It’s NHL hockey playoff season. I love this time of year: the days are longer and brighter, the geese are back in town, the weather is warming up and, more importantly, the smell of playoff hockey intensity is back. Well, in Canada this year it’s not as normal since...
Mainframes are under siege. You might like to picture the mainframe department as some medieval castle surrounded by invading troops. There’s no actual fighting going on, but gradually the forces of distributed computing are waiting for the survivors inside the...
DB2 for z/OS applications continue to be a workhorse for large IT shops. Of course the DB2 applications have Service Level Agreements for availability and performance. These are largely based on requirements that drive customer satisfaction and transaction throughput....
A few years ago, I was speaking at a conference on the west coast—attending were mostly IT executives from startup companies, and it was a lively group. Also, some IT folks were in attendance from some more established companies. Afterwards I sat beside one such chap...
So what is a mainframe? The answer to that question might, at first glance, seem to be obvious to some of us who have worked with mainframe systems our entire career. But have you ever really tried to step back and think about the question? What if your Mother asked...
A continuing, lingering perception that the mainframe is dead continues on in some parts of the IT industry. It seems that we constantly hear about IT shops that are planning to get rid of their mainframes. But rarely do we ever hear about it after the fact. No, it is...
How can you make sure that your mainframe staff stay up-to-date with the latest ideas in the mainframe world? The answer is to make sure they have access to magazines, newsletters, user groups, and social media. There are still printed mainframe-related publications...
Three weeks ago here on Planet Mainframe I introduced the idea that a CIO must excel in 4 areas: Alignment, Architecture, Agility and Ability. Over the last weeks we had a close look at IT Alignment, Architecture and Agility. This week we wrap up visiting IT Ability....
People are searching for the term progressively less over the years: www.google.com/trends/ IBM is close to underperforming the S&P 500 for the first time in a decade: www.google.com/finance However, there are early signs that the continued rise of the mobile...
Two weeks ago here on Planet Mainframe I introduced the idea that a CIO must excel in 4 areas: Alignment, Architecture, Agility and Ability, and we looked closely at Alignment. Last week we had a close look at what Architecture in IT is all about. This week we have a...
