Workforce & Training
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...
The “Experience Required” Paradox: Companies Can’t Fill Roles, Workers Shut Out
This article originally appeared in Forbes on February 5, 2025. Reposted with permission. Breaking into a cybersecurity career has never been easy and today it’s more competitive than ever. At the same time, there is a well-documented cybersecurity talent shortage,...
New To Z: Year One as a Mainframe Trainee
What’s it like to enter the mainframe world with no previous experience on the platform? In early 2024, Vertali recruited Felix Scott to join its ground-breaking New To Z (NTZ) program as a trainee. Below, Felix reflects on what it’s like. As I write, it’s been...
Do You Need a Trainer, a Coach, or a Mentor?
Anyone, whether working on mainframes or not, can reflect on where in their career they are and what kind of help—i.e., training, mentoring, or coaching—will move them forward their career (and their work-life balance) successfully. But first, consider the differences...
Virtual Mainframes: A Teaching Tool
As technology continually evolves, so should training, specifically for mainframe developers. Traditional physical mainframes have been enterprise technology’s backbone, but virtual mainframes offer a cost-effective and flexible alternative for education and training....
Free Training, a Real Mainframe, and Top Skills — Meet the EMMA Apprenticeship Program
The demand for skilled mainframe professionals continues to grow in a world with Big Iron powering critical industries and massive data operations. Yet traditional pathways into mainframe careers pose challenges for newcomers and mid-career transitions.Enter the Eli...
Transform Your Mainframe Future: Building Tomorrow’s Talent Today
Mainframes power the heart of global commerce, driving critical operations for 90% of the world’s leading banks, retailers, healthcare, airlines, Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. These organizations continually improve their systems to manage...
Latest
Mainframe Security Isn’t What It Used to Be – How CICS and LE Are Fighting Back
This article updates a 2022 piece in Cheryl Watson’s Tuning Letter, “LE Non-Executable HEAPS and CICS User Experiences” by Mario Bezzi. Current Tuning Letter subscribers can read the original article online. Think your mainframe is immune to modern cyber threats?...
Time to Rethink Db2 Disaster Recovery
For a long time, disaster recovery (DR) in Db2 z/OS environments was mostly about getting systems back online after a major outage. Whether it was a hardware failure, a data center problem, or a natural disaster, the focus was on full system recovery, bringing the...
You May Know More About Security and IAM on the Mainframe Than You Think
For many, the mainframe can be a daunting subject – with misguided initial reactions of the platform as "legacy” technology that may be replaced by the cloud. Part of this angst and dismissiveness is because not everyone fully understands the true value of the...
From Poolside Code to Mainframe Maven – Influential Mainframer Felix Scott
Felix Scott, a trainee in the New to Z (NTZ) program at Vertali in the UK, doesn’t fit the usual mental picture of a mainframer. At 27, he’s a younger voice in a field dominated by veterans. But Felix isn’t afraid to admit what he doesn’t know. "Being publicly wrong...
Strengthening Enterprise Security with IBM Multi-Factor Authentication
Why MFA is Crucial in Today’s Security Landscape Traditionally, user authentication has relied heavily on passwords or passphrases. However, passwords alone have become a weak point in cybersecurity. They are often easy to guess, reused across systems, or written...
Smarter Tech Decisions: Why “and” Wins Over “or”
In technology, we often present choices as binary decisions: replace or keep, mainframe or cloud. But what if this either/or mindset is limiting our potential? This realization struck me through an unexpected source: my home security system. A Lesson in Integration...
Mainframe Security in 2025: Countering New Threats, Using AI, and Getting the Basics Right
Introduction As we moved into 2025, two trends were front of mind for many of our clients: their continued efforts to achieve a Zero Trust security stance in the face of an evolving threat landscape, and the unstoppable rise of artificial intelligence – countering the...
The “Experience Required” Paradox: Companies Can’t Fill Roles, Workers Shut Out
This article originally appeared in Forbes on February 5, 2025. Reposted with permission. Breaking into a cybersecurity career has never been easy and today it’s more competitive than ever. At the same time, there is a well-documented cybersecurity talent shortage,...
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Upcoming Events
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Virtual CICS User Group | The IT Stairway to Heaven. CICS Testing Pyramid: From Unit to Integration to Production-Like Environment
Zoom - Virtual MeetingEffective testing is essential for building robust systems. Dive deep into a structured approach to the testing pyramid for CICS applications. Using Test4z, we will demonstrate how unit tests form […]
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Virtual Db2 User Group | January 20, 2026
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Virtual IMS User Group | February 10, 2026
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Virtual CICS User Group | March 17, 2026
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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...
📰 Top 100 Most Loved Workplace, Workload Automation in Industry Report, and more
Kyndryl Cloud Readiness Report: Hybrid Cloud Shapes the Future of AI and Enterprise Agility BMC Selected as Overall Leader for Workload Automation in Industry Report Kyndryl Named a Top 100 Most Loved Workplace® by the Wall Street Journal IBM and Groq Partner to...
❓ History of Artificial Intelligence Trivia
November at Planet Mainframe is all about AI, and you don’t need us to tell you that artificial intelligence has now been integrated into many of our daily routines. But long before AI became a household term, IBM was shaping the foundations of this increasingly...
IBM’s decision to discontinue support for the zPDT standalone offering threatens the mid-tier ISV market
IBM’s zPDT Decision Risks Mid-Tier ISVs and Mainframe Innovation I’ve been a passionate mainframe (System z) advocate for over 45 years and a staunch supporter of IBM and most of their decisions. However, when I received an email from IBM on 30 September 2025...