Every year, about this time, mainframe users are excited to get their hands on the latest edition of the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook. What makes the Yearbook stand out is that it’s an excellent reference work for all IBM mainframe professionals – no matter how many years of experience they have.
The Yearbook provides a one-stop shop for everything a mainframer needs to know. For example, the mainframe evolution section includes a hardware timeline, and a graphic illustrating mainframe operating system evolution.
In addition, there’s the glossary of terminology section explaining what all those acronyms stand for, in a way that means you can understand them. This year, a number of entries were updated by Robert S Hansel (RSH) of RSH Consulting. We’re very grateful for his contributions, and we welcome input from other readers.
One section provides a guide to sources of information for IBM mainframers. This includes information on newsletters, magazines, user groups, blogs, mainframe-related apps, and social networking information resources. Amongst the things it highlights are Enterprise Tech Journal, the TechChannel website, IBM Listservs, SHARE’s Five Minute Briefing from Database Trends and Applications, Facebook pages, and LinkedIn discussions; as well as user groups such as SHARE and IDUG. There’s also a short discussion about IBM Tech TV.
The vendor directory section contains an up-to-date list of vendors, consultants, and service providers working in the z/OS environment. There’s a summary of the products they supply and contact information. As usual, some organizations have disappeared from the list and some new ones have been added this year – indicating that this is still an exciting marketplace to be in.
The mainframe strategy section contains articles by industry gurus and vendors on topics such as:
- The NeverEnding Story: Optimizing and Securing the Modern Mainframe
- Bigger Together: How to Maximize Mainframe’s Value.
For many people, the highlight each year is the mainframe user survey. This illustrates just what’s been happening at users’ sites. It’s a good way for mainframers to compare what they are planning to do with what other sites have done. I will be looking at some of the survey highlights in a future blog.
The other great thing about the Yearbook – as far as many of the 21,000 people who download it are concerned – is that it is completely FREE.
It can only be free because some organizations have been prepared to sponsor it or advertise in it. This year’s sponsor are: Broadcom Mainframe Software Division, and Vertali. Our advertisers are: Action Software International, Advanced Software Products Group Inc (ASPG), Baer Consulting, DataKinetics, Enterprise Systems Associates, Inc (ESAi), Information Technology Company (ITC), Key Resources Inc, and Planet Mainframe.
The 2023 edition of the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook is now available here. As usual, if you don’t want to download everything at once, each section is available as a print-quality PDF file.
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