Valour is a copy/backup/restore program for IBM's VM environment.

The product

Valour, also called DiskWorks as well as strategic marketing brands chosen by vendors, grew out of a plan to rewrite the aging Westinghouse Disc Utility (WDU) and target the full range of IBM operating systems. Valour runs as a highly privileged CMS task, designed to accommodate any model disc drive or tape drive. The product incorporated a number of unique concepts and technologies. It was one of the earliest products to use a primitive form of windowing, including dialogue boxes capable of real-time updates.Valour User Manual © 1999 The product offered a wide variety of hierarchical backups, data streaming, alternating tape drives, and an ability to defragment minidisks.

Development

Valour, also called DiskWorks, grew out of a joint effort between Westinghouse and III of Orlando, Florida. Original plans called for both

VM/CMS VM (often: VM/CMS) is a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers. Design The heart o ...

and VSE versions led by Dr. Ray Ferguson of Westinghouse and Leigh Lundin of III. John Gaston was selected to lead the VSE team. Part way into development, Westinghouse began to break up the division during the

outsourcing Outsourcing is a business practice in which companies use external providers to carry out business processes that would otherwise be handled internally. Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another ...

thrust of the

Reaganomics Reaganomics (; a portmanteau of ''Reagan'' and ''economics'' attributed to Paul Harvey), or Reaganism, were the Neoliberalism, neoliberal economics, economic policies promoted by United States President, U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the ...

era. Through badly managed negotiations, Westinghouse ended up with neither developers or outsourcing partners, which spelled the end for one of the industries foremost software groups. The VM product was developed by III (Independent Intelligence Incorporated) of

Orlando, Florida Orlando ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Orange County, Florida, United States. The city proper had a population of 307,573 at the 2020 census, making it the fourth-most populous city in Florida behind Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville ...

. The software designer was Leigh Lundin. Other core developers included Dr. Ray Ferguson, Kevin Beauregard, Mark Woodruff, and Jean-François Groff. Product development occurred at III offices within Westinghouse Automation Intelligence division, Orlando, Florida. Broad range in-depth testing was conducted at IBM's

data center A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...

Tampa, Florida Tampa ( ) is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. Tampa's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and t ...

and the IBM lab in

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. The team first built an OOPS environment using a combination of procedural Rexx and assembler language. Valour may have been one of the first commercial products that looked to

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impl ...

to underpin its development platform. Development brought new techniques and concepts, including its own hi-speed access method, network hierarchical

data structure In computer science, a data structure is a data organization and storage format that is usually chosen for Efficiency, efficient Data access, access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships amo ...

s, windowing, and a buffer block concept referred to as ''granularity''.

Marketing

The product had a feature unique for its time. By changing a table and a splash screen, the product could be re-labeled or re-branded for any distributor in any Roman language. As such, the product was localized for

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, and

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, each with local marketing companies. III contracted with distributors using a non-exclusive license. For example, the distributor in the US branded it USR/Backup, while a German company, SysCon, labeled it SysCon/I.

Westinghouse Electric The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse and headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company" and was ...

Management Systems, SA (WEMSSA),

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, and

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

, acquired the marketing rights, initially for Europe, Africa, and the Far East. Westinghouse Electric,

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, subsequently acquired rights for the Americas. Through legal agreements, III then contracted with other companies and distributors. Over time, Valour (DiskWorks) replaced competing products VM Software's Backup/CMS acquired by Dowling Associates of

Dublin, Ohio Dublin is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. A suburb of Columbus, Ohio, Columbus, it falls within the jurisdictions of Franklin County, Ohio, Franklin, Delaware County, Ohio, Delaware, Union County, Ohio, Union, and Madison County, Ohio, Madison ...

References

{{Software engineering Storage software IBM mainframe software