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...
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...
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...
The IBMz mainframe is the most powerful, scalable and secure platform on the planet. It’s also the most TCO-efficient. If you have any doubts about that, just take a look at these blogs: "Turn Out The Lights...The Party's Over! Mainframes Rout Commodity Servers!"...
The traditional 3270 mainframe development environment deserves respect. It has enabled developers to create and support some of the world’s most enduring business-critical software applications running on ‘Big Iron’ boxes around the word. Many of these core systems...
I was working recently with a mixed bag of people from a company, who were trying to predict the future and see how that company needed to change in order to get where they thought they ought to be going. One issue came up fairly quickly, and that was that 2020 isn’t...
This is not an article on multidimensional databases, 3D rendering, or spatial databases, but rather how CIOs in IT think, based on their education, experience and professional motivations. A good friend of mine, Pete, recently asked me how many servers does it take...
I was reading the news on CNN recently about a power outage in California, which reminded me of some serious black outs in Costa Rica a while back. A friend was there on business, and it ruined an important business meeting that he had spent months setting up. It also...
Being in the mainframe business for about 10 years now, I hear interesting anecdotes from time to time, often from the most unlikely sources. I may have taken some liberty with the title, but it’s a true story, and it relates well to what I see in the mainframe...
Do you think the mainframe is dead? A dinosaur, an ancient piece of technology that has outlived its usefulness like cathode ray tubes, rotary dial telephones, and dial-up modems? I have some news for you. The mainframe has adapted: it is alive and well with major...
