The 2025 Winter SHARE conference will be held in the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, starting Sunday, February 23. This is a 4-day conference, with the last day (Thursday) being a full day. If you are attending, check out the Technical Agenda and download the SHARE app for your mobile device.
As usual, I’m finding that I have many instances of scheduling clashes between sessions that I really want to attend. If you are attending with colleagues, I highly recommend that you sit down together in advance and agree who will attend which session, so you cover as many presentations as possible.
If you want to catch up, I am co-presenting one session this time, our zRoadshow session on Thursday at 08:45,with the new leader of Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter, Mark Wilson.
Anyway, time to get down to business. My list of sessions I would love to attend (but often can’t because of scheduling clashes) contains the following, STARTING ON MONDAY:
Monday, February 24
- Monday, 09:15, BYOD Hands-On Lab: IMS Buffet of Labs: APIs, Open Data, DDL, Administration, Performance, by Tracy Dean, Dennis Eichelberger, and Suzie Wendler. Yes, yes, I know, I’ve left it a little late in life to suddenly develop an interest in IMS. But my Retirement Bucket List includes “Learn a new language”, so what better way to start than with a room full of IMS gurus? 😉
- Monday, 09:15, CICS Track Opening and State of CICS, by Ezriel Gross. Just so my CICS friends don’t feel that I’ve swapped my allegiances, this is a session that anyone with “CICS” in their job title should have on their must-see list, especially with a new CICS beta release waiting in the wings.
- Monday 09:15, z/OS Performance Track Kick-Off and WSC Performance Hot Topics, by Brad Snyder and Meral Temal. This is normally a must-see session for us – the WSC folks have visibility to all sorts of interesting customer situations, and this session is an opportunity for others to learn from their experiences. However, this time it is up against some tough competition – the preview of the next z/OS release. This is one of those times that you wish you had paid more attention in the Bilocation for Beginners class 😊.
- Monday, 09:15, z/OS System Programming & Hardware Track Kick-Off *plus* z/OS Futures!, by David Astemborski, Alan Johnson, Rebecca Parchman, John Petreshock, John Shebey, and John Wright. I normally gravitate towards the WSC Performance Hot Topics session, but with the addition of “z/OS Futures” to this session, I think this is where you are most likely to find me on Monday morning. (Yes, that’s right, I skipped the Bilocation class as well ☹ ).
- Monday, 10:30, WatchTower in Action: User Journey from Installation to Usage, by Machhindra Nale and Santiago Ortega. Systems continue to get bigger, faster, and more complex. Unfortunately, us humans haven’t progressed a whole lot since Human Release 1.0. Thankfully, we have computers to help us manage… well, other computers. This session shows how Broadcom’s new WatchTower product fits into your infrastructure monitoring environment and enables operators to make faster, more effective decisions. If you are interested in using WatchTower, this is a great opportunity to see it in action and interact with Broadcom’s experts.
- Monday, 10:30, What’s New in IBM MQ – Including MQ 9.4, and the latest CD releases, by Toby Keegan. MQ 9.4 was announced last October. This is the latest release, so if you are the MQ person for your installation, this is the ideal opportunity to find out what is in this release and maybe get some hints about what might be coming in the future.
- Monday, 10:30, What’s New in z/OS ? DC Edition, by Marna Walle and Stephen Warren. You will notice that the release number (3.2, for example) has been enticingly left off the title of this session. However, it is 2 years since z/OS 3.1 was previewed, so I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a wild guess that this session might be about the z/OS release after 3.1. If I’m wrong, I’ll buy you a beer at SCIDS 😉.
- Monday, 10:30, Workload Management (WLM) Update for IBM z16 and IBM z/OS 3.1, by Stephanie DeLuca. The WLM folks are in a difficult position – with both a new release of z/OS and a new generation of mainframe processor expected this year, but neither formally announced yet, this session will presumably be limited to functions that have already been delivered. However, if a z16 or z/OS 3.1 are new in your environment, you should try to attend this session to ensure you are fully exploiting all the capabilities that are available to you.
- Monday, 12:00, LNL: The Tale of Two Mainframers: Bridging the Mainframe Knowledge Gap with AI Assistance, by Anthony DiStauro and Liat Sokolov. The mainframe skills gap is hardly new news. We have been promoting various ways to help prepare for it, from apprenticeship programs to simply being more mindful of those that will follow you when making changes to your systems. In this session, the presenters will share their thoughts on how AI might be able to assist. Whether you have already started preparing or not, or whether you buy into all the hype around AI, this should be a must-attend session for anyone who has a role in getting your mainframe environment ready for the future.
- Monday, 13:15, The Secret Decoder Ring: MIPS, MSUs, Time and Money, by John Baker. John is known to one and all as a gifted and entertaining presenter, so I just need to see John’s name on a session and that is enough to add it to my must-see list. In this case, John is covering the salacious topic of MIPS and Money – how could you miss that one?
- Monday, 13:15, We Want You in DFSMS What’s New, by Alexis Kapica and Barb McDonald. The DFSMS folks always have something new to discuss, and they do an excellent job of pointing out other DFSMS sessions during the week that will go into more detail on various aspects of the What’s New presentation.
- Monday, 13:15, z/OS Communications Server Technical Update: Winter 2025 Edition, by Mike Fitzpatrick and Sam Reynolds. The dynamic duo of Mike and Sam always have something new to keep our networking colleagues busy.
- Monday, 14:30, Pitfalls on Non-Traditional Migrations, by David Hutton. ‘Non-Traditional Migrations’ is IBM-speak for CPC upgrades to a different speed range – for example, z15-7xx to z16-6xx. With a new generation of CPCs (zNext) due later this year, this might be a good time for you to start thinking about your upgrade options and considerations, in which case Dave’s presentation should definitely be on your must-attend list of sessions.
- Monday, 14:30, Understanding the IBM z/OS Cloud Storage Solutions, by Ernesto Figueroa and Glenn Wilcock. IBM offers a bewildering array of ways in which your z/OS system can communicate with the Cloud. If your company would like closer integration between your z/OS and the Cloud, this is your opportunity to learn how all the IBM options relate to each other, and which would be the best for you.
- Monday, 15:45, DORA Compliance and Your Recovery Systems, by Rebecca Levesque and Chris Walker. This is the first of three DORA-related sessions at this conference. DORA (Digital Operations Resiliency Act) is a very hot topic, and it is not limited to businesses that operate solely within the European Union. Hackers don’t care where you live or work, so the steps to prepare yourself for DORA really should be of interest to all mainframers. Take this opportunity to get up to date on the requirements, the available tools, and what your peers are doing to prepare for an evenscarier future.
- Monday, 15:45, WLM Best Practices and WLM Policy Advisor, by Brad Snyder. This presentation by the WSC’s WLM expert is billed as being aimed at those who are relatively new to z/OS. However, it discusses common WLM mistakes that the WSC team encounter and also discusses the new WLM Policy Advisor. Based on that description, this sounds like a session that will benefit both newbies and more experienced hands who have not been following the recent developments in WLM.
And that’s just for the first day! I’ll be back with some suggestions for Tuesday and Wednesday. Remember that Thursday is a nearly full day, with sessions running until 16:00.
If you are going to be at SHARE, please say Hi if you see us. (Planet Mainframe will be at Booth 422). We hope you have safe travels and an enjoyable conference.
Frank describes himself as a ‘true Mid-Atlanicer’ — he was born in New York, spent half his life in Ireland, and the other half in the Northeast of the US, resulting in an average of half-way across the Atlantic Ocean.
His first IT job was as an operator in an insurance company in Ireland. Over the subsequent 20 years he became a VM system programmer, then joined IBM Ireland as an MVS system programmer, and then worked in IBM’s fledgling Services organization before moving to IBM’s Redbooks group in Poughkeepsie as a project leader for sysplex Redbooks.
During his time in the Redbooks group, Frank’s role expanded to include Redbooks on high availability, GDPS, and performance, teaching various classes around the world, and consulting with IBM’s most complex and interesting customers.
In March 2014, Frank left IBM to join Watson & Walker and is currently its President and author of most articles in their quarterly newsletter, Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter, a role he describes as ‘the ultimate job for