valuable contributor to the IBM mainframe ecosystem.  Above all, Hercules is a community of “IBM mainframers” who enthusiastically support the computing paradigm that has provided their livelihood.  TurboHercules respects that position and is looking to carve out a commercial niche that complements—not competes with—the IBM mainframe.  Developers at TurboHercules are active participants in the open source community and are dedicated to contributing their improvements to the Hercules project.    

The TurboHercules package (described in the YouTube video below) is fully capable of running current versions of IBM’s modern 64-bit operating systems such as z/OS, z/VM, and z/VSE as well as its older 31-bit and 24-bit operating systems. The niche we see for TurboHercules is to focus on ancillary workloads such as mainframe education, training, demonstrations, pre- and post-processing, data preparation, archiving, development and testing. However, IBM has restricted the use of its operating system software to IBM mainframes only.

“We’ve got your back!“

But, there is an exception.  The worldwide IBM Customer Agreement clearly states that “if the designated machine is inoperable, the customer may use another machine temporarily.” 
We urge customers to check with their IBM reps to confirm whether you can use the TurboHercules package to support your mainframe application in the event your mainframe hardware is unusable due to a disaster or major outage.  Disaster recovery / business continuity is an ideal fit for TurboHercules since the backup and related communications occur without the need to run any IBM software on the TurboHercules machine—unless and until the mainframe becomes inoperable.