AI Month
AI Makes Recommendations. Leaders Make Decisions.
Why integrity-led organizations will win the AI era. As organizations continue adopting AI, mainframe trust matters more than ever. Technology can move information and accelerate decisions, achieving more than imagined even 10 years ago. But reliable systems,...
5 Mainframe Performance Tuning Examples That Deliver Quantifiable Value
Mainframe performance tuning does not always require a bigger budget, and lower resource consumption does not always produce a smaller bill. The real opportunity for optimizing mainframe business value lies in understanding where tuning creates usable capacity,...
❓ROI, Business Case and Tuning for Value Trivia: Round One
For July’s Planet Mainframe Trivia Quizzes, we're exploring the fundamentals of measuring value and making informed technology decisions. Whether the investment involves modernizing a mainframe environment, optimizing workloads, or deploying new enterprise...
Webinar: Accelerating Mainframe Efficiency for SysProgs and DBAs
Mainframe modernization is often discussed in broad strategic terms, but for the teams responsible for keeping core systems running, the challenge is much more practical: How do you make change faster, safer, and more repeatable without disrupting critical...
Tuning for Business Value, Not Cost: Building a Better Business Case for Mainframe Modernization
Modernization can deliver tremendous business value. But cost savings only materialize when organizations understand how mainframe economics really work. Organizations often launch mainframe modernization initiatives with a clear objective: reduce costs by moving...
Practical AI Use Cases for CICS Teams
This month, the Planet Mainframe Virtual Mainframe User Group welcomed Claire Connor, Principal Pre-Sales Consultant at Geniez AI, for a practical look at how generative AI can support CICS professionals. The conversation focused on a familiar operational challenge:...
Understanding CICS Performance: How SMF 110 Turns Symptoms Into Evidence
How monitoring and statistics data turn performance symptoms into evidence When something slows down in a CICS environment, the conversation often starts with a phrase every systems programmer (sysprog) has heard before: "CICS feels stuck." The problem with that...
A Clarion Call for the Mainframe Community
GSE Nordic Conference 2026, HelsinkiEnergy, insight, innovation After the success of the 2025 event in Gothenburg, the 2026 GSE Nordic conference continued a similar vein and delivered a packed and varied programme - spanning modern mainframe technology, AI...
Performance & Tuning Month
Understanding CICS Performance: How SMF 110 Turns Symptoms Into Evidence
How monitoring and statistics data turn performance symptoms into evidence When something slows down in a CICS environment, the conversation often starts with a phrase every systems programmer (sysprog) has heard before: "CICS feels stuck." The problem with that...
Exploring the Latest Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter: Practical Guidance for Modern Mainframe Shops
What happens when an IMS logger fills up in production? How do you prepare for z/OS 3.2? Is Coupling Facility encryption worth the effort? And what does AI really mean for the future of the mainframe workforce? The latest issue of Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter tackles...
z/OS UNIX Tuning: What New USS Practitioners Should Know
This article offers a practical USS tuning primer for new mainframers, developers moving into z/OS UNIX, and technical leaders who need to understand the basics before changing system settings.z/OS UNIX tuning can feel familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. USS...
An Undocumented CICS Fix That Boosts Throughput and Cuts CPU
IBM has an undocumented fix to the CICS WEB interface that can optimize throughput and response time while also saving CPU. This article explains how to make it work for you. In the course of my current project, I had the pleasure of working with Ole Olsen at JN Data...
CICS. Db2. IPL. The Latest Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter
The Latest Tuning Letter issue is out now! Subscribers to Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter will find the newest issue, 2026 No.1, on our Tuning Letter website. If you are not a current subscriber yet, sign up today! This subscription-only resource is available to both...
Why Ongoing Education Matters for the Mainframe Skills Gap
I graduated virtually with my Master’s degree in 2020, about two months after COVID-19 shut down much of the world. Behind the scenes, I had been working for Enterprise Performance Strategies, Inc. (EPS) since 2017, so I had a supportive professional environment while...
Turning Nightly Downtime into a Competitive Advantage with VSAM File-Sharing
If you run on IBM Z, you may still stop CICS overnight so batch jobs can update VSAM files. That pause might be necessary today, but it is no longer a requirement. We will show you how to remove the trade-off between fresh data and uninterrupted access with VSAM...
SQL & SQL PL Enhancements in Db2 12 and 13 — Technical Insights from the Virtual Mainframe User Group with Chris Crone
In this session of the Mainframe Virtual User Groups, Broadcom Distinguished Engineer Chris Crone provided a practical walkthrough of SQL and SQL PL enhancements across Db2 12 and Db2 13. Drawing on 35 years of experience working in Db2 internals, including SQL...
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Upcoming Events
Events
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Vanguard Security & Compliance
For 40 years, Vanguard Security & Compliance has brought together global cybersecurity leaders from both private industry and government agencies to deliver the most complete knowledge-based training for securing and […]
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Accelerating Mainframe Efficiency: Development and Testing Webinar
Zoom - Virtual MeetingUnlock the power of instantly available mainframe resources to revolutionize mainframe delivery. The third session in the PopUp Persona Webinar series reveals how application developers, software engineers, and QA teams […]
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Virtual IMS User Group | Data Gravity and IBM Z: Bringing Processing to the Data
Zoom - Virtual MeetingAs data volumes grow, they naturally attract applications, services, and processing toward them—a concept commonly referred to as data gravity. In hybrid cloud environments, understanding data gravity has become increasingly […]
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Virtual CICS User Group | Latest Update on Security in CICS TS 6.3: The Journey to Zero Trust
Zoom - Virtual MeetingCICS has been advocating zero trust principles and introducing security-focused enhancements since CICS TS 6.1. This session will explore the latest security capabilities available in CICS TS 6.3 and how […]
Mainframe Jargon Challenge
Every technical field develops its own language, and the mainframe world is no exception. Whether we’re talking about the alphabet soup of multi-letter acronyms or terms that have been part of the platform for decades, mainframe jargon serves as a kind of shorthand...
AI Ranked as Top Priority, Lightwell at No Cost to Universities, and more
Rocket Software Study Reveals 94% of Financial Services Leaders Rank AI as a Top IT Priority IBM Study: One in Four Malicious Breaches are AI-Enabled, Costing Companies $6 Million on Average IBM and Red Hat Offer Lightwell at No Cost to Universities, NGOs and Think...
❓Mainframes at the Movies
With summer blockbuster season upon us, it’s time to turn our attention away from the workaday world of the datacenter to its fictional representation. Mainframes have made memorable appearances on both the big and small screen for decades—sometimes portrayed as...
Izzi Software Launches Z/XDC on Visual Studio Code to Speed Adoption and Boost Mainframe Debugging for the Future
New expansion to top debugging now available, integrating seamlessly into existing workflows and supporting young programmers by improving accessibility MINNEAPOLIS, August 3, 2026 — Izzi Software, owner of ColeSoft, the leading provider of debugging solutions for IBM...
What to Expect at SHARE Pittsburgh
With SHARE Pittsburgh approaching, SHARE President Art Gutowski joined Planet Mainframe to talk about what attendees can expect—and why the conference remains valuable for both newcomers and longtime mainframe professionals. Gutowski is nearing the end of his...
Real-Time Mainframe Software Visibility, SHARE Pittsburgh 2026, and more
BMC Brings Governed AI Agents to Enterprise Workflows and Mainframe Operations Precisely Delivers Real-Time Mainframe Software Visibility to the ServiceNow AI Platform IBM Reports Infrastructure Revenue Down 7 Percent SHARE Pittsburgh 2026BMC Brings Governed AI Agents...