Latest Articles
Making a Modern Mainframer
It’s no secret that the dreaded “skills gap” is affecting the mainframe market. It’s getting harder and harder to find people who know COBOL or Assembler, and organizations that rely on these systems often have open job postings because there’s no perfect match for...
What’s waiting round the mainframe corner?
Anyone who has been working on mainframes for any length of time knows that things are always changing. Many people can remember when DB2 was new (1983), the client-server period, and the need for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). And, I’m sure, can come up with a...
Mainframe News Out There
Once a month we like to pick articles from other blogs that we feel are interesting enough to talk about on the Planet Mainframe blog. Here are this month’s picks: Update on the z14 Clipper Group article on the z14 – Craig Mullins provided some insight for us last...
Does your Mainframe need an oil change?
Performance management is a key consideration on any platform. A system may have several resources (CPU, I/O, storage, network etc.) that collectively work together to process a workload. To assess overall health of the system, mainframe system reports can be...
The New IBM z14: More Secure, Flexible, Powerful and Analytical Than Ever Before
Mainframe IT professionals always get excited when IBM announces a new version of its stalwart mainframe z Systems platform. And on July 17, 2017 IBM announced its latest and greatest mainframe hardware, dubbed the IBM z14. Coming more than two years after the IBM...
7 Mainframe Taboos We Should Break
Having worked ‘on The Mainframe’ for almost 20 years at a variety of clients and sites I’ve come about a number of taboos within the Mainframe ‘ecosystem’ that are sometimes just doing my head in and just need to be broken. These taboos can be seen across the playing...
In the age of the customer, the CIO is between a rock and a hard place
Today, customers drive business and battle lines have been drawn. Organizations are now obsessed with their customers and are competing as never before to win, serve, and retain them. According to Forrester, by 2020 every business will be either a digital predator or...
Blockchain – The Good, The Bad and the…Better.
People keep asking me why I am so excited about the Blockchain, and why I see it as an enabler for the mainframe. I am obviously a fan of the mainframe, and I see a lot of activity in a number of verticals that are creating a really neat rebirth where the mainframe is...
Money for Nothing
My wife loves shopping – even for food; I don’t, but we need to get it done. Because we’re both busy with our jobs, we tend to do one big shop at the start of the month, to get much of what we need for the month. For the most part, that means the dry foods like pasta...
Optimize Your System z ROI with z Operational Insights (zOI)
Hopefully all System z users are aware of the Monthly Licence Charge (MLC) pricing mechanisms, where a recurring charge applies each month. This charge includes product usage rights and IBM product support. If only it was that simple! We then encounter the...
