How Much Do Architects Need to Know About Mainframes?
David Stephens asks an interesting question and tries to answer it. I find a lot to agree with in his article — and I might also have a few quibbles. Example: z/OS (which I assume the author meant) is exactly UNIXTM. It is much more, too, of course.
There's a certain expectation that IT architects have superhuman talent, and I hesitate to pile onto the "architects need to know more to be competent" bandwagon too much. However, to expand on David's article a bit, I observe many IT architects struggling with cost and economic factors. Or, more strongly, I see many totally botching it, designing solutions with a weak grasp of true total costs. I have been fortunate to work with some smart people who understand IT cost patterns to an exceptional degree, and I have become a much better architect working with them. I would encourage other architects to seek out similar experiences.
| by Timothy Sipples | November 11, 2009 in People Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) |
U.S. Air Force Mainframer Celebrates 50 Years of Service
Congratulations to Jerry Chalker, who celebrated 50 years of service to the U.S. Air Force Reserve Command. Chalker works at Robins Air Force Base near Macon, Georgia. According to the article, Chalker has been a computer technician for 50 years. "As technology accelerated, Chalker stayed on the cutting edge, working with mainframe computers instead of punchcards."
Chalker currently writes software to encrypt classified documents and communications, and he says his 2009 work is quite similar to his 1959 work, when he was paid $1.58 per hour: "We had an input and we had an output and we have the same thing today. It’s just done faster."
"Chalker has been eligible to retire with full pension and benefits for the past 15 years. In reading a brief biography of Chalker, Chief Master Sgt. Kathy Gregory had a bit of news for the Air Force Reserve Command staff. 'Mr. Chalker has no immediate plans to retire,' she said. The office instantly broke into cheers."
| by Timothy Sipples | October 16, 2009 in People Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) |
EMC Cofounder Richard Egan Dies
Richard Egan, cofounder of EMC Corp., died Sunday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after a long battle with cancer and other illnesses. He was 73.
Egan was the "E" in EMC which he helped found in 1979. The company started as a memory board supplier for DEC, Wang, and IBM mainframes and minicomputers. Egan helped pivot EMC into a broader array of storage products, including especially disk storage. Many IBM mainframe customers bought (and continue to buy) EMC's well-respected storage products. Egan's company eventually became Massachusetts's largest high technology employer. After retiring from EMC in 2001 Egan served as U.S. Ambassador to Ireland.
The Mainframe Blog extends its condolences to Richard Egan's family and many friends, including Maureen (his wife of 52 years), his five children, and his 15 grandchildren.
| by Timothy Sipples | September 7, 2009 in People Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) |
Share Your Comments on SHARE
SHARE holds its big conference this week in beautiful Denver, Colorado. It's one of the biggest mainframe-focused conferences in the world and arguably the most enjoyable. (But there are plenty of seminars on a broad range of IT topics.)
Are you attending this SHARE? Learn anything new and interesting? See anything particularly impressive in the exhibit hall? Did you see any old friends or make any new ones? Consider this an open thread to post your comments.
| by Timothy Sipples | August 24, 2009 in People Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) |
Q&A Teleconference for z/OS Associate Certificate Program
You are invited to learn more !
If you or other colleagues in your organization are interested in the Marist z/OS Certificate program, please join us for a brief telephone discussion describing our Spring 2009 Enterprise Computing z/OS Certificate program.
Where & When
Date: January 15th-Thursday
Time: 12:00pm to 1:00 pm
(EST)
Call in US#: 1-888-469-0495
International:
1-210-795-2680
Passcode: 63893
You will have a chance to ask questions and learn about various aspects of the program:
- content and delivery
- participation and companies represented
- success and testimonials
- enrollment/application process
- tuition information
- history of the program
Please RSVP by Wednesday, January 14, 2009 via email to: roberta.diggins@marist.edu
Please forward this invitation to other prospective participants. Thank you!
| by JimPorell | January 9, 2009 in People Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) |
Come Together
| by Timothy Sipples | November 24, 2008 in People Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) |
HP attacking the mainframe? Like a car vs. a truck
Well, HP
is at it again. They are making more generalities about IBM’s venerable
mainframe to scare customers off that platform. Check their facts and sources,
though and you’ll find that something’s rotten in Palo
Alto
Before we get into that, though, let’s do a quick comparison
benchmark to establish a baseline. Let’s compare a four passenger Mini Cooper
car 
to a two passenger Freight liner truck cab
. Benchmark 1:
which is cheaper to commute to work in? Pretty obvious, but I’ll vote for the
car. Especially given gas price vs. diesel now…the car is the “green” solution.
Benchmark 2: We want to move the contents of our house. Most people would say
the truck, but they’d be wrong. We need to accessorize and add a trailer to
each vehicle. Now the Mini happens to put the tailpipe right in the middle of
the car on many of their models. Why? You’d have to be a moron to put a trailer
on their car. As for the truck, with a large enclosed trailer, you can put all
kinds of materials in it. In fact, you might even put a couple of the Mini’s
inside. So we’ve just proven that with the right benchmark, either solution is
appropriate. But benchmarks aren’t reality either. Most people will move their
family in the car and outsource to a shipping company to move the contents of
their house. So continuing that analogy, there is no one computer that will
solve all of a business’ problems, neither a mainframe nor a PC server will do
the job by themselves. It’s all about collaboration and using the best servers
for the right jobs.
So let’s get back to HP’s claims. I’m a little confused by Robert Frances Group claims right now. In the HP quoted report, they say you get less electricity and floor space with a PC server than you do with a mainframe. I’ve never seen a mainframe that only ran a single workload. Most of them will have transaction processing, batch, interactive, query and decision support running all at the same time. It’s true that you can take one workload off of a mainframe and run it on a PC server and then compare that PC server to a mainframe. The data might actually be real, but as information, it is “incredible”. A single PC server may be smaller than a mainframe and use less electricity (The car). But no single PC server is going to be comparable to a mainframe running multiple workloads. In fact, RFG published a paper in which they said a mainframe will use 3% of the electricity of a comparable PC server cluster attempting to accomplish the same workload. It will also use a fraction of the floor space. (The Truck). But don’t believe me….here’s exactly what they said:
RFG believes mainframe computing platforms have many of the characteristics that will ameliorate, if not eliminate, the current challenges data center managers face with power and cooling. First, mainframe power consumption and heat characteristics are, for many companies, the most efficient servers in the data center. This is true in an absolute sense, where the energy per square foot is lower than any data center system measured by our clients. More significantly, this is massively true in a relative sense, when comparing power used per transaction. On a total workload throughput basis, mainframe system power consumption is almost negligible when compared with distributed systems on a power per transaction basis. As power and cooling costs continue to rise, IT executives should reevaluate mainframe computers total cost and overall value in reducing data center operations costs.
Quote used with permission of Robert Francis Group.
So who are you going to believe? RFG or RFG? Well, in the HP cited paper, RFG just republished the results of a report done by HP. So don’t throw RFG under the bus. Just understand that it’s HP’s low quality and misleading information at work, once again.
As for the Alinean update, it’s a single workload in each example. And in them, they talk about the SAP application server. But what about the database server? Typically, if the application server is on z, the database server is in DB2 for z/OS. Did that move too? The labor costs for System z appear to be much higher than the norm for a business. The report discusses the price of an older mainframe and again, some incredible Software license charges. But what if SAP was added to a newer mainframe? How would that have compared in this report? What if it was added to an existing, newer mainframe, what would the incremental charges be as compared to net new computing servers?
HP mentions the BART system avoiding 50% of their paycheck errors. Wow…that sounds like a big number. They went to Peoplesoft, from what I guess was a homegrown application that was running on a mainframe…at least that’s what HP wants you to believe. So it sounds like the BART people are better running trains than they are at writing programs? I doubt it. That wouldn’t be fair to the hard working people at BART. But remember, if there are two paycheck errors a month and it goes down to one paycheck error a month, that’s a 50% reduction as well. (The Car). So sometimes the big numbers quoted are really just a meaningless indicator to scare you into thinking something else. How many errors a month was BART really seeing? I don’t know and neither do you based on HP's comments.
So let’s talk about something I do know about….consolidations of servers are occurring and System z has been a great place to do that. Nationwide and DGTI are two examples.
IBM has published a paper on SAP consolidation capabilities on System z. The HP press release described a customer that had mainframes and Windows servers. By eliminating the mainframe, they had a common skill set based on Windows. But how real is a customer with a single computing infrastructure? Maybe for relatively small customers, but not with larger ones. RENFE is the Spanish national rail agency. Prior to its reorganization into the two new operating companies, RENFE was composed of 18 separate business units, each with its own intranet system running various line of business applications. These included human resources systems, helpdesk applications and various internal communication portals. To drive better integration across the business and improve process efficiency, RENFE made a strategic decision to create a single information portal for all employees and that was based on System z.
IBM is eating its own cooking by consolidating many of it’s thousands of application and database servers onto System z. But that’s not the whole story either. They are also consolidating some onto System p and some onto System x. In each case, IBM is looking at underutilized stand alone servers, the baseline for the PC server marketplace and leveraging virtualization technologies to get a large reduction in physical server images. IBM is putting the right workload in the right place that makes sense for the business environment. (The Trucks).
We see constant examples of taking 100’s of underutilized standalone PC servers and consolidating through virtualization down to 10’s of higher utilized PC or RISC servers or individual mainframe servers. In each case, the customers are saving substantially on labor, environmental and capital costs. HP will tell you that 100’s to 10’s is good enough.
IBM mainframes, though, can get that down to single digits in many cases.
Look at HP’s Brazilian Navy example. A lot of folks may perceive that a mainframe could never go on a Battleship, Aircraft carrier, early warning aircraft or other military location. Well, those folks would be wrong. Today’s modern mainframe, the System z, going as far back as the zSeries z800 processor meets or exceeds the electrical, floor space, ambient temperature, humidity, air pressure and vibration specifications necessary to satisfy the locations in which those servers may be deployed. See page 12 to view a subset of these specifications. In addition, it provides operational redundancy built into the hardware architecture and operating systems that exceeds the availability requirements necessary to satisfy those particular business needs. And with its open programming models, including Java, J2EE, C/C++, in addition to the venerable COBOL and PL/I capabilities, it provides a hosting environment to capture those programming needs.
In fact, development belongs on the desktop. The most creativity and tooling is possible in that desktop and you can reboot the system at will to test your applications. IBM’s Rational Developer for System z (RDz) and Rational Team Concert suites provide an Integrated Development Environment that can leverage the simplicity of the open programming environment through its Eclipse.org tool base, but easily apply those skills and knowledge to mainframe application deployment. You want mainframe development skills? You have them in your hands already. Get the tools and put those people to work.
One of the principals of the mainframe has always been that the operating system, middleware and hardware are responsible for data locking, security, system resilience, storage management and capacity management. This enables multiple workloads to operate as individual processes and maintain the integrity of the system and the data. On other platforms, it’s typically the application that is responsible for many of these characteristics. In order to achieve these qualities of service, additional products must be acquired and additional code may have to be written by application developers to deliver these qualities. The point of this all is that a business might actually reduce the amount of code necessary to achieve their business objectives if it was targeted for deployment on System z and reduce their operational risk at the same time. To summarize this point, it can be the same code from distributed systems in a mainframe operational container and deliver superior operational performance. Same code, different container with superior operations model.
So this started by pointing out inaccuracies in the HP press
release. How can a business use that information? Well, maybe to buy an
individual compute server, that information may be helpful (The Car). But
looking at an enterprise that needs to satisfy multiple business needs, it
doesn’t appear too helpful at all (The Truck). They use Apples to compare to Oranges
| by JimPorell | November 12, 2008 in Economics, Innovation, People, Systems Technology Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0) |
Recession-Proof Mainframe Jobs
NBC's Today Show featured a short segment on "recession-proof jobs." It's a short list, but as you can see in the video toward the end of the segment, one of the big categories includes IT professionals with mainframe-related skills.
| by Timothy Sipples | November 7, 2008 in People Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) |
Skills Shortage?
I spotted this advertisement while riding the Tokyo Metro (subway):
Basically the advertisement is promoting the ready availability of skilled system engineers and programmers with COBOL experience, with a Web link to find out more about hiring them for short-term or long-term work.
Joe Clabby has some thoughts on the "skills shortage" question. Synopsis: if there are talent shortages in certain countries, those shortages are not unique to mainframe-specific disciplines.
I agree. I remember well the late 1990s, at the height of the dot-com boom in the U.S., when big city radio stations carried breathless advertisements promising skilled IT workers $100,000 signing bonuses and the like. My employer experienced record levels of employee attrition in those years. My college roommate became a paper multi-millionaire overnight. (And at least somewhat less multi a few months later, but that's another story.) I was wondering whether I should also join the attrition bandwagon, as any rational person would.
To the nearest percentage, 0% of that surge in IT salaries and benefits had anything to do with mainframe-unique skills. Yet even at that time, you could find supposedly smart people preaching doom and gloom about mainframe skills shortages, all while the prices of LAN administrators and HTML authors rose into the stratosphere.
In reality, there's never a "shortage": salaries and benefits reach an equilibrium to balance supply with demand in each discipline at any particular moment in time. So I'm not sure why so many people talk exclusively about supply-side shortages. Why don't people talk about the shortage of employers willing to pay $1M per year to their C++ programmers or network firewall administrators, for example?
As a sanity check, is your company increasing COBOL developers' salaries at rates above general wage inflation? Usually the answer to that question is an emphatic "no." Possibly the answer to that question should be "yes," particularly if those developers' productivity is improving, which is typical (and valuable).
Also, why do people think that the supply of talent is fixed? Believe it or not, many people can learn PL/I programming for example, and many comparatively quickly. IBM keeps making it easier to cross-train; as Clabby points out, the uniqueness of mainframes from a skills point of view continues to decrease. And as Clabby also points out, IT professionals in many countries are eager to learn new skills in order to enhance their marketability and career prospects.
What are you seeing? What are the salary and productivity trends in your organization? If you have a mainframe-unique skill, are you getting paid more this year?
| by Timothy Sipples | August 1, 2008 in People Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) |
More Potpourri
1. The Chicago Tribune reports on the excellent career prospects for new mainframe professionals in Illinois. Illinois State University Assistant Professor Chu Jong, associated with that university's mainframe curriculum, says it's not uncommon for his graduates to receive six or seven job offers.
2. You can now download the open beta release of IBM's WebSphere MQ Version 7 for z/OS (and for Linux on System z) at no charge. Click on "Trials and demos" on the left menu to get there. MQ V7 will be generally available in late June, 2008, so don't wait too long to take the beta for a spin. Please let IBM know what you think.
WebSphere MQ is the most popular reliable messaging transport for connecting basically anything to anything. Many enterprise architects argue that WebSphere MQ is foundational to successful service-oriented architectures, especially on System z. I agree.
3. IBM reports 1Q2008 earnings after the U.S. markets close on Wednesday, April 16.
4. The Blocks and Files blog asks, "Seriously, why does IBM bother?" This skepticism arises after IBM researchers announced a breakthrough in spintronics memory technology which could lead to a new class of storage devices within 10 years.
It's a fair question, but there are some simple answers. The basic answer is that IBM has had tremendous success commercializing (and profiting from) storage technologies, so this research is hardly unusual and is in IBM's self-interest. Examples include hard disks, floppy disks, and most tape-related technologies (such as vacuum column loading). For example, Alan Shugart at IBM invented the floppy disk to load microcode onto System/370 mainframes and peripherals. The fact that other companies might also benefit from IBM's research — as "free loaders" — is interesting but not directly relevant to whether IBM spends money on R&D. IBM has done quite well collecting both direct sales and royalties from these inventions. And yes, R&D is inherently risky. IBM has spent a lot of money researching so-called millipede storage, and it's extremely unclear whether IBM will ever see any profit from that effort. But the only criterion that matters to IBM is whether the company itself is better off for investing billions in basic research. Given IBM's track record I side with the researchers: yes, it is, without a doubt.
It's also worth noting that there are some government subsidies that encourage certain types of research. The U.S. space program is one famous example. IBM does receive some government support, although the pharmaceutical and pure defense industries tend to receive a lot more.
I do think Blocks and Files raises an interesting point indirectly. If Wall Street is so focused on short-term quarterly results, putting pressure on research investments, how can society encourage more research? (Society is the ultimate "free loader." :-)) The traditional answer has been patents, but there are a lot of companies, including IBM, that think the patent system needs fixing.
| by Timothy Sipples | April 13, 2008 in Future, Innovation, People Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) |
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