March 2026
To: WatchTower Customers
From: The WatchTower Product Team
Subject: General Availability Announcement for WatchTower z/IRIS Distributed 1.4 and End of Service for WatchTower z/IRIS Distributed 1.3
On behalf of Broadcom, we appreciate your business and the opportunity to provide you with high-quality, innovative software and services. As part of our ongoing commitment to customer success, we regularly release updated versions of our products. Today, we are pleased to announce that WatchTower z/IRIS (z/IRIS) Distributed (IronTap) 1.4 is now available.
New features for z/IRIS IronTap 1.4 include:
● Easily control the cost of OpenTelemetry (OTel) mainframe metrics with z/IRIS Aggregated Metrics
● Flexible observability by customizing sources for OTel CICS traces
z/IRIS Aggregated Metrics
Control third party APM cost for data points per minute by enabling metrics aggregation in z/IRIS. Once enabled, metrics will be aggregated over the customized interval and provided as OTel compliant Histogram and Gauge metrics for enterprise observability.
Customizing Sources for OpenTelemetry CICS Traces
IBM CICS Transaction Server 6.3 generates OTel SMF record type 1159 that must be transformed into OTel spans. With z/IRIS 1.4, customers can elect to use SMF 1159 for CICS Spans instead of SMF Type 110. This flexibility delivers flexibility to use different sources of data depending on your CICS environment.
We encourage you to plan for the migration to z/IRIS IronTap 1.4, as soon as possible, so that you can take full advantage of the features and enhancements this release has to offer.
You can download your copy of z/IRIS Distributed 1.4 online in the WatchTower 1.3 packaging at Support where you can also utilize the case management system. To install z/IRIS Distributed 1.4, follow the installation procedures for z/IRIS IronTap at Tech Docs. If you have any questions or require assistance, contact Support.
Should you need any assistance in understanding these new features, or implementing this latest release, our implementation services partners can help. Please contact your local account representative for more information on how they can help. To connect, learn, and share with other customers, join and participate in our WatchTower Community.
NOTICE of Importance (End of Service):
In accordance with the Broadcom Software Maintenance Policy Handbook, please also consider this your written notification that we are discontinuing technical support for z/IRIS Distributed 1.3 effective April 30, 2027. This will allow our development organization to more effectively focus its resources and add value to the next release of z/IRIS Distributed.
For a list of Mainframe Education courses recommended by role, please visit the Learning Paths and select the desired product. We update courses based on functional impact as well as high-demand; therefore, courses created from previous releases may apply to the current release.
Please review our End of Service / End of Life Policy at Broadcom Maintenance Policy Handbook.
Thank you again for your business.
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