Mainframes – the state of the industry

No-one who really knows mainframes thinks that they are going away anytime soon. However, that isn’t the commonly held view by people who don’t really understand what a mainframe is and does. In fact, I have written previously about the importance of mainframers explaining the benefits of using a mainframe to non-mainframe specialists in the IT sphere, and management in general.

Notwithstanding the fact that mainframes and the idea of using mainframes has been under attack since the 1990s, it’s useful to understand what mainframes are doing at the moment and where they are planning to go in the near future.

Let’s start with modernizing the mainframe – a term that pigeon-holes the mainframe as being an anachronistic device little changed during its sixty-year lifespan. Firstly, the mainframe is very modern. It has AI integrated onto its chips. It keeps data secure at rest, in flight, and in use. These are things that would have been little more than science fiction in 1964.

So, is using the cloud a good idea for mainframe sites? The answer, like the curate’s egg, is yes and no – using the cloud is good in parts. There are some things that the cloud does better than the mainframe, and I would suggest that applications or parts of applications that need to use those facilities should use the cloud. There are other things that the mainframe does best. Those applications or parts of applications should stay on the mainframe. There seems to be too much all-or-nothing thinking going on in meetings discussing mainframes and the cloud. You really want to cherry pick the best bits of each platform.

The other big topic – in terms of column inches being written about it – is artificial intelligence (AI). Everyone has heard of AI. Lots of people have tried ChatGPT or Gemini (aka Bard). But few people really get what it means. I now get emails telling me that someone is using AI, for example that podcast platforms are now using Ai. And to the untrained eye that looks like a step into the future – but it’s a future built mainly on ideas taken from Sci Fi movies and TV shows. If I have a medical scan and need someone to interpret the blobs on that scan, then an AI is probably exactly what I want to do it accurately. If I want some kind of artificial generalized intelligence (AGI) then I’m probably going to have to wait. And it’s the AGIs that films and TV usually show – usually as the villain!

For mainframers, AIs trained to do specific tasks are great and are worth investigating further. Hoping for something like HAL in the film 2001 is still a long way off. However, using an AI to hack a mainframe is possible because it is a task that an AI can be trained to do successfully. And that means a ransomware as a service (RaaS) AI could be made available to anyone who could pay for it and had a grudge against an organization or who simply wanted to see what would happen. Like every new technology, Ai can be used for good or evil. It certainly makes the idea of using AI to protect the mainframe a very important project to initiate. When I say protect, what I’m really talking about is suspending jobs or users that seem to be doing something untoward, and alerting the security team. The team can investigate further and either resume the job because it is OK, or take further action against the would-be hackers.

Thirdly, with so many mainframers looking to retire in the near future, or who have already retired and are working as consultants a few days a week, there needs to be a way to keep mainframe expertise within an organization. I think there are two main strands to solving this problem. Firstly, mainframe education is needed to help people understand how mainframes work. IBM recently introduced its Mainframe Skills Council as way to close the mainframe generational skills gap. It’s not just IBM, the Skills Council includes Academic Mainframe Consortium, Albany State University, Broadcom, DNB Bank, HOGENT, M&T Bank, Northern Illinois University, Rocket Software, SHARE, and 21CS.

And if enough people can’t be trained to become mainframers, the second approach is to use open-source software (OSS) on the mainframe. Now I know that warning bells sound for some people whenever I mention open-source software and mainframes in the same sentence, however, there is some really good software available that can run on a mainframe, eg Zowe and Ansible.

The reason that an organization would want to use OSS on a mainframe is because there are plenty of people who are familiar with using it on non-mainframe platforms. They can bring their software expertise and use it on the mainframe without needing to know the arcane secrets of the mainframe. In addition, IBM is completely onboard with the idea of using OSS and, in many cases, has plenty of examples of how to use them on a mainframe, making life much easier to use for mainframe newbies with expertise in a particular piece of OSS.

The other thing about mainframes is that they are adaptable and can embrace almost any form of technology that is available on other platforms. Obviously, having Linux as a component of the mainframe helps. Things like blockchain for financial services can be used on a mainframe. And there are plenty of other technologies like that. Things that in April 1964, when the first S/360 mainframe was announced, would have seemed magical or impossible.

And, of course, the AI mentioned above can be used to fill the widening mainframe skills gap. At this stage, with AI, there will always need to be some people around because, as I’m sure we’ve all found at some time or another, there will be circumstances that you haven’t been trained to deal with. That’s where, seemingly clever, AIs currently find their limit. I’m sure in future that this won’t be the case, but in the next five years, it probably will.

A summary of the current state of the mainframe industry is that mainframes are powerful computing platforms that are not only keeping up with the times but are also leading in many ways. They do, however, have a bad reputation amongst some groups of people as being old-fashioned and out of date. This is something that all mainframers need to address, because mainframes aren’t going away any time soon.

Happy birthday mainframe

7 April marked the 60th anniversary of the mainframe. It was on that day in 1964 that the System/360 was announced and the modern mainframe was born. IBM’s Big Iron, as it came to be called, took a big step ahead of the rest of the BUNCH (Burroughs, UNIVAC, NCR, Control Data Corporation, and Honeywell). The big leap of imagination was to have software that was architecturally compatible across the entire System/360 line.

It was called System/360 to indicate that this new system would handle every need of every user in the business and scientific worlds because it covered all 360 degrees of the compass. That was a triumph for the marketing team because it would have otherwise been called the rather dull System 500. System/360 could emulate IBM’s older 1401 machines, which encouraged customers to upgrade. Famous names among its designers are Gene Amdahl, Bob Evans, Fred Brooks, and Gerrit Blaauw. Gene Amdahl later created a plug-compatible mainframe manufacturing company – Amdahl.

IBM received plenty of orders and the first mainframe was delivered to Globe Exploration Co. in April 1965. Launching and producing the System/360 cost more than $5 billion, making it the largest privately-financed commercial project up to that time. It was a risky enterprise, but one that worked. From 1965 to 1970, IBM’s revenues went up from $3.6 billion to $7.5 billion; and the number of IBM computer systems installed anywhere tripled from 11,000 to 35,000.

The Model 145 was the first IBM computer to have its main memory made entirely of monolithic circuits. It used silicon memory chips, rather than the older magnetic core technology.

In 1970, the System/370 was introduced. The marketing said that the System/360 was for the 1960s; for the 1970s you needed a System/370. All thoughts of compass points had gone by then. IBM’s revenues went up to $75 billion and employee numbers grew from 120,000 to 269,000, and, at times, customers had a two-year wait to get their hands on a new mainframe.

1979 saw the introduction of the 4341, which was 26 times faster than the System/360 Model 30. The 1980s didn’t have a System/380. But in 1990, the System/390 Model 190 was introduced. This was 353 times faster than the System/360 Model 30.

1985 saw the introduction of the Enterprise System/3090, which had over one-million-bit memory chips and came with Thermal Conduction Modules to speed chip-to-chip communication times. Some machines had a Vector Facility, which made them faster. It replaced the ES/3080.

The 1990s weren’t a good time for mainframes. For example, in March 1991, Stewart Alsop stated: “I predict that the last mainframe will be unplugged on March 15, 1996”. Not the most successful prediction, but definitely catching the zeitgeist of the time. As mentioned above, it was the decade of the System/390. We saw the introduction of high-speed fibre optic mainframe channel architecture Enterprise System Connection (ESCON).

The System/360 gave us 24-bit addressing (32-bit architecture) and virtual storage. The System/370 gave us multi-processor support and then extended storage 24-bit/31-bit addressing. With System/390 we got the OS/390 operating system. As we moved into the 2000s, we got zSeries (zArchitecture) and z operating systems giving us 24, 31, and 64-bit addressing. In 2003, the z990 was described as, “the world’s most sophisticated server”. In 2005 we got the zIIP specialty engine. In 2008 it was the z10 EC with high capacity/performance (quad core CPU chip). In 2012, the zEC12 was described as an integrated platform for cloud computing, with integrated OLTP and data warehousing. In 2000 IBM said it would support Linux on the mainframe, and, by 2009, 70 of IBM’s top 100 mainframe customers were estimated to be running Linux. A zEnterprise mainframe could run 100,000 virtual Linux servers.

In terms of operating systems, OS/360 was replaced by MVT, which became OS/VS2 SVS, and then OS/VS2 MVS. That became MVS/SE, which became MVS/SP, which became MVS/XA and then MVS/ESA before becoming OS/390 and finally z/OS.

Mainframes were once islands of technology excellence. Now they are no longer islands, but integrated in so many way. They work happily with cloud environments to ensure the best of cloud can be integrated with the best of mainframes. They run applications that previously were thought of as only found on distributed systems, such as Java and C++. Open-source software, like Zowe, makes it easier for non-mainframers to be able to successfully work on mainframes. The growth of AI on the mainframe makes them even more capable. There’s no problem connecting parts of mainframe applications to parts of applications running on almost any other platform using APIs to create a new and better application program for users.

The z16 and z16 rack-mounted variant mainframes with their Telum chips have on-chip AI accelerators, which delivers latency-optimized inferencing, ideal for mission-critical workloads such as credit card, healthcare, and financial transactions. The z16s are also specifically designed to help protect against near-future threats that might be used to crack today’s encryption technologies.

Mainframes may be misunderstood by people who don’t know them. They may be perceived as antiquated because they are 60 years old. But just like cars and planes over the last 60 years, mainframes have hugely improved over time. And, although they will still run applications written in the 1960s, they can do so much more now. And mainframes are constantly being updated to meet the needs of the time.

I predict that we will be celebrating the mainframe’s 70th birthday and its 80^th birthdays, though we may not be able to imagine how compact it will be by then and what new capabilities it will have.

Happy (belated) birthday mainframe.

 

IBM and disruptive technology

The term disruptive technology was coined in 1995 by Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School to refer to any innovation that significantly alters the way that consumers, industries, or businesses operate. Examples might be the arrival of the PC or the smartphone. People and businesses just do things differently now from how they used to.

Currently, there are two technologies that look like they are going to be disruptive. The first is quantum computing, and the second is artificial intelligence (AI). Quantum computing’s disruptive effects are still a little way in the future, but AI is already here, and many people have already used ChatGPT or Gemini (Bard).

Humans are somewhat strange in that most people would like some things in their life and in the world to be different, while at the same time most people are very reluctant to change themselves and their way of doing things! And like any disruptive technology, people can predict that the changes caused by AI being used for good – AI is great at reading medical scans and identifying potential cancerous growths etc – and for evil – something along the lines of the Terminator movies.

Every now and again, you’re perhaps looking through the channels available on your TV and you come across a programme that you used to enjoy many years ago. Looking at it now, perhaps 30 or more years later, you find yourself amazed that no-one has a laptop or tablet, they don’t google anything, no-one has a Satnav to find where they’re going, and, strangest of all, no-one has a phone in their pocket to contact anyone, or browse social media, or pay for anything. Well, I predict that’s what current TV programmes are going to look like twenty years from now – no-one has a personal AI to give them information, to write reports, to do a million other things that it’s impossible to predict until someone invents them and lots of people use them.

However, anything that can be used for good can also be used by bad actors. How many movies have mobile phones being used to trigger explosives that could kill people and damage buildings etc. And that’s kind of where we are with AI. It could be used to hack mainframes. It could be used to take control of the electricity grid by a hostile nation. It could be used to attack hospitals, financial institutions, security services, etc etc. And it could do some people’s jobs, and that means there will be big changes in the workforce.

It’s that last reason that has led to the formation of a consortium focused on upskilling and reskilling roles most likely to be impacted by AI. The AI-Enabled Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Workforce Consortium includes IBM as well as Accenture, Cisco, Eightfold, Google, Indeed, Intel, Microsoft, and SAP. There are also six advisors.

The consortium has a goal of exploring AI’s impact on IT job roles, enabling workers to find and access relevant training programs, and connecting businesses to skilled and job-ready workers. It is evaluating how AI is changing the jobs and skills workers need to be successful. The first phase of work will produce a report with actionable insights for business leaders and workers. These should offer practical insights and recommendations to employers looking for ways to reskill and upskill their workers in preparation for AI-enabled environments.

The Consortium’s work is inspired by the US-EU Trade and Technology Council’s (TTC’s) Talent for Growth Task Force and Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins’ leadership of its skills training workstream, and input from the US Department of Commerce.

Looking at that first phase of work in more detail, the Consortium will evaluate the impact of AI on 56 IT job roles and provide training recommendations for impacted jobs. These job roles include 80% of the top 45 IT job titles that had the highest volume of job postings for the period February 2023-2024 in the USA and five of the largest European countries by IT workforce numbers (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands) according to Indeed Hiring Lab. Collectively, these countries account for a significant segment of the IT sector, with a combined total of 10 million IT workers.

Consortium member goals include:

• Cisco to train 25 million people with cybersecurity and digital skills by 2032.
• IBM to skill 30 million individuals by 2030 in digital skills, including 2 million in AI.
• Intel to empower more than 30 million people with AI skills for current and future jobs by 2030.
• Microsoft to train and certify 10 million people from underserved communities with in-demand digital skills for jobs and livelihood opportunities in the digital economy by 2025.
•   SAP to upskill two million people worldwide by 2025.
• Google has recently announced €25 million in funding to support AI training and skills for people across Europe.

As I said earlier, the world in twenty years’ time will look completely different in many ways from now. It’s refreshing to see some of the higher profile companies taking steps to prepare the workforce for the changes taking place.

What kind of mainframer are you?

I’m thinking in terms of personality when I ask that question. So, how would you describe your personality?

The trouble with personality inventories like Cattell’s 16 PF test and similar is that they only allow for a small number of personality traits. The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is much loved by HR departments, but generally derided by the scientific community. Even Wikipedia describes it as. “a pseudoscientific self-report questionnaire that claims to indicate differing personality types. The test attempts to assign a binary value to each of four categories: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving. One letter from each category is taken to produce a four-letter test result representing one of sixteen possible personalities, such as ‘INFP’ or ‘ESTJ’”. Other personality descriptions often include opposites like, “you are generally an outgoing person, but at times you like to take a backseat”. And, I guess, the truth is that people change their behaviour to suit their mood. However, let’s assume that there is some kind of personality that each person has that simply gets expressed differently in different situations.

That brings me to the Merrill-Reid method, which allows you to profile yourself or your mainframe colleagues. The Merrill-Reid model identifies four key personality types, which are analytical, driver, amiable, and expressive. The idea is that you can change your style of behaving to match that of your colleagues (particularly non-mainframers), and so they can understand what you’re trying to tell them because you have used an appropriate personality style.

The truth is that the technique is often used in selling so the vendor changes their style to match the client’s personality style. But that doesn’t matter.

David Merrill and Roger Reid were psychologists, who used factor analysis to identify two scales: assertiveness and responsiveness:

• Assertiveness is a measure of how outwardly people try to influence others. People who are high on assertiveness tend to reveal their opinions, try to persuade others, and have things their own way. People who are low on assertiveness tend to keep their views to themselves, fit in with others, and avoid conflict.
• Responsiveness is more about how outwardly emotional people appear to be. People who are high on responsiveness are more socially engaged, aware of the needs of others, and how they feel about things depends on interpersonal relationships. People who are low on responsiveness tend to be more socially distant, and primarily think about work.

This can be used to create a 2x2 matrix, with four personality types – see the Figure below:

 

If you or your colleagues are analytical, they will ask ‘why’ questions, which means whoever they are dealing with needs to have all the facts and be ready to answer their questions. They like objective information and have a low tolerance for ambiguity. They like organization and structure, and will be more concerned with work than people. They will also be reserved and logical in their behaviour. They will show little or no emotion, and make decisions slowly because they need time to think. They like to be right and can seem very critical.

If you or your colleagues are a driver personality type, they will display assertive and direct behaviour. Their focus is on results and achieving their goals. They very much like to feel that they are in control. Working with this personality type, get straight to the point. Explain how their level of satisfaction will rise – they don’t care about other people. They may appear to be arrogant and standoffish. They are action people who like results, but aren’t great listeners.

If you or your colleagues are an amiable personality type, they will display friendly and cooperative behaviour. Their focus is on harmony and maintaining relationships, and they have a low need for control. It’s important to ask them questions to make sure they are with you, and talk about the successes of similar projects you’ve worked on. They like to go along with whatever is happening. Explain how a project will help them to achieve their goals and will have a positive impact on their team. They like to feel safe and aren’t good at taking action on their own, which means that they can seem obstinate or apathetic.

If you or your colleagues are an expressive personality type, they will display outgoing and enthusiastic behaviour. They are competitive, their focus is on being creative and optimistic, and they will have a need for self-expression. With colleagues like this, rather than focusing on the facts, be empathic, be their friend while they are working with you. Don’t be surprised if they arrive late for a meeting because they have lots of commitments and a rushed lifestyle. They like to be the centre of attention. They are quite animated when they speak and don’t like to be bored. The prefer spontaneity and can be impulsive, but they do like approval.

If you want to find out what personality style you have, there are questionnaires on the Internet, for example at https://www.bradfordvts.co.uk/wp-content/onlineresources/communication-skills/behaviour-analysis/behavioural%20social%20and%20communication%20style%20questionnaire.pdf. How accurate the questionnaires are, I can’t say. Obviously, you can’t ask a new colleague to take a personality test, but, knowing the characteristics of each type, you can probably identify which category they principally belong in. If that doesn’t match your style of presentation during a project meeting, then it will be useful for you to modify the way you present information and the type of information you lead with. That way, let’s hope, you can achieve the outcomes you want and help them to understand the power of the mainframe and the benefits to your organization of utilizing it.

You can always practice, at first, on your friends and family to see which of the four domains you think they are in, and then check with their assessment of their own personality.