Workforce & Training
❓ Workforce and Training Trivia
Happy 2026—and welcome to a whole new year of Planet Mainframe Trivia! As our January theme focuses on Workforce and Training, this quiz looks at mainframe pioneers and the early decisions that shaped how mainframe skills are learned and passed on. Mainframe expertise...
Missing Mainframe and IT Skills: How Enterprises Can Respond
Attendees at GS UK 2025 noticed a new track, WAVEZ 101, dedicated to early-career and undergraduate mainframers. I was delighted to be invited to speak on mainframe skills and what I see for the industry’s future employees. A Gloomy Skills Outlook The IT skills topic...
The Spectrum of Trust: How Mainframers Are Embracing Agentic AI
A few years ago, the idea of letting artificial intelligence (AI) tweak a production mainframe system on its own would’ve made even the most daring system programmer break out in a cold sweat. We would have heard, “Let the machine make the change? Not on my watch.” ...
Looking Ahead to GS UK Conference 2025
Do more at the Core. Built to Learn, Engineered to Lead. The GS-UK In-Person Conference 2025 will be held on Monday, 3 November to Thursday, 6 November 2025, at Whittlebury Hall, Northamptonshire. This year’s theme is Do more at the Core. Built to Learn, Engineered to...
From Mainframe to Cybersecurity: Experience Is the New Superpower, Ladies
From Mainframe to Cybersecurity: Experience Is the New Superpower If you’ve written COBOL, debugged Assembler, or know how to resolve an S0C7 abend, chances are you belong to an older—and increasingly rare—demographic in tech. If you’re a woman, that group is even...
Unlocking Mainframe Talent: Skills, Mentorship, and Hiring Trends ▶️
Mainframe talent is in demand. Broadcom reports that 91% of organizations plan to hire mainframe system administrators or application developers within two years. For IT leaders, the need for skills development, mentorship, and knowledge transfer is urgent. In this...
Your biggest continuity risk isn’t technology, it’s talent
What if your biggest business continuity risk isn’t tied to technology at all, but to talent? That’s the premise behind the Mainframe Talent Succession Playbook, a research-backed guide from CCS Insight. Based on direct interviews with Broadcom customers and education...
Four Campuses, One Week: Meet Your Future Mainframe Employees
Across the country, organizations are feeling the squeeze of a shrinking mainframe skills pipeline. Last year, I shared how Illinois universities were stepping up to teach mainframe skills and how employers could tap into that pipeline. The story continues, starting...
Latest
Collaborating for Modernizing Mainframe Data Protection: A Privacy-First Approach
Collaborating for Modernizing Mainframe Data Protection As enterprises accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, mainframe environments face unprecedented challenges in balancing mainframe data protection with modernisation. Traditional approaches to...
Modernizing Mainframe Security: RACF and MFA Misconceptions
Passwords Aren’t Enough to Modernize Mainframe Security Security is the backbone of any organization’s control environment. In today’s hyper-connected economy, protecting against IT threats is not just a technical requirement—it’s a business imperative. A single...
TRIVIA – Penetration Testing
Mainframes have long been known for their unmatched reliability and security—but even the most trusted systems can hide surprises beneath the surface. As technology evolves, so do the tactics of those trying to exploit it. Penetration testing (pen testing), or...
Mainframe Security: The Quiet Frontline of Enterprise Defense
For decades, the mainframe has been viewed as one of the most secure computing platforms on Earth. With tightly controlled access, centralized data management, and unmatched reliability, it earned its reputation as the “fortress” of enterprise IT. But, as evidenced in...
From Mainframe to Cybersecurity: Experience Is the New Superpower, Ladies
From Mainframe to Cybersecurity: Experience Is the New Superpower If you’ve written COBOL, debugged Assembler, or know how to resolve an S0C7 abend, chances are you belong to an older—and increasingly rare—demographic in tech. If you’re a woman, that group is even...
The Heat is on. What 2025 Cyber Attacks in the UK Teach Us About Mainframe Security
Vertali’s Leanne Wilson reflects on a year of cyber attacks and what needs to happen now. 2025 was quite a year for cyber attacks. The UK in particular experienced a significant surge, with 43% of businesses reporting at least one incident and an astounding 91% of...
Kev Milne Brings Mainframe Pen Testing to Life with open-source Gibson
In the second episode of The Mainframe Book Club, host Andrew (Andy) McCandless talks with Kev Milne, Cyber Threat Intelligence Manager at NatWest Bank, and one of the few professionals focused on mainframe penetration (pen) testing.A Platform Born from Missing Skills...
Simplifying Mainframe Security in 2025, featuring Ravi Patil ▶️
Simplifying Mainframe Security with Broadcom As hybrid IT environments expand, so do the risks. In this video, Broadcom’s mainframe security expert, Ravi Patil, Director of Cybersecurity and Compliance, breaks down how compliance, continuous monitoring, and smarter...
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Upcoming Events
Events
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Free Virtual User Group: Db2 13 in Practice: Separating Essential Innovation from Nice-to-Have Enhancements
January 27, 2026 - Register Here Db2 for z/OS continues to evolve at a remarkable pace, with 57 new enhancements delivered through continuous delivery in 2025 alone—more than one per […]
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Virtual IMS User Group | February 10, 2026
Zoom - Virtual Meeting -
SHARE Orlando 2026
SHARE Orlando is where mainframe superheroes come together for five days of deep technical learning, collaboration, and networking. It’s the only industry conference dedicated entirely to delivering expert insight and […]
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Virtual CICS User Group | March 17, 2026
Zoom - Virtual Meeting
Newest Virtel Release, SHARE Orlando Tickets, and more
VIRTEL announces release of Virtel 4.63: a major new version to better connect, secure, and simplify access to any mainframe application SHARE Orlando Early Bird Tickets Available Hitachi Vantara's Virtual Storage Platform One Wins CRN 2025 Products of the Year Award...
What 2025 Taught Us About Mainframes: A Trivia Quiz
As the year closes, and the year-end reflections roll in, we’re taking a closer look at key findings from the latest BMC, Kyndryl, and Planet Mainframe Arcati surveys. The results point to a platform that is evolving in response to cost pressures, skills gaps,...
Real-Time Data Replication, Quantum Safe Assessment Service, and More
Precisely Accelerates Mainframe Modernization with Real-Time Data Replication to Amazon S3 Kyndryl Unveils Quantum Safe Assessment Service to Enable Enterprise Readiness for the Quantum Era IBM Turbonomic and IBM Kubecost unite to optimize Kubernetes performance and...
Mainframe Miscellaneous Trivia!
As the year draws to a close (whether your days are growing shorter and darker or longer and brighter), December tends to invite a little reflection. Over the past year, Planet Mainframe Trivia has dished out a veritable smorgasbord of topics, from the early days of...
More Mainframe Lingo Trivia
Mainframe environments come with their own vocabulary, much of it precise, legacy-rich, and completely opaque to anyone who hasn’t spent time in the ecosystem. And there really is no end to the alphabet soup. Even seasoned professionals pick up new terms over the...
📰Agentic AI framework, and an AI Assistant and Data Catalog Agent
Kyndryl launches agentic AI framework and services for the mainframe Precisely Announces Gio™ AI Assistant and Data Catalog Agent in the Data Integrity SuiteKyndryl launches agentic AI framework and services for the mainframe Kyndryl has introduced a new set of...