In 2023, the mainframe is the central technology of the biggest businesses on earth, but they also have a long and storied history. They’ve been around long enough, in fact, to have had a cameo appearance in the show Mad Men (shout out to the IBM/360). But...
How well do you know mainframes? Here is a quick test to gauge where you fit on the scale of novice to expert when it comes to knowing your mainframe trivia. Give it your best shot.
As one of the most popular operating systems on the planet, we are all living in a Linux world. All of the world’s top 500 supercomputers run Linux, not to mention our cars, phones, and home appliances. This trusty OS has now been around for a few decades, which in...
Since you’ve found your way to Planet Mainframe, you probably know that mainframes are the IT workhorses of big business. It’s not an exaggeration to say that it’s hard to even imagine the past several decades of commerce without the mainframe doing its thing, mostly...
For a long time, mainframes seemed like a safe room where a company’s most precious data possessions would be secure. But while mainframes still present unique challenges to bad actors, the days of mainframe impenetrability are most definitely over. Ever since the...
For a long time, the perception that mainframes are inherently secure probably made life quite a bit easier for hackers than it really needed to be. Back in the pre-internet world, corporations could probably afford to treat mainframe security as an...
While databases may not be the sexiest segment of IT history, they are inarguably the backbone of modern information systems. With that in mind, we’re devoting our trivia challenge this week to the enduring data management technology that is Db2. This massively...
Did your computer journey start with dial-up and dot matrix? Perhaps you cut your teeth coding COBOL, or maybe you dream in Rust. Whatever your beginning, both you and technology changed along the way. If you’re not modernizing your mainframe and your skills, you’re...
As usual, this week’s trivia challenge will look back at two Planet Mainframe articles with different themes. This week, our first article will be most relevant for companies that outsource their mainframes to specialist outsourcers. The second should be highly...
Whether you love it or hate it, COBOL has been around for a long time, its impact lingering even as its popularity wanes. Created by committee way back in the middle of the last century, COBOL was one of the first high-level computer languages and the business...
