Influential Mainframers
Bridging Worlds: How Anshul Agrawal Is Bringing AI to the Heart of IMS
Anshul Agrawal Senior Manager, Product DevelopmentBMC Software Pune, Maharashtra, IndiaThis piece is part of the 2026 Planet Mainframe Influential Mainframers series.The mainframe has always been built on trust. Decades of reliability, scale, and performance have made...
Influential Mainframer Trivia: Bob Evans
At Planet Mainframe, April is dedicated to honoring influential mainframers past and present. This week’s quiz dives into the life and times of Bob Evans (1927–2004), who played a central role in shaping modern enterprise computing during his career at IBM. ...
From Classroom to Community: Geoffrey Decker’s Mainframe Impact
Geoffrey Decker Instructor, Northern Illinois UniversityCo-Founder and Lead Instructor, Eli Madison Memorial Apprenticeships (EMMA) DeKalb, Illinois, USA This piece is part of the 2026 Planet Mainframe Influential Mainframers series.The Maestro of the Mainframe...
Making the Invisible Visible: How PJ Catalano Connects Mainframes to the Next Generation
Pasquale “PJ” Catalano IBM Z & LinuxONE Test ArchitectIBM Infrastructure, EST&IPoughkeepsie, New York, USAThis piece is part of the 2026 Planet Mainframe Influential Mainframers series.IBM Z & LinuxONE Test Architect and Master Inventor, Pasquale “PJ”...
SHARE Cleveland 2025: Mainframes, Music, and Milestones
We declare SHARE Cleveland a rockin’ success! The rock ‘n roll theme permeated the city, exhibitor booths, and giveaways, culminating in a live music reception at the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. Have you seen someone wearing a leather kilt play bagpipes to AC/DC? Now...
2025 Influential Mainframers
Planet Mainframe spent the month of April honoring the individuals that keep the world’s mainframe systems running. With the second annual Influential Mainframers campaign, we shared the stories of “the folks behind performance tuning breakthroughs, critical...
Celebrating the People: A Look at the 2025 Influential Mainframers
Mainframe is more than a technology; it’s a community. From educators and engineers to quiet experts keeping systems running, Planet Mainframe spent the month sharing stories – your stories. Welcome to the wrap-up of our second annual Influential Mainframers...
Vikas Sinha: Strategy, Stewardship, and Service – Influential Mainframer
A New Mainframe BelieverVikas Sinha nearly turned down the opportunity that would define the second half of his career. Before pivoting to mainframe, Sinha led predictive analytics at IBM. He relished helping shape a future where data science would transform...
Latest
Modernize Security with ACF2 and Top Secret Version17.0
In the world of security, many things have changed since the last release of ACF2 and Top Secret. Credential-based attacks are up - compromised credential-based attacks cost organizations $4.67m annually, while being the initial attack vector 10% of the time¹....
The Need for Effective Change Management
Introduction Over the last few years there has been an ever-increasing number of widely publicised problems involving notable corporate organisations and the failings of their IT systems. Incidents of ransomware, hacking and phishing are becoming worryingly...
Extending the Security Stack: Red Teaming, Scenarios, Risks, and Reality
Mainframes hold the heart of the most critical business processes in finance, healthcare, and government. Yet many security programmes still draw a neat line around them, treating z/OS as out of scope for red teaming, scenarios, and cyber risk quantification. This...
The Open Mainframe Project Has a Trust Problem — And the Mainframe Can’t Afford It
Open Mainframe Project Security Concerns I was chatting with a mainframer buddy the other day, and he expressed some concerns about the overall code security of the Open Mainframe Project (OMP), particularly around member vetting. So, I spent a bit of time digging...
IBM z17 NTS Enhancements: Securing Time Synchronization
In October 2025, Planet Mainframe published the first article of this two-part series on IBM z17 Time Synchronization Enhancements. That article focused on time synchronization resiliency and accuracy enhancements introduced on IBM z17. This article continues with a...
z/OS Security Assessments: What We Missed in 2015 vs. Today
My career has, over the nearly four years of working in this field, predominantly been comprised of RACF Administration and Engineering, interspersed with other opportunities that I foolishly volunteered myself for. Such opportunities have included writing articles,...
PowerTerm End-of-Life: Why Organizations Must Act Now – And Why the December 10 Webinar Is Critical
In March 2025, Ericom PowerTerm, a terminal emulator still used by thousands of organizations to access mainframes, IBM i systems, Unix hosts, VMS machines, and other mission-critical environments, officially entered End-of-Life (EOL). For decades, PowerTerm provided...
Mainframe AI Agents: The Interns Who Never Sleep
A conversation with BMC Anthony Doroand Leah Sokalov.A Knowledge Problem That Can’t Wait Amanda Hendly, Managing Editor of Planet Mainframe, met with Distinguished Engineer Anthony Doro and Senior Product Manager Leah Sokalov, both from BMC. The conversation focused...
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Virtual IMS User Group | April 14, 2026
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European Mainframe Technical Exchange – Prague – April 21-23
Prague, Czech Republic Prague, Czech RepublicRegistration is open for the 2026 European Broadcom Mainframe Technical Exchange! This year’s event will take place in Prague, Czech Republic, from April 21 - 23. Register today to reserve […]
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Virtual CICS User Group | May 12, 2026
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Virtual Db2 User Group | May 19, 2026
Zoom - Virtual Meeting
Influential Mainframer Trivia: Bob Evans
At Planet Mainframe, April is dedicated to honoring influential mainframers past and present. This week’s quiz dives into the life and times of Bob Evans (1927–2004), who played a central role in shaping modern enterprise computing during his career at IBM. ...
Kyndryl Readiness Report, Precisely and Matillion Partnership, and more
Kyndryl Readiness Report reveals misalignment between infrastructure investment and preparedness for converging modernization demands Precisely and Matillion Partner to Accelerate Data Modernization and Agentic AI Readiness IBM Completes Acquisition of Confluent,...
Open Tools, Modern Workflows: A Next-Gen Mainframe Quiz
This week, our Planet Mainframe quiz continues the “Next-Gen Mainframe” theme. For decades, mainframe development operated in its own world—but as the broader industry converged on open-source tooling, Git-based collaboration, and cloud-style DevOps pipelines, the...
2026 X-Force Threat Index, Expanded Data Integrity Suite, and more
IBM 2026 X-Force Threat Index: AI-Driven Attacks are Escalating as Basic Security Gaps Leave Enterprises Exposed Precisely Expands Data Integrity Suite with New AI Agents for Enhanced Data Quality, Data Enrichment, and Location Intelligence BMC Signs Five-Year...
Hybrid by Design: The Next-Gen Mainframe Quiz
If you’ve been in the mainframe ecosystem for any time at all, you’ll know that the mainframe has long been associated with stability and staying power. But today’s conversation increasingly centers on the evolution of the next-gen mainframe, and how it fits into...
New Survey Findings, New FlashSystem Portfolio, and more
New Rocket Software Survey Finds 69% of IT Leaders Report Data Security Keeps Them Up at Night Kyndryl Named a Leader in 2025–2026 IDC MarketScape for Mainframe Modernization IBM Introduces Autonomous Storage with New FlashSystem Portfolio Powered by Agentic AI...