Latest Articles
IMS Managed ACBs After Six Months: Adapting to the New Normal
When IBM made IMS Managed ACBs mandatory with the release of IMS 15.6 in June 2025, it marked the end of a long transition period and the beginning of a new operational reality for IMS customers. At a recent Planet Mainframe Virtual IMS User Group, Anshul Agrawal,...
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...
Redefining Legacy Modernization Around Customer Outcomes | On-Demand Webinar
Learn why legacy modernization stalls and how hybrid strategies reduce risk. Watch AveriSource experts explain refactor, reimagine, and replace approaches.
All I Want for Christmas is an IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator
It’s always the right time to talk about my absolute favorite mainframe technology, the IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator (we users like to call it IDAA). As you finalize your wish list for your CFO or Santa, don’t forget this!What’s Not in a Name If you’ve ever heard me...
Leadership in the mainframe community: Lessons from Industry Trailblazers
Careers in enterprise technology are rarely linear, and mainframe careers are no exception. At the GS UK Conference, a panel of industry leaders came together to share personal reflections on leadership, career growth, and what it takes to build a meaningful,...
Enterprise IT Trends: Reflections on a Year of Adjustment (and a Look Ahead)
As I reflect on yet another year of tectonic adjustment across the technology sector, I see little evidence that things are about to calm down. If anything, the forces reshaping enterprise IT feel more entrenched, more demanding, and more consequential than ever....
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...
The Open Mainframe Project Has a Trust Problem — And the Mainframe Can’t Afford It
Open Mainframe Project Security Concerns I was chatting with a mainframer buddy the other day, and he expressed some concerns about the overall code security of the Open Mainframe Project (OMP), particularly around member vetting. So, I spent a bit of time digging...
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...
IBM z17 NTS Enhancements: Securing Time Synchronization
In October 2025, Planet Mainframe published the first article of this two-part series on IBM z17 Time Synchronization Enhancements. That article focused on time synchronization resiliency and accuracy enhancements introduced on IBM z17. This article continues with a...
