x30 Years of Great Ideas and Counting

Today is the 48th anniversary of IBM's announcement of the System/360 mainframe on April 7, 1964, if you count in decimal like many mainframe applications and users do. However, if you count in hexadecimal, or base 16, like many computer scientists, including mainframe systems folks, do, then today is the 30th (or "x30"th) anniversary of that announcement. This seems like a good opportunity to reflect on some of the great innovations and ideas that have continued to come from the mainframe, up to and including the most recent SHARE conference in Atlanta.

First, though, let me offer a tip of the hat to Pandoria13 for comments received on the last blog. Also, I'll point out that I've enable monetization of this blog, and would be interested in feedback on this step.

Of course, the System/360 mainframe did not emerge in isolation - rather, it arose as the culmination of many years of advancement and culture, drawn fom earlier mainframes and ideas, and being the "love child" of IBM, SHARE, and the organizations that were taking the journey of defining what an ideal business computer should do and be.

In fact, unlike UNIX, Linux, Windows and MacIntosh, technologies around which a culture formed, the mainframe was the manifestation of an already-existing culture which has continued to be a core part of that platform.

So, some of the original innovations associated with the mainframe in the 1960's and 1970's were also present, at least as concepts, in other earlier and competing platforms at the time. But they generally received their most enduring manifestation in what became today's leading-edge mainframe, including:

• Virtual memory
• Virtual machines
• Full system integrity and security

And, of course, many, many more.

Which leads us to the latest and greatest insights at SHARE. Though I must confess that some of the best ones I got were from an excellent interview with John Ehrman, a father of modern mainframe assemby language, for the mainframe history book that Dr. Steve Guendert and I are working on. Learning about the sources and outcomes for decisions about how the underlying language of the machine grew and adapted was fascinating.

The keynote about how "Boring Meetings Suck" by Jon Petz followed by a session later in the afternoon where he elaborated was also of interest, and a motivator to be more effective in business, including mainframe IT.

Of course, there were many interesting technology keynotes, sessions and discussions.

Two of the sessions that most grabbed my attention were a Wednesday morning one for new mainframers, where a room full of high school and university students got to learn about the mainframe thanks to the IBM Academic Initiative and some related presentations (including a quick one I was able to give about zNextGen), after which they got to check out the Technology Exchange; and a session about local mainframe user groups - which I hope leads to further discussion.

The evening receptions were great opportunities to network and share and learn information about the latest and greatest on the mainframe.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that many of the sessions make good starting points for future blogs, so I think that's where I'll leave it for today... stay tuned!

Leading Big Iron Edge

SHARE in Atlanta last week was an excellent event. Not only did I catch some great keynotes and many other valuable sessions, not only did I get to be with hundreds of my friends and favourite mainframers including many of the key players in the mainframe ecosystem, but I had the opportunity to see some of the many ways that the mainframe continues to be the most technologically-advanced business computing platform around.

But before I dig into the details, a couple of other notes, beginning with thanks for the comments on last week's blog post from my friend Marcel den Hartog (zMarcel) in the Netherlands and from my colleague Jerry Seefeldt with whom I attended a great session/discussion about local mainframe user groups at SHARE. It's inspiring to see the growing interest in local mainframe user groups, and I'm looking forward to seeing how they connect up and what role SHARE is able to play in it.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that I met with my friends and colleagues from key mainframe publications at SHARE, including MainframeZone and the associated magazines z/Journal and Mainframe Executive, and IBM Systems Magazine (mainframe edition). I'm looking forward to continuing to publish articles and such with all three. And, I'd like to take the opportunity to refer you to the video series "Big Iron: The Mainframe Story (so far...)" which I worked on with the folks at CA Technologies, IBM Systems Magazine and various mainframe luminaries to produce. It's a great way to get more familiar with the mainframe.

Once you've seen those videos, you're ready to find out about just how leading edge today's mainframe is. I certainly was as I roamed the Technology Exchange Expo floor, and I was impressed with what I saw.

As always, IBM had the biggest booth, and in addition to having an actual mainframe running on the floor, they had other techology and plenty of people and stations to tell the world about all the great things happening on the mainframe that are keeping it at the forefront of high-end business computing, including Linux-on-z/VM cloud computing. One of IBM's biggest emphases was on their Smarter Planet initiatives.

Fortunately, the mainframe is much more than just IBM: it's an ecosystem with many technology vendors and the largest organizations on earth as the customers. So, each vendor had one or more (sometimes many more) things to show the world about how they're making the mainframe better all the time.

Many of the products are about enabling the mainframers of today and tomorrow to be more effective, including CA Technologies' role-based CA Mainframe Chorus workspace, and Chicago-Soft's Application Knowledge Capture™ service to retain valuable understanding from imminent retirees.

Of course, forming and educating a new generation of mainframers is a key focus, so Interskill was there, and CA Technologies announced scholarships for their Mainframe Academy.

There were also solutions for bringing greater end-to-end integration and functionality between the mainframe and the rest of the computing world, such as the Mainframe Event Acqusition System™ (MEAS™) which provides integration of real-time mainframe event information with McAfee's Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platforms.

One company, UNICOM® Global, even had their Founder, President & CEO Corry Hong at their booth, and giving presentations, in order to introduce everyone to all the solutions - both established and new - that they're involved with.

In addition to the content on the exhibit flor, there were also various other news and articles in the SHAREnews Dailies. And there were many discussions, including a focus group about "Big Data."

Of the many interesting sessions one of my favourites was Cheryl Watson's Hot Flashes, which has many of the latest and greatest tidbits about how to make mainframes run even better.

After a week at SHARE, it's clear that the mainframe is constantly staying ahead with world-class functionality and all the most modern technology to respond to the business needs of the largest organizations on earth, today and for the foreseeable future.

And SHARE is the place where it all connects.

Next blog post, I plan to share some interesting thoughts and insights from the various sessions and discussions I enjoyed at SHARE.

SHARE

Back in the earliest days of business computing, when all printing and displaying of text was uppercase, it became apparent that the users of this technology would benefit from getting together to share their innovations and lobby for the improvements that would best respond to their business needs. Thus it was that, in 1955, nine years before the announcement of the System/360 mainframe, SHARE was born.

57 years later, the semi-annual SHARE conference has now opened in Atlanta with a great keynote by Jon Petz about how to survive and improve business meetings, to be followed by a week full of technical and how-to sessions.

When SHARE was founded, the name was what they did - not an acronym, but uppercase because computers didn't offer lowercase letters back then. One of the most important things that emerged from their first nine years of lobbying for their business computing requirements was the announcement of IBM's System/360, the epitome of business computing and progenitor of today's mainframe.

In keeping with SHARE's business orientation, the Monday and Tuesday of the conference now also include a parallel ExecuForum for key IT decision makers to meet and discuss issues from a business perspective. Many of these folks started their careers as mainframe technical experts before moving eventually to their current responsibilities.

One of the most important things SHARE has always offered above and beyond its sessions is an opportunity for business computing professionals - particularly those reponsible for large-scale business IT that includes mainframes - to network and do dynamic problem solving among peers. This hearkens back to the origins of SHARE, and it's something you'll see and hear in the hallways between sessions, at the various receptions, on the exhibit floor, in the session rooms before and after the presentations, and at meals and coffee meetings between colleagues who only ever see each other at SHARE - sometimes even if they work for the same organization!

While SHARE was the first computer user group ever founded, it didn't take long for others around the world to follow suit, so sister organizations in Europe and Pacific Rim countries have also existed for most of SHARE's history.

However, SHARE is the pinnacle - or, as I prefer to think of it, the nexus - of mainframe and large enterprise computing user organizations. And it's where you'll meet the key players - both people and organizations - in the ecosystem.

Interestingly, while SHARE is now 57 years old, it's actually getting younger. The number of first-time attendees seems to increase each time. Many of these newbies will associate with the zNextGen project at SHARE, but regardless of whether or not they do that, you'll see them taking every opportunity to chat with and learn from the many highly-experienced attendees who are delighted to be able to mentor them.

Of course, the session content is of significant value all by itself, so many people who can't be at SHARE in person are virtually attending SHARE Live! from Atlanta to benefit from the keynotes and other valuable sessions.

However, the opportunities that come from attending in person are even greater, and they include not only networking and mentoring, but also building lasting friendships that can be there for you at a time of need. I have personally experienced this.

Being at SHARE in person has yet another benefit: the Technology Exchange Expo, where you can meet people from just about any organization that wants to be seen as a credible part of the mainframe ecosystem, and learn about the latest in business information technology.

For those who wish to take their benefits even further, there are many volunteering and speaking opportunities, as SHARE is a volunteer-run organization (with the paid assistance of an organization that handles many of the logistical details, of course). That means that, whether you'd like to develop your speaking, people, or organizational skills, there are ways to do so with SHARE.

SHARE also has its share of traditions, from pins and ribbons on badges, to receptions, to group dinners and networking events, to special sessions that everyone tries to attend. One of my favourites has always been "Cheryl Watson's Hot Flashes" which is  at 9:30 am on Friday morning, and contains a summary of everything significant happening in the mainframe ecosystem, much of which she has gleaned from the content of the week leading up to her session.

Why all this detail about a user group and educational conference? Because, until you've understood the mainframe community and culture, you can't possibly understand the platform. The mainframe is much more than merely technology: it's at the beating heart of the key organizations in the world economy, and the beating heart of the mainframe is the people that make it run. And those people can be found at SHARE.

In my next blog post, inspired by all the leading-edge technology being announced and displayed at SHARE, I intend to write about some of the important innovations currently happening on the mainframe.

Easy Does IT

In my last blog post, I discussed the generations of mainframers, and called the current new generation of the technical experts that will act as the beating heart of this platform "Generation Easy." The problem is, getting this generation fully in place before the previous ones depart is not turning out to be particularly quick or easy. This post is about how to make it so.

First, though, I should mention that I also had some nice and appreciated comments from friends of mine in generations Charlie and Easy - thanks!

In 2005, I wrote a whitepaper and an article, and gave a presentation at SHARE, about the need to get a new generation in place on the mainframe, and what steps were necessary to do so. Since then, I've continued to develop my thinking and experience on this, and am continuing to write more articles on the topic as well.

So, this blog post is a good opportunity to sketch out the basics. To find out more, you can read my articles at MainframeZone.com and the related magazines (z/Journal and Mainframe Executive), or contact me for a consultation or presentation.

The first step is to hire new people while you still have experienced ones around to teach and mentor them, and do a proper transfer of responsibilities.

In-house projects and mentoring, including tracking down and updating obsolete configurations and programs, are important activities to get them going.

However, before that happens, you'll likely need to get your new people introduced to the mainframe, unless you're lucky enough to hire people have have done some initial learning at universities and colleges working with the IBM Academic Initiative. Even in those cases, though, some additional training can be helpful. There are a number of good options for this. Three that I'm familiar with (though this is not an official endorsement) are:

1) Have them join the z/NextGen project of SHARE (free). This will give them the opportunity to start connecting and learning, and also give them access to a select number of mainframe introductory eLearning courses made available for free to z/NextGen members by the folks at Interskill.

2) Go for the whole meal deal and sign them up for the complete selection of eLearning courses from Interskill.

3) Sign them up for CA Technologies' Mainframe Academy.

Of course, there are other options for introductory courses as well - and, ideally, if your organization is big enough to have its own mainframe, you should also have some of your own in-house introductory courses to help people get familiar with your particular context.

I can also strongly recommend self-study to complement this, and IBM's Red Books are excellent resources for this purpose.

Now, once your new people have the basics in place and have begun being mentored, getting to know your environment and doing introductory projects, the next important thing is to get them connected and acculturated into the mainframe culture. If you've already signed them up for z/NextGen, you've made a good start. Getting them involved with such communities is important. The follow-on step is to send them to a mainframe educational conference such as SHARE.

In fact, if you happen to be in the Atlanta area (or have the financial and schedule flexibility to make a last-minute travel booking), I can strongly recommend sending your newbies to attend SHARE in Atlanta next week. Or, you can sign them up to attend virtually with SHARE Live! from Atlanta.

In addition to the above, you'll want to update your local mainframe technology and culture to be more compatible with this new generation, and the one that follows it. I intend to dig into that in future blog posts. And, of course, there's room for plenty of elaboration on the above basics.

Next week, however, I plan to blog more about SHARE.

Generations

The mainframe ecosystem has had several generations of people in charge of it, each learning from the previous while bringing their own abilities, insights, and eventually experiences. While it's somewhat arbitrary to draw a line between each of these, it can help in understanding where we are today, so let me give it a try.

But first, I'd like to thank my two commenters from last week's post: Jim Michael, my friend and mentor and someone who is approximately in or next to my "generational band" though much wiser and slightly more chronologically gifted, and Kristine Harper, my friend and a leading member of the current new generation of mainframers (Gen-E referred to below).

Now, I'd say the first generation of mainframers are those who started their careers before the advent of electronic computing. Let's call them "Generation Able." Many of them had been in the military during World War II, and brought that culture and scrupulousness to their establishment of the culture of computing, and eventually to mainframe computing.

I'll designate the next one, "Generation Baker," and group those who started their careers on early computers, and ended up spending most of their careers on the mainframe.

The third one, "Generation Charlie," are those who started out on the mainframe when it was already in place and running - some time in the mid-to-late 1960's, the 1970's, and 1980 to 1982. For them, computing was mainframe was computing for the formative years of their careers.

In 1983, Time Magazine declared the PC "Man of the Year" and the world of computing changed forever. Suddenly, everyone spoke of the mainframe in the past tense as they looked to the future of computing on other platforms. Those hardy (or foolhardy, depending on whom you ask) few who went into mainframe careers were seen as non-mainstream, to put it politely. I was among them. We are "Generation Dog," and I include everyone who came on board before Y2K preparations took off, around 1997. We are few in number, because many from the previous generations were still around, organizations were not investing well in building a new generation on the mainframe thinking it was going away, and mainframes were requiring fewer and fewer people to keep them running, even as they continued to grow their capacities, but also their reliability and maintainability.

Y2K changed everything, as organizations realized they had invested too deeply into highly-functional mainframe environments to simply move off, so they had to update their code to survive the turn of the millennium. The world was slowly waking up to the fact that the mainframe had become a fixed foundation of large-scale IT. Those who have begun their careers since this time, while still slim in numbers, knew they had brilliant careers ahead of them, being responsible for the most important computing platform on earth. I call them, "Generation Easy."

Suddenly, everything is changing, and the ultimate generation is about to arrive: "Generation Fox." They will inherit a mainframe unlike that of their predecessors, and take part in its becoming so. The mainframe will be simpler to maintain, manage and deploy new applications for than ever, and will likely show itself to be the optimal platform for top-quality cloud computing. Unlike their technically-oriented predecessors, many in this generation will be as focused on business results as on the bits and bytes of how-to. And, if (as I expect) a tipping point of rediscovering the mainframe is reached, this new generation will also balloon as organizations invest in using the mainframe for the newest and most leading edge applications.

However, they're not here yet, and the first five generations are made of highly-competent, trustworthy, hard-working technologists who have passed down practices, cultures and user groups that have become the infrastructure of this essential platform. We will continue to need their ilk at the foundation of mainframe computing, regardless of how many of the new business-oriented generation flood in. So, my advice to organizations looking to the future of their mainframes is, hire quality now, mentor them, get them tried and proven, and then you'll be able to ensure that the mainframe continues to run well as all the Gen-F's start to flood in. Because your mainframe's not going away, but Gen's A through D are, and soon.

Next week, I'll talk about some of the ways to get a new generation in place on time to respond to the imminent challenges and opportunities on the mainframe.

...Then a Miracle Happens

A favourite cartoon of mine shows two academics at a chalk board, with a complex set of equations on the left hand side and a simple, elegant solution on the right hand side. One of them is saying to the other, "I think you need to be more explicit here" while indicating the bridge between the two sides, which is a cloud containing the words, "Then a Miracle Happens." In many ways the mainframe is like this: with all the wondrously complex things from hardware to applications running together in unison to deliver business value, it's easy to forget that none of it would be possible without that central part that makes everything happen - the people and culture of the mainframe.

Of course, long before the first computer, let alone the first mainframe, there were people. People invented the mainframe, and gave it its culture. People made and improved the hardware, operating systems, middleware and applications. People learned how to use the mainframe, building on their best abilities learned from other contexts, including in the military during the second world war. Those same people worked together to establish the culture of the mainframe, including everything from scrupulous planning and change control to a special way of saying and seeing things unique to the mainframe culture.

If you've read any blogs I've previously written before starting Mainframe Analytics (for example, "How to Talk Like a Mainframer"), you'll know that one of my favourite examples of the culture passed down from WW II military veterans is the words mainframers use for the first six letters of the alphabet: Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, Fox (rather than the current Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot). These were the standard in WW II, and were in habitual use by the earliest mainframers. Consequently, they got passed down through the generations, and continue to be widely used today.

Another thing that came down the generations is SHARE, one of the remaining great mainframe user groups, and in many ways the nexus of the lot. Founded in 1955, nine years before IBM announced the System/360 which is the ancestor of modern mainframes, it was intended to enable users of IBM's business computers, including early mainframes, to share information in order to ease the task of getting value from them. Today, at 57 years old, SHARE is still going strong - in fact, their next meeting will be in Atlanta in March.

Now, there's a lot to be said about the culture of the mainframe and the various generations of mainframers - in fact, I've written quite a few articles on the topic (check out http://mainframezone.com for a good number of them). So, rather than making this post a big long one that talks about all of them, I'll stop here for this week, and pick up next week with a discussion of the state and future of the mainframe workforce.

App Location

Why do we use computers? What led to them being developed in the first place? What is it they do that we can't just have lots of people do instead? The simple answer is, we use computers for the applications that run on them, which do valuable things that would be impossible, unpleasant or prohibitively expensive to have people do them for you instead.

By now, most of us are used to the concept of "apps" - those single-user-focused applications that run on personal computing devices such as smart phones. Of course, "app" is just an abbreviation for "application" which is what mainframes were built to run.

The journey of recognizing the "application layer" of computing as distinct from the rest of the technology has been a long one, and it could be argued that it will never be entirely complete, because some people will always buy technology for the sizzle (i.e. bells and whistles) rather than the steak (the value it actually brings). However, on the mainframe, this journey substantially concluded a long time ago.

Today, the applications that run on the mainframe handle business at a global scale. They do billing and accounts receivable, HR, decision support, customer account handling, large-scale postal sorting, addressing and stamping, and many, many other business functions that require a massive capacity for data and throughput with total reliability.

As with smartphones and PCs, some mainframe applications can be bought from vendors, and may even run with very little customization. However, there are also many applications that are highly customizable - ERP systems (i.e. Enterprise Resource Planning, such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle Financials, etc.) are a good example of this kind.

The nice thing about those vendor-supplied applications is that they're kept current and maintained, so the customer's job is just to keep installing and configuring the latest upgraded version - which is a lot more work than it sounds like, but a lot less work than writing and updating their own.

However, one of the most important kinds of application on the mainframe is in-house. These are the trade-secret, competitive-advantage, bread-and-butter applications that do unique things that no other organization does in exactly the same way. In fact, they generally embody an organization's essential identity. They have been written and maintained in-house, often for decades, and they provide core functionality, which is often built on and extended with distributed applications that sink deep roots into them.

Interestingly, while these can be some of the most valuable applications, they're also some of the most problematic, because, as they get more and more established, it becomes harder and harder to change them to respond to new needs and opportunities without adversely affecting other mainframe and non-mainframe applications that rely on they way they behave.

This often results in very complex circumstances when two large organizations merge, and they have applications with overlapping functionality. Trying to modify them to work together can be something of a nightmare, complicated by the fact that they also use data sources (usually databases) that have completely different natures as well. This is the point at which frustration may set in, and tried-and-proven applications may be set aside for vendor-provided solutions, often on non-mainframe platforms. Which, in my opinion, is a shame, given the functionality, reliability and competitive advantages that can often be sacrificed for the sake of short-term convenience.

There is a whole range of solutions that exist to enable "modernization" of mainframe applications that have been around long enough to get into an inertial funk. These include: lift-and-shift solutions to run mainframe applications mostly unmodified on other platforms; solutions that reverse engineer applications into a business rules representation for re-generation to the platform (and programming language) of choice; and solutions that build connections into and around the established ones to enable building on their functionality (on and off the mainframe) without substantially modifying them.

In any case, there are many billions of lines of programming in the mainframe applications that run the world economy, and they have proven themselves over the decades to work very well, so they're generally not going away any time in the foreseeable future. Which means that it's time for responsible people to start making long-term plans to maximize the benefit of their mainframe applications to their organizations, rather than just taking them for granted and trying to squeeze value out of them without sufficient care and feeding.

Care and feeding... yes, that's a very important topic, and not just for the mainframe hardware and software, because an essential part of what makes the mainframe great is the human side: people and culture. I'll write about that next time.