2022 at iTech-Ed Ltd

2022 was the year that we moved away from Covid restrictions and started to act the way we did in 2019. It was the year of the great resignation, when many people decided that they didn’t want to go back to their old job, and quite few decided that they didn’t want to work at all.

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.

In January, Trevor Eddolls was awarded the IBM Z Community Advocate – 2021 (Level 2) badge for actively contributing to the IBM Z and LinuxONE community. It seems that he is in good standing with his IBM Z and LinuxONE peers and he’s passionate about taking his advocacy to the next level. He has, they say, expert skills in IBM Z and LinuxONE and can be expected to regularly contribute technical knowledge to the community.

On 11 January, the Virtual CICS user group had a very interesting presentation from Wendell Lovewell, product manager and systems programmer for MacKinney Systems. He was discussing, “Taking the pain out of CICS application debugging”.

Also, January saw the publication of the always popular Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2022. You can download a copy here – it’s FREE. Last year’s edition was downloaded around 21,000 times during the course of the year, and Trevor is Editorial Director for this highly-respected annual source of mainframe information.

In addition, Trevor’s article, “Mainframe and IT 2021 Review, With a Look Toward 2022”, was published on the new TechChannel website.

The exciting news in February was that Trevor Eddolls was recognized by IBM as a 2022 IBM Champion. IBM said: “On behalf of IBM, it is my great pleasure to recognize you as a returning IBM Champion in 2022. 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 2021 calendar year.”

On 8 February, Dusty Rivers, Director, z Systems at Adaptigent, gave the Virtual IMS user group another interesting presentation entitled, “IMS as a client in the new world”.

Also in February, Trevor’s article, “Top Serverless Frameworks IT Pros Should Consider in 2022”, was published on the Toolbox website (now Spiceworks).

The Virtual CICS user group enjoyed a hugely interesting presentation, on 8 March, from Joe Winchester, IBM Senior Technical Staff Member, and Jeffin Siby, Lead developer on the Zowe Explorer for IBM CICS. They were discussing, “How Zowe makes the mainframe open, simple, and familiar”.

Also in March, Trevor’s article, “Get the New 2022 Arcati Mainframe Yearbook”, was published on the TechChannel website. And Trevor’s article, “Why the Future of Work Depends on PC Fleet Stability and Predictability”, was published on the Toolbox website (now Spiceworks). Lastly, Trevor’s article, “Connect me to the mainframe”, was published on the Planet Mainframe website.

On 12 April, the Virtual IMS user group enjoyed a very knowledgeable presentation from Loc Tran, Lead Software Developer at BMC Software. His presentation was entitled, “How to use IMS log records to investigate transaction response time”.

Also in April, Trevor’s articles, “Highlights From the 2022 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index” and “Can IMS Connect to the Outside World?” were published on the TechChannel website.

On 10 May, the Virtual CICS user group had an interesting presentation from Robert Barnes, CEO at Jazz Software. He was discussing, “CICS Web services – bridging two worlds”.

Also in May, Trevor’s article, “Mainframe Security: Are There More Gaps in Your Defenses Than You Thought?” was published on the TechChannel website.

In June, Trevor Eddolls earned the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community Contributor – 2022 (Level 1) badge. He also earned the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community Advocate – 2022 (Level 2) badge. “The badge earner has expert skills in IBM zSystems and LinuxONE and can be expected to regularly contribute technical knowledge to the community.” And, he earned the IBM Z and LinuxONE Community Influencer – 2022 (Level 3) badge. He is described as “a thought leader and viewed as a technical expert”.

The Virtual IMS user group enjoyed another interesting presentation from Haley Fung, IBM Product Manager for IMS and Ansible for Z, and Ajay Jashnani, Senior Software Engineer at IBM on 14 June. They were discussing “Ansible and IMS: Part II – Getting started with the Ansible IMS collection”.

Also in June, Trevor’s article, “Why Git Is Valuable to the Mainframe” was published on the TechChannel website.

On 12 July, the Virtual CICS user group had a great presentation from Stewart Francis, Lead Software Engineer at IBM. He was discussing, “Developing and modernizing CICS applications with Ansible”.

Trevor’s article, “Modernization and the Mainframe as a Service” was published on the TechChannel website in July.

The 9 August saw a fact-filled meeting of the Virtual IMS user group, when James Martin, Senior zSolutions Advisor, System Z, at Rocket Software discussed “What’s New with IMS Performance Solution Pack”.

Also in August, Trevor’s article, “Why Ansible Is Emerging as a Top Automation Tool for Mainframes” was published on the TechChannel website. In addition, his article entitled “4 Reasons Why Remote PC Management is Critical for Hybrid Work Era” was published on the Spiceworks website.

On 13 September, the Virtual CICS user group enjoyed an interesting presentation from Russ Teubner, Distinguished Engineer (formerly CEO, HostBridge Technology), and Greg Smith, Software Engineer, Mainframe Software Division at Broadcom, who were discussing “Using Analytics and AI to Find and Fix Inefficient Patterns in CICS Integration”.

September also saw Trevor’s article, “The Costs of Data Breaches in 2022” be published on the TechChannel website.

The Virtual IMS user group, learned a lot about provisioning databases in a modern way on 11 October, when Radek Mrvec, Staff Software Engineer | Mainframe at Broadcom Software, presented.

Also in October, Trevor’s article, “Tell them about mainframes”, was published on the Planet Mainframe website. In addition, Trevor’s article, “Identifying Top Cloud Security Issues”, was published on the TechChannel website.

On 1 November, Trevor gave a presentation to the security stream at this year’s GSE conference. It was entitled “Ransomware, gaps in SMF records, and detection options”.

Also in November, Trevor’s article “Enable Rapid Ransomware Recovery With IM Software”, was published on the TechChannel website. In addition, his article “COBOL – past, present, and future” was published on the AIOps community website. Lastly, his article “Welcome to the Virtual Db2 user group” was published on the Planet Mainframe website.

There was another great presentation from Ezriel Gross, Principal Solutions Advisor at Rocket Software on 15 November to the Virtual CICS user group. He was discussing, “OMEGAMON for CICS on z/OS 5.6 and CICS Performance Analyzer for z/OS Next Release and Features”.

In December, Trevor’s article “How to Navigate Ransomware Attacks”, was published on the TechChannel website.

Also on 13 December, there was a very informative presentation to the Virtual IMS user group  from Joseph Leamon, IMS Software Engineer (UDB) at IBM and Mahmood Abuzaina, Software Engineer at IBM. They were discussing “Distributed access to IMS via Java”.

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 (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3792561/) and Virtual CICS (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3847862/).

Looking forward this year, the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2023 will be published in January. The Virtual IMS and Virtual CICS user groups will continue to meet on alternative months throughout the year. In addition, there is a new Virtual Db2 user group, which has its first meeting in January. In addition, Trevor will continue blogging and writing articles.

Find out more about iTech-Ed here.