Just a few months ago, we passed a mainframe anniversary, of sorts. Sometime in March 1996, the IBM mainframe was supposed to be finished in the world of computing. Its end was pronounced– or rather predicted – and a precise date was given. Stewart Alsop, a head...
Part 3: The pitfalls of MIPS This is the third in a series of blogs about how to follow up on your mainframe outsourcer. The first blog was about why it is important to follow up. The second blog introduced the two metrics that are generally used as the basis for...
Part 2: Understanding MIPS and MSU This is the second in a series of blogs about how to follow up on your mainframe outsourcer. The first blog was about why it is important to follow up, and some of the pitfalls of not doing so. This article focuses on explaining the...
Many enterprises that rely on IBM mainframes were caught out when the pandemic hit as they were not set up to enable large numbers of staff to access applications remotely. However, the enforced switch to home working has provided the much-needed impetus to evaluate...
To many, z/OS is a legacy operating system where ‘old school’ technologies like CICS, COBOL and batch reign. Java, not so much. But tools and platforms usually found on Linux and Windows servers are now, not only present on z/OS, but mainstream. An example of this is...
There are many reasons why companies choose to outsource their mainframe. One of the major reasons is economies of scale—cost per unit (e.g. per MIPS or MSU) for hardware and software falls dramatically as the mainframe gets larger. Similarly, the cost of having the...
Once a month (or so) we like to pick blog articles from other sources that we feel are interesting enough to talk about on the Planet Mainframe blog. Here are this month’s picks: Taking Down the Mainframe Another interesting article on the Dancing Dinosaur blog:...
A data breach is every company's waking nightmare. What is the cost of a data breach for your company?Ponemon Institute and IBM Security released the 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report. Interviews were conducted with more than 3,200 professionals from 524 companies...
Understanding how an Input Message sent by an IMS Connect Client to IMS Connect works when OTMA NAKs the Input Message IMS Connect (ICON) is the TCP/IP gateway for IMS. So, besides running the traditional IMS transactions on z/OS, an IMS programmer/database...
The IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS Migration Assistant (CMA) has been very popular among COBOL migration users. It is a step-by-step wizard and an interactive checklist that guide users through the information along their migration journey from COBOL 4 or earlier to...
