2020 at iTech-Ed Ltd

2020 came as a bit of a surprise to most people. I can remember sitting in the pub with some old friends in January explaining, in more detail than they probably needed, what my ambitious plans for the year ahead were. Needless to say, most of them are now my 2021 plans (or 2022, perhaps). Working from home moved from being something that some people did sometimes to what we all did a lot of the time. And yet, much work was carried out and things in the mainframe world moved forward. As usual, at this time of year, I thought I’d take a look at the previous year, with the spotlight on what happened at iTech-Ed Ltd.

The exciting news in January was that Trevor Eddolls, CEO at iTech-Ed Ltd, was recognized by IBM as a 2020 IBM Champion. IBM said: “On behalf of IBM, it is my great pleasure to recognize you as a returning IBM Champion in 2020. Congratulations! We would like to thank you for your continued leadership and contributions to the IBM technology community. This recognition is awarded based on your contributions for the 2019 calendar year.”

Also in January, Trevor’s blog, “2019 in review with a look forward to 2020”, was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website. And his blog “The Who, What, Where, When, Why for Mainframe Security”, and “Joining the API economy” were republished on the Experfy Web site. Lastly, his Planet Mainframe blog was republished on the Maintec blog site as “Why non-mainframers are starting to fear the mainframe?”.

As usual, January saw the publication of the always popular Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2020 – it’s FREE. It gets downloaded around 21,000 times during the course of the year, and Trevor Eddolls is Editorial Director for this highly-respected annual source of mainframe information.

On 25 February, the Virtual CICS user group had an absorbing presentation from Al Saurette, Principal with MainTegrity, entitled “Providing system integrity for multiple LPARs with improved GDPR and PCI/DSS compliance”. It looked at File Integrity Monitoring to identify breaches in minutes not days. Also in February, Trevor’s blog, “The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2020”, was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website.

In March, Trevor’s blog, “What does the future of the mainframe look like?”, was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website.

On 7 April, the Virtual IMS user group learned how distributed techniques could be used with IMS databases. Broadcom’s Radek Mrvec’s talk was called “Java and SQL in IMS for z/OS Applications”. With well over 70 people attending, clearly this is a topic of great interest. Also in April, Trevor’s blog, “Mainframe online user groups make sense”, was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website.

On 12 May, the Virtual CICS user group enjoyed an excellent presentation from IBM’s Stew Francis called, “Extending CICS applications with Java using Maven and Gradle”. Also in May, Trevor’s blog, “Superordinate goals and life after Covid19”, was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website. At the end of May, Trevor’s “Interrrogation on Spiceworks” was published. Spiceworks is an online community for the IT industry.

On 9 June, the Virtual IMS user group enjoyed a brilliant presentation from Haley Fung, IBM Offering Manager for IMS. There was so much information. Her subject was “4 Paths to Digital Transformation in IMS”. Also in June, Trevor’s blog “Mainframers working from home” was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website.

On 7 July, the Virtual CICS user group had a great presentation from HostBridge’s CEO and co-founder Russ Tuebner called, “Getting and Using CICS Integration Analytics”. Also in July, Trevor’s blog “Who remembers Rexx?” was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website. And Trevor's blog entitled “Tell me about COBOL” was published on Planet Mainframe.

On 11 August, the Virtual IMS user group enjoyed an interesting presentation from Nick R Griffin, WorldWide IMS Specialist at BMC. His subject was “Implement IMS Analytics for Better Business Outcomes”. Also in August, Trevor’s blog “Mainframes, DevOps, and Containers” was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website. And, in August, Trevor’s article, “3 Device Management Challenges For Modern IT Operations (And How to Overcome Them)”, was published on the IT Toolbox website.

The Virtual CICS user group enjoyed a fantastic demonstration from Colin Pearce on 8 September. His presentation was entitled, “Installing and Connecting to CICS EXPLORER for a single CICS region”. Also in September, Trevor’s blog “The last part of the mainframe to modernize” was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website. Trevor also had a number of blogs published on the Experfy website. They were, “The last part of the mainframe to modernize”, “Mainframes, DevOps, and Containers”, and “Who remembers Rexx?”. Lastly, Trevor’s blog “Moving mission-critical mainframe workloads to the cloud” was published on Planet Mainframe. And in September, Trevor’s article, “5 Mistakes to Avoid When Planning PC Fleet Stability”, was published on the IT Toolbox website.

On 6 October, there was another great presentation to the Virtual IMS user group from Dusty Rivers, Director, z Systems Software: IMS & CICS at GT Software. He was discussing “IMS Can't do That... or Can It?”. Also in October, Trevor’s blog “The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2021” was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website. His blog “Moving Mission-Critical Mainframe Workloads To The Cloud” was republished on the Experfy website. Trevor also had articles published on the IT Toolbox website in October. There was “Why Businesses Need to Take Hardware-Based PC Security Seriously”, and also “Biggest Technology Mistakes During the Rush to Remote Work (Plus How to Avoid Them)”.

The 3 November saw another great presentation from Ezriel Gross, Principal Solutions Advisor at Rocket Software, to the Virtual CICS user group. His presentation was entitled, “Visualizing CICS performance data in Splunk using CICS Performance Analyzer”. Also in November, Trevor’s blog “Modern data security” was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website.

The Virtual IMS user group meeting, on 8 December, enjoyed a fascinating presentation from James Martin, Senior Solution Advisor at Rocket Software. He was discussing, “Performance and IMS”. Trevor’s article, “Modernizing PC Fleets Should Be Your Top Priority Right Now: Here’s Why”, was published on the IT Toolbox website in December. Also in December, Trevor’s blog “Blockchain as a Service on mainframes” was published on the IBM Destination Z user group part of the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community website. And, Trevor’s blog “Don’t Tell the CFO!” was published on the Planet Mainframe website.

Trevor continued to blog regularly and publish articles. And he continued to tweet at @t_eddolls, @virtualims, and @virtualcics. He’s on Instagram at @t_eddolls/. And on Facebook you can find him at fb.com/itech-ed, fb.com/VirtualIMS, and fb.com/VirtualCICS. And there are groups on LinkedIn for Virtual IMS (www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=379256) and Virtual CICS (www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3847862).

Looking forward to 2021, the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2021 will be published in January. The Virtual IMS and Virtual CICS user groups will continue to meet on alternative months throughout the year. Trevor will continue blogging and writing articles.

Find out more about iTech-Ed here.