People

Mainframe Home

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)

the greaterIBM connection

One of the many innovations Sam Palmisano has spearheaded at IBM is the idea of reaching out to "alumni". The first initiative was a few years ago when he hosted a reception for a group of former executives of the company. A few were retired but most were in senior positions in other companies. That was just the beginning and now the idea of reaching out has been expanded -- big time. The number of past and present IBMers is probably close to a million people. Establishing communications with such a huge base can be nothing but a good thing for the company.

When I left engineering school and joined IBM in 1967, it was common to look for a job at a company and expect to stay there your entire career. Nobody thinks that way anymore. If you tell someone you were with a company for decades, they might ask "what's the matter, couldn't you find any other jobs?". Another change is that in the old days if someone left the company they were considered a traitor and barred from coming back. Today, there are many executives that left the company at some point, got some experience at one or more other companies, and then brought that experience back into IBM. Some have come and gone multiple times. The turnover has strengthened the company.

And now we have social networks. In the early stages there was a perception that social networking meant eleven year-old girls on MySpace. Now businesses are realizing that it is more likely forty or fifty year-old business people on Facebook and Xing and LinkedIn and Plaxo Pulse. The Internet has enabled everyone to be connected to everyone. Whether it is reading blogs, posting to wikis, updating status on Facebook, or making new connections through viral invitations, it is clear that a big company like IBM has a lot to gain by "connecting" past, present, and future IBMers to each other and with the company. IBM calls it "the greaterIBM connection". On Monday evening the company hosted a greaterIBM reception at the Metrazur at Grand Central Station in New York. More than four hundred attended. It was good to reconnect with some colleagues I had not seen for quite a few years.

Will social networking payoff in business terms? Nobody knows for sure but in my opinion it is certain -- as soon as we see the New York Times run a front page story that social networking is a fad, in trouble or peaking out we will have confirmation that success is a sure thing. A short term inhibitor is that there are so many different social networks. As web standards evolve I am confident that we will have a world where people will create one profile and then be able to decide which part of their profile is accessible in which networks.

IBM sees the potential and is investing the time and resources to build a large and active network. The possibilities are endless -- collaboration on projects, networking to hire or get hired, crafting deals, referrals to and from IBM and its business partners. As a bonus, social networking is fun and good for morale. I look forward to continuing to be a part of the greaterIBM connection as it evolves. Upon e-tirement in 2001 after nearly four decades at IBM, I don't really feel like I left anyway! The stories that I have been writing since 1998 over at the patrickWeb blog fall into a number of categories. One section is devoted to "IBM Happenings". I am sure I will also be writing and linking at the greaterIBM connection along with others. Cross linking will increase the overall "connectedness". That's what the web is all about. I am really proud that IBM is taking networking and the blogosphere so seriously.

the greaterIBM connection
Greater IBM Wiki

by John Patrick

November 14, 2007 in History, Innovation, People Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Mainframe on YouTube - the sequels are in!

For all of you "Mainframe: Art of the Sale" fans, there are three brand new installments available now.

Bob's protégé is ready for his first sales call - but can he close the deal?

You'll have to see for yourselves.  Click below to view:
Lesson Four
Lesson Five
Lesson Six

If you've never seen "Mainframe: Art of the Sale," you might want to start with these:

Lesson One
Lesson Two
Lesson Three

by Kevin Acocella

November 13, 2007 in People Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (2)

Privacy Protection (Or: How to Avoid Going Out of Business)

There's a security crisis in our industry. Quite simply, businesses are failing to protect their customers' privacy, and corporate information is leaking everywhere it shouldn't be. IT architects need to think seriously about how to avoid these problems. If they don't, it's going to get a lot worse: at least as bad as the 2005 CardSystems case, for example.

I humbly suggest that businesses should follow an architectural pattern of "data recentralization." I hope people don't think this notion is a radical one. Think about the privacy problem statistically for a moment. It's much easier to protect information -- to apply reasonable and appropriate business controls -- if it isn't scattered everywhere. It costs a lot less, too, to have fewer, central data stores with authentication, authorization, audit trails, and data protection (backup, disaster recovery, etc.) There will always be tension between the need for convenient, immediate access to corporate information and strong governance. However, I don't agree that these objectives are necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, data recentralization helps promote a "single version of the truth," something that provides tremendous business value.

So why are some so-called experts totally confused about the technology solutions to this problem? Take this recent example in the trade press, which proclaimed that, "Encrypting data on a mainframe is difficult...."

Where on earth did that myth start?  Fortunately, an anonymous commenter immediately stomped on that false rumor, calling that particular assertion "dangerous" even. The commenter added, "The world would be a lot safer if our financial transactions relied exclusively on IBM mainframes, and many businesses are rushing to do exactly that."

by Timothy Sipples

April 24, 2007 in People Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Core Connectors

Greater IBM has made a "call for core connectors". Hmmm. Core connectors? What kind of cores are they that need to be connected? Most of the current IBMers are not old enough to remember "core" memory that was used in mainframes. Core connectors also sounds like something from a Lego parts list. Both of these thoughts are nostalgic but we all know that is not what IBM has in mind.

The goal is to build a social networking community -- a "place" where the possibilities are endless -- collaboration on projects, personal networking for jobs and deals, referrals to and from IBM, and networking just for the fun of it. One of the key questions being asked is how does Greater IBM get highly-networked 'core connectors' to spend the time to help get things going and spur organic growth of the community. Not easy for sure.

The challenge is that the people who are the best networkers are already so busy networking that it is hard to motivate them to take on yet another "channel" of communications. I encounter the same challenge at the numerous boards where I am privileged to serve and that have the same goals as IBM -- building their communities. I don't claim to have the magic answer but in short the best approach I have seen over the years is to apply tenacious program management, just as IBM is doing. Occasional emails from people encouraging the "cc's" to visit the blog and or group and post something eventually work. It is a given that the people with the most to contribute are also the ones with the least time and so the occasional nudge often causes things to happen.

The other angle is to publicize success stories about how the community has actually helped someone. It is best if the person actually helped tells their own story -- again perhaps with a little prodding. The successes are often subtle and indirect. It isn't that someone posts "I need a job" and they get an email with an offer for the dream job. More likely the job (or deal) comes from someone who knows someone who knows someone who read something about an opportunity or a person and then was able to make the connection. Sometimes there are multiple bank shots involved. Here is an example of what I mean.

I started writing "reflections" in 1996 and they evolved into my blog. In the early days of RSS (really simple syndication) many people didn't know what a blog reader was and didn't know how to include an RSS feed into their browser or news portal. I started enabling people to "subscribe" to my blog in a way that generates an email version of each story that I write. There are now more approximately 400 people who read patrickWeb via email. When readers like a story they tend to forward it to their friends and this results in more subscribers and more readers. Some of the readers are reporters. Sometimes a reporter will send an email asking for an interview. The interview gets covered in the press. XYZ Company decides to hold a conference for their customers and they call or visit the Washington Speakers Bureau to get an outside speaker. The WSB refers XYZ to the interview that was in the press and sets up an engagement for a paid speech. In some cases the story that lead to the chain of events may have had nothing to do with the ultimate subject of interest to XYZ -- it was the communications that lead to something that lead to something, etc. The same principles apply to getting a job or landing a deal.

Building the community and getting tangible results from it takes a lot of time and tenacity. Greater IBM is on the case and making progress. I encourage all of us out there with stories to tell to keep telling them. You never know where they will lead.

Other patrickWeb stories about blogging
Other patrickWeb stories about IBM

by John Patrick

August 27, 2006 in History, People Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Classified Ads - Personals - ?? Seeking ??

FIND LOVE AND STABILITY

Tired of being continuously available? Not me! I'm the world's leading self-healing, self-configuring, self-protecting and self-optimising enterprise server. If you're interested in having a low-maintenance relationship with your critical workloads, we could be a match made in heaven. Do you think you have the skills it takes to administer my environment?

by Timothy Sipples

June 10, 2006 in People Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Little Help Here

If you're at all familiar with IBM eServer Magazine, Mainframe Edition, you'll know that the final column that runs at the back of the magazine is called Stop Run, and it's a one page eclectic look at the mainframe world. It can highlight interesting people, unusual uses for a mainframe, ancient mainframes still in use today and just interesting stories in general that get passed around in the mainframe community.

Well, my folder of potential Stop Run topics is empty, with the exception of a dried squashed fly at the bottom. And, although I considered writing about that fly, I didn't think it would be all that interesting to mainframe readers. Soooo. . .

How's about it, mainframe blog readers? Do you have any interesting stories from your many, or few, years in the mainframe world? Do you have interesting mainframe-related hobbies? Non-mainframe-related hobbies? Have you ever killed anyone, and the guilt has eaten at you for so long, you want to confess in a future Stop Run? Are you suffering from a mainframe-related illness? If you answered yes to any of these, or you have ideas of your own you'd like to pitch by me, please let me know, either here, or e-mail me at rhodesr@us.ibm.com

Thanks, in advance, for any input you can provide on this.

by Yossarian9

December 13, 2005 in People Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Open Documents -- Part 3

The battle over OpenDocument Format has begun and Microsoft is using their traditional brass knuckles approach. It was revealed this week in some blogs that a recent article, "Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument", which ran at Fox News was written by a journalist hired by Microsoft. (See an interesting rebuttal). The stakes are high. The issue is who owns documents, the document creator or the software that was used to create the documents.

Let's make it personal and down to earth. Mr. and Mrs. Smith and their children all have computers on the local area network at home. They recently had a busy weekend. Mr. Smith created a presentation which he will take to a conference and present using his ThinkPad. Mrs. Smith wrote a newsletter which will be distributed to dozens of members in a local non-profit organization she belongs to. The Smiths' daughter completed a school term paper replete with graphical images, clip art, and photographs. The Smiths' son is a graduate student in business and he developed a spreadsheet to reflect a ten-year financial plan for a new business idea. Who owns these four documents? (read more)

by John Patrick

October 15, 2005 in Future, History, Innovation, People, Programming, Systems Technology Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

The Main Mainframe Blog

The folks at IBM tell me that readership at the Mainframe Blog is growing. This is not surprising. There are a lot of us "old timers" out there that have fond memories and many people around the world who are using, developing, extending, exploiting, and loving mainframes. You might say it is somewhat of a cult. The initial posts at the Mainframe Blog have been by current or formers IBMers, but knowing IBM's passion for collaborative innovation, it would not surprise me to see the blog opened up over time to a wide variety of points of view across the industry and customer base.





The Main Mainframe blog

Mainframes and the virtual datacenter

Other IBM related patrickWeb stories

by John Patrick

August 17, 2005 in Innovation, People Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

Response times?

I have just been reading that the UK is one of the most advanced broadband countries in the world, and our next wave of broadband is due to get us to 10Mb per second. Gosh, does that mean that we might approach the response times we have been enjoying on mainframes for the last 20 years or more?

And, no, I am not the only who thinks this way!

by pwarmstrong

August 9, 2005 in People, Systems Technology Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Why don't toasters work properly?

I have just read an intriguing article in the Daily Telegraph. It would appear that despite the fact that the Romans (what did the Romans ever give us? – see below)  mastered toast, manufacturers are still struggling to create an effective electric toaster.

Now, I do wonder how they determined that the Romans made good toast – did they find a piece lying around somewhere? However, that’s not the point.

In the article it says “dazzling displays and design can’t hide the fact that most toasters aren’t very good at their core function – making toast.”

I would like to offer a slight change to that sentence: “dazzling displays and design can’t hide the fact that most distributed systems aren’t very good at their core function – supplying a production level operating system.”

Yes, I am a lot older than James and the others here, and I was brought up in a mainframe world. I was raised on an operating system that was designed to do multi-tasking, recover itself from errors, was secure, and did not have to be rebooted every ten minutes. For more boring details about my life, click here or here.

Do I want everyone to throw away their wondrous new pretty Unix, Linux and Wintel boxes? No. Do I want people to throw away 30 years of hard-earned experience in how to run production systems? Also no.

What I want people to do is to take the best pieces from each world and build truly useful systems, which are designed to make businesses run better.

Ah yes, the Romans

They knew which side of the road you should drive on – Napoleon ruined it all later

by pwarmstrong

August 4, 2005 in History, Innovation, People, Systems Technology Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Jugendjahre

By now you might wonder who this "boas" is. I am an IBMer :-)
I was born close to the Black Forest. You have heard of it. It is where the cake comes from. And the wine. So how did I get on the wrong path and into Computer Science? People in the Black Forest have lot's of time in the long winter to think. They have a history as engineers to invent things, like the cuckoo clock. Quite early in the 80s, my Dad bought me a Kosmos CP-1, it had a 6 MHz 8bit CPU (Intel 8049) a foil keyboard and a 6 character LED UI. Programing was in machine code only. That was the start of my personal "you-need-to-have-the-latest-gadget" quest. So I upgraded to the Commodore 64. At my High School, we had a few IBM-compatible PCs that soon had me writing code in Turbo Pascal. When I was finished with my education, I found a job in the Boeblingen Development Lab supporting VSE/ESA customers and development of mainframe operating system components. College never taught me what I learned from this skilled team and the smart customers. For many decades they had build a heritage of ongoing refinement on how to run business critical production environments your round. But all these green screens and funny keyboards which of course were called Terminals. So a couple of us back in Germany had this idea to port Linux to the mainframe. Of course, the rest is history. With pride the code changes to the kernel were hosted on a Linux/390 system running at Marist College, you can still visit the page from back then. Since these days of my early youth, I got involved in other areas on Linux, such as on embedded devices and on the Cell chip. Right now, the design of Virtualization Engine keeps me busy.

by Boas Betzler

August 3, 2005 in People Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

On z9, mainframe blogging, serendipity, biography, killer marketing, and MVS geekdom

One of things that the blogosphere drives is serendipity, "the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident".

Links can make you lucky, and as Louis Pasteur said: "Chance favours the prepared mind".

What do i mean "links can make you lucky". For one thing most search engines work by counting links, so as links increase so does relevancy. For another, people follow and cluster and distribute links.Thus, when i recently posted a blog asking where are all the mainframe bloggers, I was expecting some kind of response. Someone somewhere was going to pull the link chain in.

What I didn't know was just how good my timing was. I had written the post months before, but never got round to posting it. As soon as I did though, July 15th, IBM's mainframe communications people jumped. They wanted to introduce blogging as an element of System z9 marketing and I had just made the kind of call to action they were already planning to.

So naturally they asked if I wanted to contribute to a group blog. I believe in making a contribution. But I am also zealous in guarding my independence. I wanted to know about the blog ownership, copyright, who else was involved. It may seem odd to say the one question I didn't ask was: "how much will I get paid?" But that is blogs for you.

I was reassured that IBM would include representatives from both the user community, but also, more importantly for credibility's sake, other mainframe vendors. I would not have got involved if it was just an IBM marketing vehicle. We'll see how this plays out. Finally, you will notice the blog is not even hosted by IBM.com.

That is because, increasingly, IBM gets it. People like Catherine Helzermann, James Snell, and executives with cojones, are leading IBM into the world of conversational marketing. One of the tenets of blogging, as far as I am concerned, is Be More Competitive By Being Less Competitive. If you are in attack mode all the time you tend to lose credibility, Ed Brill's solid FUD/anti-FUD work notwithstanding. I regularly link to other smart analysts with good ideas. I would rather do that than steal the idea and claim it as my own. And I know other firms can do things we at RedMonk can't, don't or won't.

So that's a few words on mainframe blogging, but what about biography? One key thing in starting a blog is to say a little bit about who you are and why you're doing it. Who is this James Governor cat, and why should I pay a jot of attention to what he has to say?

I am 35 and I have been covering the IBM mainframe ecosystem for ten years now. I used to be a reporter and editor. I think i can hear the knives on the grind stone. "This guy has been a journalist and analyst and expects to have any credibility? "

I will take that on the chin, but with a caveat.

When I started watching the mainframe in 1995 it really was grey hairs and geeks. I had to learn a new language and felt I had to fight for credibility in every meeting. I wasn't just 25; I was a young looking 25. Sometimes I thought about wearing glasses just to try and look more mature. The fear of being found out meant that I immersed myself in gorpy stuff like SNA, partitioning and virtualization, job scheduling, message-queing, workload management, the meaning of mixed workloads and I/O intensive operations. But you had to extend this stuff too - terminal emulation and middleware were bread and butter. I covered Amdahl and HDS, EMC and StorageTek, BMC and CA.

My colleagues called me "legacy boy". So much for legacy - many of the dotcom and networking firms they covered don't exist any more... What they called legacy I called production environments. And the age thing? I couldn't help but notice that boas, one of the other posters on this group blog, was born two years after me                        .

These days of course our skills are in demand. Every systems vendor out there has mainframe envy, and needs to get better at delivering on, and communicating, hardcore technical concepts for today's computing challenges. When I talk to Michael Emanuel about Microsoft's systems management strategy we both know that mainframe quality is the high bar-that is what Microsoft is shooting for.

According to this August 2004 interview in news.com Bill Gates is still measuring his company's efforts against the IBM System/360 project. He said:

 

Our scheduling and predictability on this project has   been better than it was on OS 360 (the mainframe operating system created by   IBM). So software has not gotten more complex. Software with this kind of   scope of features and compatibility has always been complex. That's the   business we're in.

I think the admission  is somewhat revealing of Gates's psychology, but that's a subject for a different blog...

Its worth taking a step back, at this point, to compare a couple of systems launches this week.

Microsoft began the long beta road to delivery of Vista.

IBM announced System z9 and some other assorted goodies.

What is kind of amazing is that, as far as I can see, IBM blew away Microsoft from a PR perspective.

News stories about Vista tend to raise more questions than they answered. What's the point, what's the value, when will it be here? Words like gripe and delay peppered the coverage.

IBM's z9 press coverage meanwhile was more like the US governments': it was all about certainty.

It was like John Kerry against George W Bush, with IBM as the Republicans.

I should make an admission at this point. I was pre-briefed on the IBM systems news last Thursday and I didn't think it quite made it. I fired off an email to that effect. You sure you tied the concepts together? I wasn't at the event in NY earlier this week but evidently IBM did just that.

IBM wanted to frame the debate using terms like "collaborative processing" and collaborative design. What the hell is collaborative processing? Who cares, as long as it means brand z9 and brand IBM are associated with one of today's hot memes, collaboration. And the association worked bloody well, as these links show.

So IBM got it right. z9 associations were aspirational and all about clarity.

What is one of businesses biggest concerns at the moment? Identity leakage and theft. While Microsoft is doing some good work with respect to security and ID, it was IBM earning the approval of column inches. Erich Clementi's story about tape and encryption evidently caught the imagination.

And for pranksters what about the names of these systems, and the cars they evoke?

Would you prefer a BMW concept car or a 1970s Oldsmobile station wagon?

What I also can't understand is why nobody at Microsoft used their search engine to see about other Vista Software companies. Its called due diligence. And it only takes a second. I guess when legal and out of court settlements become part of the business model you can get a little complacent. But if I was Steve Ballmer I would be firing someone this week.

No such problems for IBM z9, unless BMW wants to claim it is a software company now.

Not everyone was impressed with IBM's moves.

But all in all the proof is in the press. IBM has the third estate on side, and on message. At least for now. We'll know soon enough if that translates into sales.

One thing that I wanted to make sure I did when posting to the mainframe blog was to give hardcore geeks something to check out. Other bloggers or techies with similar interests. So how about MVS Turnkey emulation, open source style? SAP R/2 hands keep popping out of the woodwork. Here is some 3278 pr0n.

One final note before I go. If you want to read blogs you can make life very easy for yourself by using a simple online service called bloglines. Here is a how to guide. You don't need to visit a bunch of sites every day. Blogs come to you, which one of the reasons they are so useful.

Thus ends my first Mainframe Blog post.

by James Governor

July 29, 2005 in People Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack (1)

The Mainframe Geek

Recently on Slashdot I found myself reading many postings on the topic "What is Mainframe Culture?". It turns out that Mainframers have a real sense of identity. In fact, they seem to me like the prototype geeks. A geek is defined as a "person who is interested in technology". I went to Geekfinder and entered 'mainframe' as search expression. Sure enough, the result list had over 2000 matches. What would qualify you to apply for one of those?

You might be a real mainframe geek if ...

• YOU WRITE ALL YOU EMAIL UPPERCASE.
• when called to court, you look for a Principle Of Operation to take your oath on.
• you still think they should have never started casual Friday.
• you have a large supply of punchcards that you use to write shopping list on the back
• you have either grey hair or no hair.
• all your tattoos are in EBCDIC.

Seriously. There is one personality trait that mainframe people learned early on: to share. Sharing a bag of candies means that you don't eat them all yourself. It also means not to give them away to the first guy around, but to save some for your friends. Mainframers grew up with the concept that they don't own the machine and are not the only one online. That they cannot grab all the resources all the time. They had to apply for machine time to run their programs through the reader. When they started to use screen interface, they logged on to the "Time Sharing Option". Writing batch jobs, the first thing to declare is which resources are needed.

The concept of virtualization, sharing a system through the use of abstracted and architected interfaces, is inherent in the mainframe culture. Slowly the Unix geeks find out that more than one application can run in an Operating System. Recently more and more Windows geeks run multiple Operating Systems on the same machine. On Virtual Machines. Pretty soon, they all will cherish the mainframe culture. They will think twice before re-booting an OS just because there could be many other applications running. They will no longer turn the power off just because they see the blue screen of death. Clint Boulton has written a piece about a 24 year old programmer now hooked on mainframes.

In a virtualized IT infrastructure the server, network and storage resources are shared among all the business applications. Running a successful data center means to assign these resources to the applications and transactions according to business priorities along efficiency, reliability, availability and performance. If this what you do, treat yourself to a state-of-the-art caffeine delivery vehicle. You are real mainframe geek.

by Boas Betzler

July 25, 2005 in Future, History, People Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack (1)