Featured
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
Observability Month
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
Latest

Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?
Or: We need to talk about mainframe hacking There’s an elephant in the room says Mark Wilson. It’s mainframe-sized, at serious risk of being hacked, and its name is Z. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” That was US president Franklin D. Roosevelt at his...

So what Does ‘Mainframe Modernization’ Really Mean?
What is mainframe modernization? Well, a lot of vendors will tell you that it is the replacement of some, or all of your mainframe infrastructure, which is old and costly to run (or so they will tell you), with commodity servers (and their software and services), that...

Mainframe news out there
Once a month 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: Monitoring the Cryptographic Protection of Your z/OS Network Traffic Here is a really interesting...

9 ways to Master the Z
So you are now working on the mainframe platform. You wanted to keep up with the latest and greatest or you just wanted to get to know a topic or feature associated with the mainframe. Either you just started your job in a mainframe shop or you are an experienced...

Do I need real-time, continuous, mainframe security monitoring and auditing?
To be honest, mainframes are pretty secure, aren’t they? We’ve had RACF and other External Security Managers (ESMs) for years. On top of that, the new z14 gives us pervasive encryption. And there are any number of logs recording what’s going on on Z, and we can run...

A Lack Of Expertise Does Not Force You To Abandon The Mainframe
“Quick! Abandon the mainframe. …Oh, and by the way, buy a bunch of our platforms and services for millions of dollars!” —Distributed systems manufacturers Craig Mullins did quite an insightful piece a while back about the state of things in the mainframe world...

Sub-capacity Pricing and Capping 101
Soft capping, using IBM’s Defined Capacity (DC) or Group Capacity (GC) options, is an effective method to help control software costs. An even more effective method is to automate the limits of these caps based on application consumption and budgetary requirements. ...

Mainframes and the Cloud: Made for Each Other
April 2018 marked the 54th anniversary of IBM’s mainframes. It is uncertain if anyone could have ever predicted such a long and successful life for them. A quick historical sketch: IBM launched the first modern mainframe, IBM 360, on April 7, 1964. With 229,000...
Sign up to receive the latest mainframe information
Upcoming Events
Vanguard Security & Compliance 2025
Marriott St. Louis Airport 10700 Pear Tree Ln, St. Louis, MO, United StatesRecognizing the global need for cybersecurity education, Vanguard Security & Compliance is a premier gathering of cybersecurity professionals from around the world. VSC offers a comprehensive program that balances educational […]

Essential z/OS Performance Tuning Workshop
Virtual MeetingJoin Scott Chapman in this 4-day z/OS Performance Tuning Essentials Workshop that focuses on the foundational terminology, metrics, and practices necessary to measure, understand, and improve z/OS system performance. Participants will gain a comprehensive understanding of the factors driving performance and […]
Introducing Syncsort™ Storage Management
Recently, Precisely added the Storage Management solutions from DTS Software to our product lineup. These products represent a significant addition to Precisely’s already robust IBM Z software portfolio. The newly […]
IDUG EMEA 2025
Dusseldorf, GermanyIDUG will be taking place in Dusseldorf for the 2025 EMEA Db2 Tech Conference! Experience the custom Solution Center, workshops & hands-on labs, IBM’s certification & badging opportunities, as well […]

Mainframe News for You
Utah’s Office of Recovery Services Moves from COBOL to Cloud in 18 Months Utah’s Office of Recovery Services (ORS) is responsible for both collecting child support payments across the state and ensuring public funds are used appropriately. For 24 years it has relied...

History of Cybercrime and Cybersecurity
For a long time, mainframes seemed like a safe room where a company’s most precious data possessions would be secure. But while mainframes still present unique challenges to bad actors, the days of mainframe impenetrability are most definitely over. Ever since the...

Kyndryl Signs Agreement with UK Tax Authority and More
Kyndryl Signs Agreement with UK Tax Authority to Accelerate and De-risk Modernization in Critical Tax Infrastructure Kyndryl, IBM’s managed infrastructure services business spin-off, has signed an agreement to manage a proportion of HMRC’s (His Majesty’s Revenue and...

Mainframe Security Trivia
For a long time, the perception that mainframes are inherently secure probably made life quite a bit easier for hackers than it really needed to be. Back in the pre-internet world, corporations could probably afford to treat mainframe security as an...

SC Media Honors Rocket Software’s Cynthia Overby for Career in Mainframe Security and more
SC Media Honors Rocket Software’s Cynthia Overby for Career in Mainframe Security SC Media, a publication of the CyberRisk Alliance, has announced its five 2023 Women in IT Security Honorees. Among the five honorees is Rocket Software’s Cynthia Overby, lauded for her...

Db2 Trivia: The Basics
While databases may not be the sexiest segment of IT history, they are inarguably the backbone of modern information systems. With that in mind, we’re devoting our trivia challenge this week to the enduring data management technology that is Db2. This massively...