IBMers across the globe must be wondering what’s going on as IBM starts to axe job and downsize its workforce. Particularly badly hit seems to be the Indian subcontinent and Europe. It looks like IBM is reducing commodity equipment staff in favour of software staff.
In Europe, figures being quoted are up to 500 people in France, 430 in Italy, 240 in the Netherlands, 105 in Belgium, and 35 in Norway. It looks like worldwide job cuts could reach 15,000.
IBM recently sold its System X server to Lenovo and, so, many of the job cuts have come from its Systems and Technology Group (STG).
There’s also some talk about IBM asking Goldman Sachs to value its chip division. The implication is that IBM will then sell that off – leading to a further drop in its head count.
Irrespective of that suggestion, we find that Samsung Electronics has joined IBM’s OpenPOWER Consortium. OpenPOWER (announced last August) is a way for companies to licence the architecture and customize it for their specific needs – in the same way that ARM does with its chips. Other group members include Google, Nvidia, Mellanox, and Tyan. IBM has also announced it’s putting up over $1bn to encourage Linux development on the chips – hopefully increasing their usage.
Meanwhile, IBM’s Chief Executive Officer, Ginni Rometty has been to Beijing for three days of meetings with government leaders.
It’s not all bad news from mainframe companies in India, CA Technologies has announced a strategic partnership with IDG Ventures India, a technology venture capital fund investing in India, to help drive innovation in the enterprise software market.
However, it’s not all good news for CA. It recently reported 8 percent lower earnings for its third quarter compared to the previous year. Net income in the three months fell to $232 million. So per-share net income fell 7 percent to 51 cents. Revenues in the quarter of $1.163 billion were down 3 percent from last year.
It seems that layoffs are expected at Compuware, but this is the final phase of its planned cost-cutting, and brings its headcount down to mid-1990s levels.
Over at BMC, things seem more upbeat. They have announced BMC Engage 2014, an IT management conference that will offer new ideas and insights to help people use technology platforms – from mainframe to cloud to mobile – to achieve organizational and market objectives, and drive major business transformations – they claim. It runs from 13 to 16 October at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin in Orlando, Florida.
Over at Microsoft, new CEO, Satya Nadella, has e-mailed staff saying: “We must zero in on what Microsoft can uniquely contribute to the world”. That is, perhaps, harder than you might think in a world full of Apple and Samsung devices, and with Google pretty much ‘owning’ the Web.
An interesting week!
Showing posts with label CA Technologies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CA Technologies. Show all posts
Sunday, 16 February 2014
Sunday, 26 January 2014
The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook - user survey findings
The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2014 is now available for download from http://www.arcati.com/newyearbook14 – and it’s FREE. Each new Yearbook is always greeted with enthusiasm by mainframers everywhere because it is such a unique source of information. And each year, many people find the results of the user survey especially interesting.
The results came from the 100 respondents who completed the survey on the Arcati Web site between 1 November and 6 December 2013. 51% were from North America, 33% were from Europe with the remainder from the rest of the world.
Half of the respondents worked in companies with upwards of 10,000 employees worldwide. Below that, with 24 percent of respondents, were staff sizes of 1001-5000, 10 percent with staff sizes of 0-200, nine percent with staff sizes of 201 to 1000, and only seven percent with staff sizes of 5001 to 10,000. In terms of MIPS, 28 percent had 1000-10,000 MIPS, down again from last year’s figure of 36 percent. 16 percent had under 500 MIPS, only 15 percent had 500-1000 MIPS, 13 percent had 10,000 to 25,000 MIPS, and 17 percent had over 25,000 MIPS installed.
Looking at MIPS growth produced some interesting results. 71 percent of sites of mainframe installations are experiencing some growth, with three sites claiming growth in the region of 26-50 percent. Only eight percent of sites are reporting a decline in mainframe capacity growth. 11 percent of sites are not expecting any kind of change in their MIPS this year. Small sites (32 percent) are most likely to have seen some kind of decline or to have stayed the same, and yet, in complete contrast, they were more likely to see growth in the 26-50 percent range. While some larger sites (above 10,000 MIPS) did report a decline or no growth, the majority were anticipating some kind of growth possibly up to 50 percent per year. Mid-range respondents were typically expecting some kind of growth (89 percent of sites). It is a confusing picture with nearly a third of small sites, 10 percent of medium sites, and 17 percent of larger sites showing no growth or a decline. Perhaps sites have been holding off on growth until the global economic climate brightens up.
The survey looked at whether sites currently used their mainframe for cloud computing. Only seven percent of respondents said they did. The survey also asked whether respondents were planning to adopt cloud computing as a strategy. 50 percent said they weren’t at present. 16 percent thought some mainframe applications would be cloud enabled in the future. And 15 percent claimed that some of their applications are using the cloud model.
There’s been a huge growth in the use of social media in recent years, and the survey wondered whether those people “using their dad’s technology” found social media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc) useful for their work on the mainframe. 18 percent said that they did, with 13 percent not sure, and the rest not using it at all. With IBM having Facebook pages dedicated to IMS, CICS, and DB2, it seems a shame if they’re not being used.
With the growth in number of software products that allow users to monitor the mainframe from a browser on a tablet/iPad or smartphone, the survey looked at whether mainframers were using these devices to monitor or control their mainframe. Only nine percent said that they were.
Another hot topic through 2013 has been Big Data and all the things associated with that (such as Hadoop). The survey asked whether sites had any plans to use Big Data. Just two percent of sites said that they were already using Big Data, with a further 12 percent planning to do so.
The survey also asked about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). It wanted to know how important sites thought it was to make mainframe data available to other platforms. 78 percent of sites said that it was very important to the way they work at the moment. Three percent are in the planning stage, and nine percent expect to do some work on this in the future. When it comes to how important is the idea of people using their own devices (BYOD) to access mainframes, 15 percent of sites said it was very important to the way they work now – but 47 percent said it wasn’t important.
Anyway, full details of the responses to many other questions can be found in the user survey section of the Yearbook. It’s well worth a read.
The Yearbook can only be free because some organizations have been prepared to sponsor it or advertise in it. This year’s sponsors were: Software Diversified Services (SDS), Software AG, zIT Consulting, and CA Technologies.
The results came from the 100 respondents who completed the survey on the Arcati Web site between 1 November and 6 December 2013. 51% were from North America, 33% were from Europe with the remainder from the rest of the world.
Half of the respondents worked in companies with upwards of 10,000 employees worldwide. Below that, with 24 percent of respondents, were staff sizes of 1001-5000, 10 percent with staff sizes of 0-200, nine percent with staff sizes of 201 to 1000, and only seven percent with staff sizes of 5001 to 10,000. In terms of MIPS, 28 percent had 1000-10,000 MIPS, down again from last year’s figure of 36 percent. 16 percent had under 500 MIPS, only 15 percent had 500-1000 MIPS, 13 percent had 10,000 to 25,000 MIPS, and 17 percent had over 25,000 MIPS installed.
Looking at MIPS growth produced some interesting results. 71 percent of sites of mainframe installations are experiencing some growth, with three sites claiming growth in the region of 26-50 percent. Only eight percent of sites are reporting a decline in mainframe capacity growth. 11 percent of sites are not expecting any kind of change in their MIPS this year. Small sites (32 percent) are most likely to have seen some kind of decline or to have stayed the same, and yet, in complete contrast, they were more likely to see growth in the 26-50 percent range. While some larger sites (above 10,000 MIPS) did report a decline or no growth, the majority were anticipating some kind of growth possibly up to 50 percent per year. Mid-range respondents were typically expecting some kind of growth (89 percent of sites). It is a confusing picture with nearly a third of small sites, 10 percent of medium sites, and 17 percent of larger sites showing no growth or a decline. Perhaps sites have been holding off on growth until the global economic climate brightens up.
The survey looked at whether sites currently used their mainframe for cloud computing. Only seven percent of respondents said they did. The survey also asked whether respondents were planning to adopt cloud computing as a strategy. 50 percent said they weren’t at present. 16 percent thought some mainframe applications would be cloud enabled in the future. And 15 percent claimed that some of their applications are using the cloud model.
There’s been a huge growth in the use of social media in recent years, and the survey wondered whether those people “using their dad’s technology” found social media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc) useful for their work on the mainframe. 18 percent said that they did, with 13 percent not sure, and the rest not using it at all. With IBM having Facebook pages dedicated to IMS, CICS, and DB2, it seems a shame if they’re not being used.
With the growth in number of software products that allow users to monitor the mainframe from a browser on a tablet/iPad or smartphone, the survey looked at whether mainframers were using these devices to monitor or control their mainframe. Only nine percent said that they were.
Another hot topic through 2013 has been Big Data and all the things associated with that (such as Hadoop). The survey asked whether sites had any plans to use Big Data. Just two percent of sites said that they were already using Big Data, with a further 12 percent planning to do so.
The survey also asked about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). It wanted to know how important sites thought it was to make mainframe data available to other platforms. 78 percent of sites said that it was very important to the way they work at the moment. Three percent are in the planning stage, and nine percent expect to do some work on this in the future. When it comes to how important is the idea of people using their own devices (BYOD) to access mainframes, 15 percent of sites said it was very important to the way they work now – but 47 percent said it wasn’t important.
Anyway, full details of the responses to many other questions can be found in the user survey section of the Yearbook. It’s well worth a read.
The Yearbook can only be free because some organizations have been prepared to sponsor it or advertise in it. This year’s sponsors were: Software Diversified Services (SDS), Software AG, zIT Consulting, and CA Technologies.
Sunday, 19 January 2014
The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2014 has been published
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.
What makes this annual publication so important? The answer is that it provides a one-stop shop for everything a mainframer needs to know. For example, the technical specification section includes model numbers, MIPS, and MSUs for zEnterprise processors (zEC12s, z196s, and z114s). There’s also a hardware timeline, and a display of 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. And this year we’ve added a number of Big Data terms that are becoming commonly used.
One section provides a media guide for IBM mainframers. This includes information on newsletters, magazines, user groups, blogs, and social networking information resources for the z/OS environment. Amongst the things it highlights are Enterprise Tech Journal, IBM Listservs, SHARE’s Five Minute Briefing on the Data Center, Facebook pages, and LinkedIn discussions; as well as user groups such as SHARE and IDUG.
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, there are a number of new organizations in the list this year – indicating that this is still an exciting market place to be in.
The mainframe strategy section contains articles by industry gurus and vendors on topics such as:
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 20,000 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 sponsors were: Software Diversified Services (SDS), Software AG, zIT Consulting, and CA Technologies.
To see this year’s Arcati Mainframe Yearbook, click on www.arcati.com/newyearbook14. If you don’t want to download everything at once, again this year, each section is available as a print-quality PDF file.
You won’t want to miss out on this excellent publication.
What makes this annual publication so important? The answer is that it provides a one-stop shop for everything a mainframer needs to know. For example, the technical specification section includes model numbers, MIPS, and MSUs for zEnterprise processors (zEC12s, z196s, and z114s). There’s also a hardware timeline, and a display of 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. And this year we’ve added a number of Big Data terms that are becoming commonly used.
One section provides a media guide for IBM mainframers. This includes information on newsletters, magazines, user groups, blogs, and social networking information resources for the z/OS environment. Amongst the things it highlights are Enterprise Tech Journal, IBM Listservs, SHARE’s Five Minute Briefing on the Data Center, Facebook pages, and LinkedIn discussions; as well as user groups such as SHARE and IDUG.
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, there are a number of new organizations in the list this year – indicating that this is still an exciting market place to be in.
The mainframe strategy section contains articles by industry gurus and vendors on topics such as:
- Research Report – Software Diversified Services’ E- Business Server: Encryption, Compression, Key Creation and Management?
- The Challenge: Actively Control MLC Costs for IBM’s System z
- Mainframe meets mobile
- Your Business is Dynamic – Are You? Empowering the Dynamic Data Center.
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 20,000 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 sponsors were: Software Diversified Services (SDS), Software AG, zIT Consulting, and CA Technologies.
To see this year’s Arcati Mainframe Yearbook, click on www.arcati.com/newyearbook14. If you don’t want to download everything at once, again this year, each section is available as a print-quality PDF file.
You won’t want to miss out on this excellent publication.
Saturday, 13 April 2013
A bad time for mainframes?
It seems that nowadays is not a good time to be in the world of mainframes, with BMC Software likely to be taken over, Compuware recording a loss, and to add insult to injury, Oracle is talking about releasing a mainframe!
So let’s start with BMC Software, which got its name from its founders back in the early 1980s – Scott Boulette, John Moores, and Dan Cloer. BMC, notably, bought Boole & Babbage at the end of the 1990s and shortly after acquired CONTROL-M and its company, New Dimension Software. But those heady days must seem a long time ago because on 22 April it’s expected to receive final takeover bids.
Elliott Management owns a 9.6 percent stake in BMC, and signed a standstill agreement with BMC last summer, but that ended on 6 April. So they could bid for BMC or nominate directors to its board. People who know about these things are saying that buyout firm Thoma Bravo has joined a bidding group led by KKR & Co LP and TPG Capital LP in order to bid. Their likely rivals are a team comprising Bain Capital LLC and Golden Gate Capital. You can assume people are arranging to have access to large pots of money on the day. Bids are likely to be between $40 and $50 a share. We’ll be watching to see what happens, and, more importantly, what the impact is on users of their mainframe software.
Compuware is probably most famous for its Abend-AID product, which first saw the light of day in the 1970s. In the 1980s, they launched File-AID. Compuware recently reported disappointing fourth-quarter results and said its total year-on-year revenue is expected to drop from $1 billion to between $942 million and $946 million for the fiscal year ending 31 March.
CEO Robert Paul has increased his planned cost-cutting to between $80 million and $100 million over the next two years. (It was $60 million over three years.) A natural consequence of this could be layoffs – and that could impact on the quality of the software mainframe users can get hold of, or may mean longer delays between upgrades.
Interestingly, Elliott Management (see above) is Compuware’s second-largest shareholder, owning 8.7% of the stock. In January, their takeover bid of $2.3 billion ($11-per-share) was rejected by the board. Meanwhile, Sandell Asset Management, which holds 2.8% of Compuware stock, is urging the board to sell the company to the highest bidder as quickly as possible.
And while these mainframe companies are facing financial difficulties, Larry Ellison has launched, what he’s calling, a mainframe-class machine – arguing that any mission-critical app that runs on any Unix system will run better on the new Sparc T5 and M5 servers. In addition, Oracle is claiming that it has passed IBM on integer throughput performance – but that’s compared against IBM Power series.
The big news over at CA Technologies is that CA has filed a patent infringement suit against AppDynamics, which was started by one of its ex-employees. CA got hold of the patents when it bought Wily Technology in 2006. The ex-employee led the design and architecture for several Wily products. You may also remember that last November CA sued New Relic Inc for patent infringements. Again, the founder of New Relic had been a senior executive at Wily.
At least IBM seems to be doing OK. It's just released a $1 billion plan to construct and check Flash technology for enterprise solutions. The technology should assist firms coping with Big Data challenges. The people at UBS have upgraded IBM from ‘neutral’ to ‘buy’, saying IBM has the best strategy of its peers in what it terms the “IT as a service” industry. Plus a new Synergy Research Group study shows that IBM’s share of the cloud infrastructure equipment market has hit a two-year high in the fourth quarter of 2012, reaching just over 19 percent.
So let’s start with BMC Software, which got its name from its founders back in the early 1980s – Scott Boulette, John Moores, and Dan Cloer. BMC, notably, bought Boole & Babbage at the end of the 1990s and shortly after acquired CONTROL-M and its company, New Dimension Software. But those heady days must seem a long time ago because on 22 April it’s expected to receive final takeover bids.
Elliott Management owns a 9.6 percent stake in BMC, and signed a standstill agreement with BMC last summer, but that ended on 6 April. So they could bid for BMC or nominate directors to its board. People who know about these things are saying that buyout firm Thoma Bravo has joined a bidding group led by KKR & Co LP and TPG Capital LP in order to bid. Their likely rivals are a team comprising Bain Capital LLC and Golden Gate Capital. You can assume people are arranging to have access to large pots of money on the day. Bids are likely to be between $40 and $50 a share. We’ll be watching to see what happens, and, more importantly, what the impact is on users of their mainframe software.
Compuware is probably most famous for its Abend-AID product, which first saw the light of day in the 1970s. In the 1980s, they launched File-AID. Compuware recently reported disappointing fourth-quarter results and said its total year-on-year revenue is expected to drop from $1 billion to between $942 million and $946 million for the fiscal year ending 31 March.
CEO Robert Paul has increased his planned cost-cutting to between $80 million and $100 million over the next two years. (It was $60 million over three years.) A natural consequence of this could be layoffs – and that could impact on the quality of the software mainframe users can get hold of, or may mean longer delays between upgrades.
Interestingly, Elliott Management (see above) is Compuware’s second-largest shareholder, owning 8.7% of the stock. In January, their takeover bid of $2.3 billion ($11-per-share) was rejected by the board. Meanwhile, Sandell Asset Management, which holds 2.8% of Compuware stock, is urging the board to sell the company to the highest bidder as quickly as possible.
And while these mainframe companies are facing financial difficulties, Larry Ellison has launched, what he’s calling, a mainframe-class machine – arguing that any mission-critical app that runs on any Unix system will run better on the new Sparc T5 and M5 servers. In addition, Oracle is claiming that it has passed IBM on integer throughput performance – but that’s compared against IBM Power series.
The big news over at CA Technologies is that CA has filed a patent infringement suit against AppDynamics, which was started by one of its ex-employees. CA got hold of the patents when it bought Wily Technology in 2006. The ex-employee led the design and architecture for several Wily products. You may also remember that last November CA sued New Relic Inc for patent infringements. Again, the founder of New Relic had been a senior executive at Wily.
At least IBM seems to be doing OK. It's just released a $1 billion plan to construct and check Flash technology for enterprise solutions. The technology should assist firms coping with Big Data challenges. The people at UBS have upgraded IBM from ‘neutral’ to ‘buy’, saying IBM has the best strategy of its peers in what it terms the “IT as a service” industry. Plus a new Synergy Research Group study shows that IBM’s share of the cloud infrastructure equipment market has hit a two-year high in the fourth quarter of 2012, reaching just over 19 percent.
Sunday, 24 February 2013
Guest blog - Cloud and mainframes: a perfect couple
This week, I’m publishing a second blog entry from Marcel den Hartog, Principal Product Marketing for CA Technologies Mainframe Solutions. You can read more of his blogs here.
I know what you’re thinking: another Generation Z person wanting to ride the cloud hype and make sure we don’t forget about his favourite platform. But bear with me while I explain there is a lot of logic behind this...
I am old enough to remember the time when many of us in IT were surprised by the rise of the distributed environment. And, like many others, I did my fair share of work building applications on both mainframes and distributed servers. I was, however, lucky enough to work in an environment with little or no bias to any platform; our management simply asked us to pick the best platform for any given application.
Soon after building the first distributed applications, we found that we needed the data that resided on the mainframe. Not a big surprise, because most of the mission-critical data was stored on the mainframe AND we had a requirement that almost all the mission-critical data in the company had to be up-to-date, always!
This was not easy, especially in the early phases. We did not have ODBC, JDBC, MQSeries, Web services, or anything else that allowed us to send data back and forth from distributed applications to the mainframe. We had to rely on HLLAPI, a very low-level way of transmitting data by using the protocols that came with 3270 emulation boards like IRMA or Attachmate. And for the data that did not require continuous updates, we relied on extracts that were pumped up and down to a couple of distributed servers every night, where the data was then processed to make it usable for different applications.
The “fit-for-purpose” IT infrastructure we had back then was not ideal because it required a lot of work behind the scenes, mainly to make sure the data used by all these applications was up-to-date and “transformed” in the right way. But the technology became better and better, and with the move from text-based Clipper applications using HLLAPI to communicate with CICS transactions, we slowly moved to more modern, visually attractive programming languages that used more modern protocols like ODBC and JDBC. But since not all data on the mainframe or on distributed systems was capable of being accessed by these protocols (like VSAM files, IMS databases and others), for many applications we had to rely on data transport and transformation routines (and the servers to store and manage it) for many years. Even today, companies pump terabytes of data up and down their various platforms for many different purposes.
The next phase in IT was the switch from home-grown applications to buying applications like ERP, CRM, or other third-party (standardized) applications. And again, these applications not only required data from the mainframe and distributed applications, we also had to extract data FROM these applications to update the other applications our companies relied on. After all, every company runs with a mixture of applications on a mixture of platforms. And to complicate things even more, we do not buy all applications from the same vendors. So we have to exchange data between commercial applications as well. More complexity, more work, more money and more stuff to manage.
Welcome to the world of cloud. Where again, we will run (commercial) applications on a different platform and where we are (again) asked to make sure that our companies most valuable IT asset (our data) is up-to-date across all the different platforms: mainframe, cloud, and distributed. After all, we don’t want our customer data to be different across the different applications; the fact that we have to duplicate across all our different environments is already bad enough.
The efforts to create a pool of IT resources that enables us to create the “fit-for-purpose” IT infrastructure we are all aiming for has, until now, resulted in a very complex IT infrastructure that requires a lot of management. Here is where a latest IBM mainframe technology, comes in. The “pool of resources” can be found externally in the form of cloud services, as well as internally in blades that are configured to run virtualized systems on the mainframe. Adding the mainframe to this pool has big advantages. If you run Linux on the specialized engines (IFLs) on the mainframe, you need a lot less infrastructure to allow the Linux servers to communicate with each other and with your existing zOS applications. So there is no need for cabling and other network infrastructure. This not only greatly reduces the amount (and added complexity) of the hardware needed, it also means less power consumption and more flexibility. In the beginning of this article we agreed that many applications need access to mainframe data. By bringing the applications that need this data closer TO the mainframe, and by reducing the amount of infrastructure devices needed to connect it all, we make things simpler, faster, more manageable, and more reliable.
To make the mainframe part of an internal pool of IT resources that is flexible enough to accommodate the business needs of our management, there is one last step we must take; we need the right software to orchestrate, provision, and decommission servers on demand. There are already a number of vendors who offer software that helps you to provision both internal and external (cloud) resources in a matter of minutes. Simple drag-and-drop applications that provision servers and configure the network and connection settings make it possible to create complex environments in a matter of minutes. But none of them has supported the mainframe (yet). In the near future, however, the mainframe will also be supported, and this will open a new world of possibilities for everybody who already owns a mainframe. Soon, the mainframe will not just be used as part of an internal or hybrid cloud environment, it will act as one of the components you have in your pool of resources.
Yes, a stand-alone mainframe can offer many of the advantages that “cloud” offers: on-demand capacity, virtualization, flexibility and reliability. But not until you are able to use the mainframe as a component in a cloud infrastructure, so that you can bring the applications that need access to their data closer to the mainframe, will the two really be a perfect couple.
I know what you’re thinking: another Generation Z person wanting to ride the cloud hype and make sure we don’t forget about his favourite platform. But bear with me while I explain there is a lot of logic behind this...
I am old enough to remember the time when many of us in IT were surprised by the rise of the distributed environment. And, like many others, I did my fair share of work building applications on both mainframes and distributed servers. I was, however, lucky enough to work in an environment with little or no bias to any platform; our management simply asked us to pick the best platform for any given application.
Soon after building the first distributed applications, we found that we needed the data that resided on the mainframe. Not a big surprise, because most of the mission-critical data was stored on the mainframe AND we had a requirement that almost all the mission-critical data in the company had to be up-to-date, always!
This was not easy, especially in the early phases. We did not have ODBC, JDBC, MQSeries, Web services, or anything else that allowed us to send data back and forth from distributed applications to the mainframe. We had to rely on HLLAPI, a very low-level way of transmitting data by using the protocols that came with 3270 emulation boards like IRMA or Attachmate. And for the data that did not require continuous updates, we relied on extracts that were pumped up and down to a couple of distributed servers every night, where the data was then processed to make it usable for different applications.
The “fit-for-purpose” IT infrastructure we had back then was not ideal because it required a lot of work behind the scenes, mainly to make sure the data used by all these applications was up-to-date and “transformed” in the right way. But the technology became better and better, and with the move from text-based Clipper applications using HLLAPI to communicate with CICS transactions, we slowly moved to more modern, visually attractive programming languages that used more modern protocols like ODBC and JDBC. But since not all data on the mainframe or on distributed systems was capable of being accessed by these protocols (like VSAM files, IMS databases and others), for many applications we had to rely on data transport and transformation routines (and the servers to store and manage it) for many years. Even today, companies pump terabytes of data up and down their various platforms for many different purposes.
The next phase in IT was the switch from home-grown applications to buying applications like ERP, CRM, or other third-party (standardized) applications. And again, these applications not only required data from the mainframe and distributed applications, we also had to extract data FROM these applications to update the other applications our companies relied on. After all, every company runs with a mixture of applications on a mixture of platforms. And to complicate things even more, we do not buy all applications from the same vendors. So we have to exchange data between commercial applications as well. More complexity, more work, more money and more stuff to manage.
Welcome to the world of cloud. Where again, we will run (commercial) applications on a different platform and where we are (again) asked to make sure that our companies most valuable IT asset (our data) is up-to-date across all the different platforms: mainframe, cloud, and distributed. After all, we don’t want our customer data to be different across the different applications; the fact that we have to duplicate across all our different environments is already bad enough.
The efforts to create a pool of IT resources that enables us to create the “fit-for-purpose” IT infrastructure we are all aiming for has, until now, resulted in a very complex IT infrastructure that requires a lot of management. Here is where a latest IBM mainframe technology, comes in. The “pool of resources” can be found externally in the form of cloud services, as well as internally in blades that are configured to run virtualized systems on the mainframe. Adding the mainframe to this pool has big advantages. If you run Linux on the specialized engines (IFLs) on the mainframe, you need a lot less infrastructure to allow the Linux servers to communicate with each other and with your existing zOS applications. So there is no need for cabling and other network infrastructure. This not only greatly reduces the amount (and added complexity) of the hardware needed, it also means less power consumption and more flexibility. In the beginning of this article we agreed that many applications need access to mainframe data. By bringing the applications that need this data closer TO the mainframe, and by reducing the amount of infrastructure devices needed to connect it all, we make things simpler, faster, more manageable, and more reliable.
To make the mainframe part of an internal pool of IT resources that is flexible enough to accommodate the business needs of our management, there is one last step we must take; we need the right software to orchestrate, provision, and decommission servers on demand. There are already a number of vendors who offer software that helps you to provision both internal and external (cloud) resources in a matter of minutes. Simple drag-and-drop applications that provision servers and configure the network and connection settings make it possible to create complex environments in a matter of minutes. But none of them has supported the mainframe (yet). In the near future, however, the mainframe will also be supported, and this will open a new world of possibilities for everybody who already owns a mainframe. Soon, the mainframe will not just be used as part of an internal or hybrid cloud environment, it will act as one of the components you have in your pool of resources.
Yes, a stand-alone mainframe can offer many of the advantages that “cloud” offers: on-demand capacity, virtualization, flexibility and reliability. But not until you are able to use the mainframe as a component in a cloud infrastructure, so that you can bring the applications that need access to their data closer to the mainframe, will the two really be a perfect couple.
Sunday, 27 January 2013
Guest blog - IT made simple? Automation lessons from the mainframe
This week, for a change, I’m publishing a blog entry from Marcel den Hartog, Principal Product Marketing for CA Technologies Mainframe Solutions.
Many moons ago, some smart people invented machines to do things (that were previously done manually) faster, better, and more consistently. Good examples are the car industry, the way we make (made) light bulbs, and how we produce clothes or other fabrics. Not much later, people invented machines to automate administrative tasks, so we could calculate faster and have better insights in our financials, with fewer people than ever before. Programmable typewriters are an early example, but the first simple computers did exactly that, add and subtract numbers faster and with fewer errors than an employee could (and ideally with no errors at all!).
The main reason for people inventing “machines” like this was to do things more efficiently, which in turn would make them more competitive. It was as simple as that. True, the equipment was a bit more complex, but the advantages far outweighed the problems of complexity.
This is where Information Technology was born. We soon needed people to drive these “machines”, maintain them, and program them to perform new tasks. And before we knew it, we had simplified a lot of manual tasks, invented some that we didn’t even know existed, and, probably even more important, we were seen as just another part of the business. A part that was able to help the company to run more efficiently and become more competitive.
Automation, in the most general sense, also helped our civilization to evolve faster and faster. Automating more meant we had more time to study, more time to invent even better technology that could automate even more...
However, somehow, at some point in the recent past, something went wrong. We kept implementing more technology that helped us to automate more bits and pieces, but we somehow forgot the next step of automation – automating our automation. Sounds weird? Well, look at how many manual interventions today’s IT systems need to keep them healthy. Ask your IT peers why it still takes 10 days to implement a new server (or 3 days if you do it on a virtualized server farm). Go and ask your Help Desk staff how much time it takes for a performance issue to bubble up, and get fixed again. Ask your operations staff how many of their events (across platforms) have automated actions attached to them that do stuff that could replace manual interventions...
Now, please don’t get me wrong, I know that there are many IT departments that have implemented automation in their IT environment. But in all fairness, it’s not really enough to cope with the complexity of today’s environments. There is another reason, however, for bringing this up now. In the past four years, many IT departments have implemented virtualization in some way. Some have been more successful than others, but there is one thing most people seem to agree on: the current mix of servers – Enterprise Servers like the IBM mainframe, standalone Unix, Linux, and Windows servers, and many virtualized systems running different kinds of OSs – is already hard to manage, and automation is already quite difficult. If the signs are right, we will add a lot of new stuff making it even harder to monitor, manage, and control everything we have.
With the addition of support for mobile devices, Cloud initiatives, and Big Data, we will be confronted with new and unpredictable behaviours arising from our systems. So if there were ever a time to give some extra attention to automate the things we already have, it’s now – at least then we will be more prepared for the unknowns that these new initiatives will bring us. I really think that this is also one of the ways to demonstrate to “the business” that IT really is ready to bring in the new IT services that the business requires. In the past, IT has often been accused of spending too much money to “keep the lights on”. Part of this, as we all know, is the fact that we still spend too much money and time on manual work (and interventions ) to keep these same lights on.
Now, please go back to my first paragraph and tell me if this sounds familiar. The business is now ready for new initiatives like Cloud, Big Data, and more and better support for mobile devices because it will help them to work in a more cost-effective way. IT is also ready for the next step, when we will be required to automate more of what is now running the business, to make sure that it runs as an efficient engine that needs a lot less attention, but also to free up the resources needed to run the new services that the business requires us to run...
I think we can all agree that what I just wrote makes sense. So why not go back to history once more for a final lesson?
Many Fortune 500 companies still run the majority of their mission-critical business services on a mainframe. And for good reason: it is a reliable environment, cost effective, and it is a platform that doesn’t confront managers with a lot of surprises. Some people might call this “boring”, others would say that it’s the way things are supposed to be run. Because of the nature of the mainframe (it was once the ONLY platform to run IT services on) automation has been perfected on this platform in the past decades. Some companies have tens of thousands of “rules” that kick in once unexpected things happen. Looking for proof? See how many people the average mainframe is managed with, compare that with the amount of mission-critical transactions running on that same mainframe, and everybody will agree that you need fewer people to manage a mainframe than you do to manage other environments. With mainframes, you really can have IT made simple.
People learn from the past. Experience is what has brought mankind to where it is today. But for some strange reason, we tend to think of history as something that goes 50+ years back. In IT, going back in history to learn something simply means going back 6-10 years. Talk to your mainframe peers, learn from their experience, and find how you can benefit from their automation expertise. It will not only make your current infrastructure run better, it will also help you to demonstrate to the business that you are ready for the next bulk of new and innovative IT projects – and you will save some money at the same time. And who doesn’t want to do that these days?
Many moons ago, some smart people invented machines to do things (that were previously done manually) faster, better, and more consistently. Good examples are the car industry, the way we make (made) light bulbs, and how we produce clothes or other fabrics. Not much later, people invented machines to automate administrative tasks, so we could calculate faster and have better insights in our financials, with fewer people than ever before. Programmable typewriters are an early example, but the first simple computers did exactly that, add and subtract numbers faster and with fewer errors than an employee could (and ideally with no errors at all!).
The main reason for people inventing “machines” like this was to do things more efficiently, which in turn would make them more competitive. It was as simple as that. True, the equipment was a bit more complex, but the advantages far outweighed the problems of complexity.
This is where Information Technology was born. We soon needed people to drive these “machines”, maintain them, and program them to perform new tasks. And before we knew it, we had simplified a lot of manual tasks, invented some that we didn’t even know existed, and, probably even more important, we were seen as just another part of the business. A part that was able to help the company to run more efficiently and become more competitive.
Automation, in the most general sense, also helped our civilization to evolve faster and faster. Automating more meant we had more time to study, more time to invent even better technology that could automate even more...
However, somehow, at some point in the recent past, something went wrong. We kept implementing more technology that helped us to automate more bits and pieces, but we somehow forgot the next step of automation – automating our automation. Sounds weird? Well, look at how many manual interventions today’s IT systems need to keep them healthy. Ask your IT peers why it still takes 10 days to implement a new server (or 3 days if you do it on a virtualized server farm). Go and ask your Help Desk staff how much time it takes for a performance issue to bubble up, and get fixed again. Ask your operations staff how many of their events (across platforms) have automated actions attached to them that do stuff that could replace manual interventions...
Now, please don’t get me wrong, I know that there are many IT departments that have implemented automation in their IT environment. But in all fairness, it’s not really enough to cope with the complexity of today’s environments. There is another reason, however, for bringing this up now. In the past four years, many IT departments have implemented virtualization in some way. Some have been more successful than others, but there is one thing most people seem to agree on: the current mix of servers – Enterprise Servers like the IBM mainframe, standalone Unix, Linux, and Windows servers, and many virtualized systems running different kinds of OSs – is already hard to manage, and automation is already quite difficult. If the signs are right, we will add a lot of new stuff making it even harder to monitor, manage, and control everything we have.
With the addition of support for mobile devices, Cloud initiatives, and Big Data, we will be confronted with new and unpredictable behaviours arising from our systems. So if there were ever a time to give some extra attention to automate the things we already have, it’s now – at least then we will be more prepared for the unknowns that these new initiatives will bring us. I really think that this is also one of the ways to demonstrate to “the business” that IT really is ready to bring in the new IT services that the business requires. In the past, IT has often been accused of spending too much money to “keep the lights on”. Part of this, as we all know, is the fact that we still spend too much money and time on manual work (and interventions ) to keep these same lights on.
Now, please go back to my first paragraph and tell me if this sounds familiar. The business is now ready for new initiatives like Cloud, Big Data, and more and better support for mobile devices because it will help them to work in a more cost-effective way. IT is also ready for the next step, when we will be required to automate more of what is now running the business, to make sure that it runs as an efficient engine that needs a lot less attention, but also to free up the resources needed to run the new services that the business requires us to run...
I think we can all agree that what I just wrote makes sense. So why not go back to history once more for a final lesson?
Many Fortune 500 companies still run the majority of their mission-critical business services on a mainframe. And for good reason: it is a reliable environment, cost effective, and it is a platform that doesn’t confront managers with a lot of surprises. Some people might call this “boring”, others would say that it’s the way things are supposed to be run. Because of the nature of the mainframe (it was once the ONLY platform to run IT services on) automation has been perfected on this platform in the past decades. Some companies have tens of thousands of “rules” that kick in once unexpected things happen. Looking for proof? See how many people the average mainframe is managed with, compare that with the amount of mission-critical transactions running on that same mainframe, and everybody will agree that you need fewer people to manage a mainframe than you do to manage other environments. With mainframes, you really can have IT made simple.
People learn from the past. Experience is what has brought mankind to where it is today. But for some strange reason, we tend to think of history as something that goes 50+ years back. In IT, going back in history to learn something simply means going back 6-10 years. Talk to your mainframe peers, learn from their experience, and find how you can benefit from their automation expertise. It will not only make your current infrastructure run better, it will also help you to demonstrate to the business that you are ready for the next bulk of new and innovative IT projects – and you will save some money at the same time. And who doesn’t want to do that these days?
Sunday, 2 December 2012
Computer futures
It’s December. It’s the time of the year when people are either reviewing what kind of a year it has been for them or predicting the future. I thought that this week I’d look forward to next year.
The big news for mainframe users is, of course, the price hike promised by IBM. If you go to http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/9/897/ENUS312-129/index.html&lang=en&request_locale=en you can see that from 1 July, the price of Flat Workload License Charges (FWLC) will increase.
According to Timothy Prickett Morgan writing for The Register: “IBM has a wide variety of monthly software pricing schemes for its System z mainframes, but the FLMC scheme is interesting in that it applies to all machines regardless of size or vintage equally and as you increase the capacity of the mainframe, the software fees stay flat.
“The bad thing about the FWLC scheme is that it does not have what IBM calls sub-capacity pricing, where customers use virtualization to isolate capacity on a particular mainframe and then only get charged for that software based on the MSUs consumed in that logical partition.” MSUs are Metered Service Units. It looks like the average price rise will be around the 10 percent level.
We probably won’t be making use of Application Performance Management Software as a Service (perhaps more easily written as APM SaaS). A survey conducted by IDG Research Services online among members of the CIO Forum on LinkedIn during August found that 61 percent of organizations have no plans to implement APM SaaS. But around a quarter (24 percent) already use APM SaaS in some capacity, with a mere 4 percent are using an APM SaaS vendor to monitor all their critical applications.
A CA Technologies survey found that 80 percent of Australian organizations are expected to face a shortage of mainframe skills in the future, with 57 percent already experiencing difficulties. The skills shortage issue is one that IBM, CA, and other companies are addressing with graduate and undergraduate programmes of study on mainframes.
The good news from the survey is that the mainframe is also playing an increasingly strategic role in managing the evolving needs of the enterprise. Again this comes as a surprise to no-one who knows about mainframes. With the growth in use of Linux on the mainframe, organizations can save lots of their budget. And the new hybrid models allow sites to get the best of all worlds.
The survey also found that 36 percent of respondents anticipate an increase in hardware spending in the next 12 to 18 months. Good news for hardware vendors. 44 percent of respondents are planning to increase their spending on mainframe-related services.
And while our focus is on mainframes, we all use laptops, tablets, and smartphones, so it’s interesting to see that Steven Sinofsky has left Microsoft. Who’s he, you say? Well, he was one of the driving forces behind Windows 8. Similarly, Scott Forstall has left Apple. Both were working to get laptops, tablets, and smartphones to use much the same interface and appear to the user to all have the same look-and-feel. Perhaps that touchscreen-style way of working will make its way to the interface to mainframe applications? Or perhaps in many ways it has in so far as remote access to mainframes can be achieved over the Internet from a browser on any platform.
I definitely predict more things will decide they are ‘cloud’ things. Mainframe users have been saying all along that they used to sit at a terminal and not worry where the application software lived, or where the data was stored – they just knew it was ‘out there’ and got on with their work. I’m sure this ‘cavalier’ attitude is one most users would like to be able to embrace. We’ve all had the problem with a file being on our office computer when we need it in the evening or weekend, or being on our home computer on Monday morning when we’re in the office. IT departments can sweat the security issues, but users will love the idea of it all (data and apps) being out there and available from anywhere.
Finally, if you’re a vendor, don’t forget to update your information in the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2013 – you can do it here. And if you’re a mainframe user, then help us by completing the user survey here.
The big news for mainframe users is, of course, the price hike promised by IBM. If you go to http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/9/897/ENUS312-129/index.html&lang=en&request_locale=en you can see that from 1 July, the price of Flat Workload License Charges (FWLC) will increase.
According to Timothy Prickett Morgan writing for The Register: “IBM has a wide variety of monthly software pricing schemes for its System z mainframes, but the FLMC scheme is interesting in that it applies to all machines regardless of size or vintage equally and as you increase the capacity of the mainframe, the software fees stay flat.
“The bad thing about the FWLC scheme is that it does not have what IBM calls sub-capacity pricing, where customers use virtualization to isolate capacity on a particular mainframe and then only get charged for that software based on the MSUs consumed in that logical partition.” MSUs are Metered Service Units. It looks like the average price rise will be around the 10 percent level.
We probably won’t be making use of Application Performance Management Software as a Service (perhaps more easily written as APM SaaS). A survey conducted by IDG Research Services online among members of the CIO Forum on LinkedIn during August found that 61 percent of organizations have no plans to implement APM SaaS. But around a quarter (24 percent) already use APM SaaS in some capacity, with a mere 4 percent are using an APM SaaS vendor to monitor all their critical applications.
A CA Technologies survey found that 80 percent of Australian organizations are expected to face a shortage of mainframe skills in the future, with 57 percent already experiencing difficulties. The skills shortage issue is one that IBM, CA, and other companies are addressing with graduate and undergraduate programmes of study on mainframes.
The good news from the survey is that the mainframe is also playing an increasingly strategic role in managing the evolving needs of the enterprise. Again this comes as a surprise to no-one who knows about mainframes. With the growth in use of Linux on the mainframe, organizations can save lots of their budget. And the new hybrid models allow sites to get the best of all worlds.
The survey also found that 36 percent of respondents anticipate an increase in hardware spending in the next 12 to 18 months. Good news for hardware vendors. 44 percent of respondents are planning to increase their spending on mainframe-related services.
And while our focus is on mainframes, we all use laptops, tablets, and smartphones, so it’s interesting to see that Steven Sinofsky has left Microsoft. Who’s he, you say? Well, he was one of the driving forces behind Windows 8. Similarly, Scott Forstall has left Apple. Both were working to get laptops, tablets, and smartphones to use much the same interface and appear to the user to all have the same look-and-feel. Perhaps that touchscreen-style way of working will make its way to the interface to mainframe applications? Or perhaps in many ways it has in so far as remote access to mainframes can be achieved over the Internet from a browser on any platform.
I definitely predict more things will decide they are ‘cloud’ things. Mainframe users have been saying all along that they used to sit at a terminal and not worry where the application software lived, or where the data was stored – they just knew it was ‘out there’ and got on with their work. I’m sure this ‘cavalier’ attitude is one most users would like to be able to embrace. We’ve all had the problem with a file being on our office computer when we need it in the evening or weekend, or being on our home computer on Monday morning when we’re in the office. IT departments can sweat the security issues, but users will love the idea of it all (data and apps) being out there and available from anywhere.
Finally, if you’re a vendor, don’t forget to update your information in the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2013 – you can do it here. And if you’re a mainframe user, then help us by completing the user survey here.
Sunday, 4 November 2012
What’s really going on?
One of the problems with being a mainframer these days is finding out what’s going on at other sites and being able to compare your experiences with other people’s. There used to be rooms full of mainframe staff, and regular turnover meant that new ideas were easily examined. Apart from Google, nowadays you can keep in the loop by joining a user group (like the Virtual IMS and Virtual CICS user groups that don’t require you to be out of the office to attend meetings), going to conferences (you’ve just missed IOD, but Guide Share Europe takes place next week), or you can read survey results.
Or there’s survey results. And as we’re coming to the end of another year, surveys seem to be happening more frequently.
BMC Software recently published a survey from their AsiaPacific area. They found there was a growth in processor engines, which was driven by transaction processing requirements. And driving that is users wanting to have data available to them at any time and anywhere – particularly users with mobile devices. BMC also found that some of the growth could be attributed to legacy application development and some to newer applications where the mainframe provides the back-end delivery of that application.
Respondents liked mainframes for security and data integrity reasons, as well as its centralized manageability. One result that won’t surprise anyone who’s investigated the option was that the cost of moving away from the mainframe is very high!
CA Technologies has published a survey of 800 IT and business leaders. They found that IT and business leaders often have two different views on innovation, with IT respondents suggesting that they are more likely to position themselves as driving innovation, being an expert on innovation, and having the required skills to foster innovation. Business executives identified IT’s shortcomings in regard to its ability to support and drive innovation and gave themselves credit for innovation.
With results that could have been published any time up to the 1990s, the survey found large gaps can be found in rating IT’s knowledge of the business, IT’s business and communications skills, and overall speed and agility. I thought this division had healed over many years ago, but maybe the pendulum is swinging back the other way? Perhaps the paucity of IT staff makes it harder for them to get to meetings and interact with other execs? Or maybe the CIO (Chief Information Officer) is disappearing from organizations and IT is being relegated into a silo all over again?
Not surprisingly, the survey found common frustrations such as organizations’ lack of agility, and budget and staff resource shortages. Interestingly, new IT initiatives include mobile and business intelligence/analytics. Organizations reporting high levels of innovation are also planning investments in cloud, security management, business analytics, service management, and virtualization.
If you want to have your say about what’s happening at your site, the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook is conducting a user survey now. You can find the survey at www.arcati.com/usersurvey13.
If you’re interested in the Virtual IMS or CICS user groups, you can find them at www.fundi.com/virtualims/ and www.fundi.com/virtualcics/ respectively. More information about the GSE conference is at www.gse.org.uk/tyc/.
Or there’s survey results. And as we’re coming to the end of another year, surveys seem to be happening more frequently.
BMC Software recently published a survey from their AsiaPacific area. They found there was a growth in processor engines, which was driven by transaction processing requirements. And driving that is users wanting to have data available to them at any time and anywhere – particularly users with mobile devices. BMC also found that some of the growth could be attributed to legacy application development and some to newer applications where the mainframe provides the back-end delivery of that application.
Respondents liked mainframes for security and data integrity reasons, as well as its centralized manageability. One result that won’t surprise anyone who’s investigated the option was that the cost of moving away from the mainframe is very high!
CA Technologies has published a survey of 800 IT and business leaders. They found that IT and business leaders often have two different views on innovation, with IT respondents suggesting that they are more likely to position themselves as driving innovation, being an expert on innovation, and having the required skills to foster innovation. Business executives identified IT’s shortcomings in regard to its ability to support and drive innovation and gave themselves credit for innovation.
With results that could have been published any time up to the 1990s, the survey found large gaps can be found in rating IT’s knowledge of the business, IT’s business and communications skills, and overall speed and agility. I thought this division had healed over many years ago, but maybe the pendulum is swinging back the other way? Perhaps the paucity of IT staff makes it harder for them to get to meetings and interact with other execs? Or maybe the CIO (Chief Information Officer) is disappearing from organizations and IT is being relegated into a silo all over again?
Not surprisingly, the survey found common frustrations such as organizations’ lack of agility, and budget and staff resource shortages. Interestingly, new IT initiatives include mobile and business intelligence/analytics. Organizations reporting high levels of innovation are also planning investments in cloud, security management, business analytics, service management, and virtualization.
If you want to have your say about what’s happening at your site, the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook is conducting a user survey now. You can find the survey at www.arcati.com/usersurvey13.
If you’re interested in the Virtual IMS or CICS user groups, you can find them at www.fundi.com/virtualims/ and www.fundi.com/virtualcics/ respectively. More information about the GSE conference is at www.gse.org.uk/tyc/.
Saturday, 30 June 2012
Having a giraffe!
If someone says something that seems a bit strange, unexpected, or a tad offensive, the standard response used to be: “Are you having a laugh?” – indicating that, from your point of view, what they’re saying is unreasonable. Well now, with a nod to Cockney rhyming slang, people say: “Are you having a giraffe?!”
Definitely not having a “giraffe” recently have been customers of British banks: Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Nat West, and Ulster Bank. These banks’ customers found that they couldn’t access their funds, or what they could see when they looked online at their account was not what they thought their balance should be!
The press have reported that people due to purchase new houses were unable to transfer money because they and their solicitors banked with Nat West. Another case in the papers referred to a prisoner who should have been released on bail, but the money never ‘appeared’ in the account so he spent the weekend in custody.
So, who’s to blame? It’s a bad time for banks – everywhere they’re being downgraded, but what went wrong for the RBS group of banks? RBS announced that the problems were all due to software failures. But I thought that seemed unlikely because the banks use good old reliable mainframes. However, as the week has gone on, it seems that it could be the result of a software failure, and the software in question was supplied by CA Technologies.
The story is that a technical problem occurred when RBS carried out a software update on Tuesday (19 June), which it fixed on Friday (22 June). The update or upgrade was being applied to RBS’s batch scheduling software, CA 7 Workload Automation. The software is used by RBS’s back end systems to update account balances.
This overnight upate is where the problem seems to have occurred. What isn’t clear is whether it was human error that led to technical issue, or whether there was some problem with the software itself.
There’s much buzz around that if the fault does lie with CA then RBS will take them to court for, what could turn out to be, a large sum in compensation. If it’s a result of what RBS’s staff did with the software, then that will be an internal matter.
One consequence of all this is that RBS has decided to cancel its corporate hospitality packages at Wimbledon. The bank said it would be “inappropriate” to continue providing the hospitality.
In addition to RBS carrying out its own internal investigation into what happened, Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has said that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) should investigate “what went wrong and then, perhaps even more importantly, why it took so long to recover”.
CA Technologies has announced that it is working with RBS to fix the technical issues that led to the outage of RBS’s online services for five days.
It’s bad news for customers, RBS, and CA, but there are lessons to be learned by every other bank, insurance company, and other financial institution. Firstly, I believe it would be commercial suicide to ditch mainframes and migrate to other platforms – no matter how good they look during a PowerPoint presentation. More importantly, the lesson to learn is to ensure the resilience of the platform. If updates or upgrades are being made, then a complete back-up copy of a working system needs to be available elsewhere. Whatever happened to RBS’s hot back-up site? How come, when things went pear shaped, they couldn’t swap across to it and use their log files to update all transactions from the evening of the 19th? Every other bank needs to check its procedures for backing out failed software upgrades and running live on separate systems. And they need to be able to recover much faster than RBS’s five days!
With banks across Europe facing a pretty torrid time at the moment, and millions of online RBS customers unable to make payments or even see their balances last week, plus RBS facing compensation payment claims from its customers, and CA facing the possibility of litigation, on this occasion, no-one’s having a giraffe!
Definitely not having a “giraffe” recently have been customers of British banks: Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Nat West, and Ulster Bank. These banks’ customers found that they couldn’t access their funds, or what they could see when they looked online at their account was not what they thought their balance should be!
The press have reported that people due to purchase new houses were unable to transfer money because they and their solicitors banked with Nat West. Another case in the papers referred to a prisoner who should have been released on bail, but the money never ‘appeared’ in the account so he spent the weekend in custody.
So, who’s to blame? It’s a bad time for banks – everywhere they’re being downgraded, but what went wrong for the RBS group of banks? RBS announced that the problems were all due to software failures. But I thought that seemed unlikely because the banks use good old reliable mainframes. However, as the week has gone on, it seems that it could be the result of a software failure, and the software in question was supplied by CA Technologies.
The story is that a technical problem occurred when RBS carried out a software update on Tuesday (19 June), which it fixed on Friday (22 June). The update or upgrade was being applied to RBS’s batch scheduling software, CA 7 Workload Automation. The software is used by RBS’s back end systems to update account balances.
This overnight upate is where the problem seems to have occurred. What isn’t clear is whether it was human error that led to technical issue, or whether there was some problem with the software itself.
There’s much buzz around that if the fault does lie with CA then RBS will take them to court for, what could turn out to be, a large sum in compensation. If it’s a result of what RBS’s staff did with the software, then that will be an internal matter.
One consequence of all this is that RBS has decided to cancel its corporate hospitality packages at Wimbledon. The bank said it would be “inappropriate” to continue providing the hospitality.
In addition to RBS carrying out its own internal investigation into what happened, Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, has said that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) should investigate “what went wrong and then, perhaps even more importantly, why it took so long to recover”.
CA Technologies has announced that it is working with RBS to fix the technical issues that led to the outage of RBS’s online services for five days.
It’s bad news for customers, RBS, and CA, but there are lessons to be learned by every other bank, insurance company, and other financial institution. Firstly, I believe it would be commercial suicide to ditch mainframes and migrate to other platforms – no matter how good they look during a PowerPoint presentation. More importantly, the lesson to learn is to ensure the resilience of the platform. If updates or upgrades are being made, then a complete back-up copy of a working system needs to be available elsewhere. Whatever happened to RBS’s hot back-up site? How come, when things went pear shaped, they couldn’t swap across to it and use their log files to update all transactions from the evening of the 19th? Every other bank needs to check its procedures for backing out failed software upgrades and running live on separate systems. And they need to be able to recover much faster than RBS’s five days!
With banks across Europe facing a pretty torrid time at the moment, and millions of online RBS customers unable to make payments or even see their balances last week, plus RBS facing compensation payment claims from its customers, and CA facing the possibility of litigation, on this occasion, no-one’s having a giraffe!
Sunday, 3 June 2012
Operations management still growing
Gartner has produced figures showing that the Worldwide IT Operations Management (ITOM) software revenue increased by 8.7 percent last year and totalled $18.3 billion.
Why is this important? Let me suggest that we have been in or around recession since 2008, making most organizations try to cut their spending and try to save as much money as possible until the markets start moving again. Clearly, operations management is too important to be left – making it appear fairly central to the sucess (or perhaps survival) of many organizations.
Commenting on the figures, Laurie Wurster, Research Director with Gartner said: “The market showed growth for the second consecutive year, after a sharp decline in 2009, despite slow economic growth, tight IT budgets, and merger and acquisition activity. We saw consistent resilience in 2011, with the ITOM software market expanding both in terms of revenue and worldwide markets.”
So which software vendors are benefiting from this growth in the market? Well, it seems there are five that mananged 53.5 percent of the revenue between them. And yet again, in that number one spot is IBM. Second is CA Technologies, at least $1 billion behind the leader. Then comes BMC, Microsoft, and HP.
IBM was in pole position in the combined mainframe management segments, which accounted for 28 percent of its total ITOM software revenue of $3.3 billion.
CA Technologies was in second place for the third year running, with revenue growth ahead of the overall market.
BMC Software enjoyed 8.2 percent growth, with 31 percent of its growth coming from the mainframe. You may wonder whether that makes it a more tastey takeover target!
Microsoft saw impressive growth of 11.2 percent. Most of its sales are associated with its Windows product, of course.
It’ll be interesting to see where HP is next year. The company may be forced to take its eye off the ball as they go to court against Oracle. And then there’s the 25000 jobs that are being cut.
I think the important point to take away from this story is that organizations – whether they’re large mainframe-based sites or Windows sites – are looking to manage their operations in new and developing ways. This must be an indication of their desire to get the world economy moving again, and, more importantly for them, be well placed to take advantage when it is.
Why is this important? Let me suggest that we have been in or around recession since 2008, making most organizations try to cut their spending and try to save as much money as possible until the markets start moving again. Clearly, operations management is too important to be left – making it appear fairly central to the sucess (or perhaps survival) of many organizations.
Commenting on the figures, Laurie Wurster, Research Director with Gartner said: “The market showed growth for the second consecutive year, after a sharp decline in 2009, despite slow economic growth, tight IT budgets, and merger and acquisition activity. We saw consistent resilience in 2011, with the ITOM software market expanding both in terms of revenue and worldwide markets.”
So which software vendors are benefiting from this growth in the market? Well, it seems there are five that mananged 53.5 percent of the revenue between them. And yet again, in that number one spot is IBM. Second is CA Technologies, at least $1 billion behind the leader. Then comes BMC, Microsoft, and HP.
IBM was in pole position in the combined mainframe management segments, which accounted for 28 percent of its total ITOM software revenue of $3.3 billion.
CA Technologies was in second place for the third year running, with revenue growth ahead of the overall market.
BMC Software enjoyed 8.2 percent growth, with 31 percent of its growth coming from the mainframe. You may wonder whether that makes it a more tastey takeover target!
Microsoft saw impressive growth of 11.2 percent. Most of its sales are associated with its Windows product, of course.
It’ll be interesting to see where HP is next year. The company may be forced to take its eye off the ball as they go to court against Oracle. And then there’s the 25000 jobs that are being cut.
I think the important point to take away from this story is that organizations – whether they’re large mainframe-based sites or Windows sites – are looking to manage their operations in new and developing ways. This must be an indication of their desire to get the world economy moving again, and, more importantly for them, be well placed to take advantage when it is.
Sunday, 13 May 2012
How’s business?
Since 2008, the world seems to have lurched its way from one financial crisis to the next. In the UK they’re talking about double dip recession. In Spain, things look difficult. And in Greece, things look impossible! So how are the big mainframe companies weathering the storm? Are we looking at an extinction-level event? Are the big players (the metaphorically dominant dinosaurs) going to be replaced by smaller companies (the metaphorical mammals)?
For people who like this kind of thing, there are meant to have been five mass extinctions in the Earth’s history. There’s the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (about 65.5 million years ago) when about 75% of species became extinct, seeing the end of the dinosaurs, and mammals and birds becoming the dominant land vertebrates.
There’s also the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event (205 million years ago). The Permian–Triassic extinction event (251 million years ago), which is referred to as the ‘Great Dying’. The Late Devonian extinction was about 375–360 million years ago. And the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event was 450–440 million years ago.
BMC Software’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings fell 42%. On the dowside there was an increase in operating expenses, while on the up side they saw slightly improved revenue. It seems that cloud services bookings totalled $100 million for the year – 10% ahead of analysts’ projections. The company closed its acquisition of Numara Software, which added to revenue in the fourth quarter, and gave BMC additional IT management tools and distribution to mid-sized companies. BMC also has 25% more sales people than it had a year ago. Looking at the bottom line: for the quarter ended 31 March, BMC Software reported a profit of $70.7 million, or 43 cents a share, down from $122.5 million, or 67 cents a share, a year earlier.
CA Technologies’ fourth-quarter earnings increased from last year, helped mainly by lower income tax payments. Revenues for the quarter rose 5 percent from last year, but were mostly offset by increased product development and general expenses. Its fourth-quarter net income was $211 million or $0.45 per share, compared to $188 million or $0.37 per share last year. Its net income jumped by 12%.
IBM recently reported flat revenues as its hardware business struggled in the first quarter of 2012. Revenues increased by just 0.3 percent to $24.7billion from the same period last year, although profits increased by 7.1 per cent to $3bn. IBM’s figures for each of its major divisions were generally positive, especially its cloud services, which saw revenue double, however its hardware business suffered a 6.7 percent decline in revenue to $3.7billion. IBM has raised its 2012 full-year earnings per share forecast to at least $15.00.
I couldn’t find any figures for Progress|DataDirect.
So, it seems financially to be a bit mixed rather than anywhere near an extinction for the big beasts of the mainframe software world. There may be a number of small mammals running around their feet, but these metaphorical dinosaurs are far from fighting for their very existence. It’s always worth remembering that dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrate for around 135 million years. Mainframes have only been with us since the 1960s They’ve still got quite a long way to go!
For people who like this kind of thing, there are meant to have been five mass extinctions in the Earth’s history. There’s the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (about 65.5 million years ago) when about 75% of species became extinct, seeing the end of the dinosaurs, and mammals and birds becoming the dominant land vertebrates.
There’s also the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event (205 million years ago). The Permian–Triassic extinction event (251 million years ago), which is referred to as the ‘Great Dying’. The Late Devonian extinction was about 375–360 million years ago. And the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event was 450–440 million years ago.
BMC Software’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings fell 42%. On the dowside there was an increase in operating expenses, while on the up side they saw slightly improved revenue. It seems that cloud services bookings totalled $100 million for the year – 10% ahead of analysts’ projections. The company closed its acquisition of Numara Software, which added to revenue in the fourth quarter, and gave BMC additional IT management tools and distribution to mid-sized companies. BMC also has 25% more sales people than it had a year ago. Looking at the bottom line: for the quarter ended 31 March, BMC Software reported a profit of $70.7 million, or 43 cents a share, down from $122.5 million, or 67 cents a share, a year earlier.
CA Technologies’ fourth-quarter earnings increased from last year, helped mainly by lower income tax payments. Revenues for the quarter rose 5 percent from last year, but were mostly offset by increased product development and general expenses. Its fourth-quarter net income was $211 million or $0.45 per share, compared to $188 million or $0.37 per share last year. Its net income jumped by 12%.
IBM recently reported flat revenues as its hardware business struggled in the first quarter of 2012. Revenues increased by just 0.3 percent to $24.7billion from the same period last year, although profits increased by 7.1 per cent to $3bn. IBM’s figures for each of its major divisions were generally positive, especially its cloud services, which saw revenue double, however its hardware business suffered a 6.7 percent decline in revenue to $3.7billion. IBM has raised its 2012 full-year earnings per share forecast to at least $15.00.
I couldn’t find any figures for Progress|DataDirect.
So, it seems financially to be a bit mixed rather than anywhere near an extinction for the big beasts of the mainframe software world. There may be a number of small mammals running around their feet, but these metaphorical dinosaurs are far from fighting for their very existence. It’s always worth remembering that dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial vertebrate for around 135 million years. Mainframes have only been with us since the 1960s They’ve still got quite a long way to go!
Sunday, 6 May 2012
If it's May it must be Madness
For the fourth year in a row, CA Technologies is hosting its free virtual trade show. As always, there are educational presentations to help mainframe users get more value from their existing products, and improve their technical skills. You can find out more and register by going to ca.com/mainframe/may. Last year’s event drew 5,000 registrants from 59 countries; and connected partners, industry experts, and colleagues via virtual booths and online chats.
MMM12 includes presentations by CA Technologies and leading industry experts including Julie Craig, research director, application management, Enterprise Management Associates; Jon Toigo, CEO of Toigo Partners, International LLC; Joe Clabby, president, Clabby Analytics; Craig Mullins, president, Mullins Consulting; Stu Henderson, president, The Henderson Group; and DB2 expert Sheryl Larson, president of Sheryl M Larson, Inc.
There’s also keynote speakers including: CA’s Dayton Semerjian; Dr Howard Rubin, President and CEO of Rubin Worldwide; Julie Craig, CA’s research director; Jon Toigo, CEO Toigo Partners; and Karen Sleeth, Senior Principal CA Labs.
From 1 to 31 May, CA claims it’s “the largest mainframe-focused event of its kind. Every weekday in May brings new insights, tools, and strategies to help you understand and maximize the strength and relevance of 21st century mainframe solutions. There are more than 100+ valuable sessions, demos, papers, and other valuable tools available over every business day in May, so you won’t want to miss a thing! From application development and performance, to databases and storage, to Linux on System z, MMM 2012 has your area covered!”
You may recall that Arcati’s Mark Lillycrop and I were involved in a Networking Lounge conversation during last year’s mainframe madness.
The great thing about this event is that you don’t need to leave your desk. There’s no travel costs, hotel costs, meals, replacement staff costs etc. You just log-in from your laptop.
The same applies to the Virtual CICS user group meeting on Tuesday 8 May. At 10:30am CDT, Stephen Mitchell, Managing Director of Matter of Fact Software Limited, will be discussing “Utilizing the Dojo Toolkit for Web browser-driven applications from CICS”.
Modern Web applications need a user interface that gives a positive experience, is functionally effective, and pleasing on the eye. Creating such user interfaces can be quite difficult using the browser’s native Javascript language. Javascript libraries such as the Dojo Toolkit facilitate the creation and delivery of modern Web applications. CICS on z/OS is fully capable of servicing the needs of Web applications. This presentation discusses how the Dojo Toolkit can be exploited by CICS Web applications. Reference is made to the business issues encountered when deciding to use the Dojo Toolkit in a software solution that already uses the CICS Web interface.
If you want to register for the presentation, you need to go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/624487633. If you want to find out more go to http://www.fundi.com/virtualcics/. Or if you’re an IMS specialist go to http://www.fundi.com/virtualims/ to find out about future IMS-related presentations.
Online events like CA’s May Mainframe Madness and virtual user group meetings like the Virtual CICS user group this coming week save attendees time while delivering the information they’d get from physically attending an event. And for their organization, the savings are huge – which is why we’re seeing more events of this type, and why they are so successful.
MMM12 includes presentations by CA Technologies and leading industry experts including Julie Craig, research director, application management, Enterprise Management Associates; Jon Toigo, CEO of Toigo Partners, International LLC; Joe Clabby, president, Clabby Analytics; Craig Mullins, president, Mullins Consulting; Stu Henderson, president, The Henderson Group; and DB2 expert Sheryl Larson, president of Sheryl M Larson, Inc.
There’s also keynote speakers including: CA’s Dayton Semerjian; Dr Howard Rubin, President and CEO of Rubin Worldwide; Julie Craig, CA’s research director; Jon Toigo, CEO Toigo Partners; and Karen Sleeth, Senior Principal CA Labs.
From 1 to 31 May, CA claims it’s “the largest mainframe-focused event of its kind. Every weekday in May brings new insights, tools, and strategies to help you understand and maximize the strength and relevance of 21st century mainframe solutions. There are more than 100+ valuable sessions, demos, papers, and other valuable tools available over every business day in May, so you won’t want to miss a thing! From application development and performance, to databases and storage, to Linux on System z, MMM 2012 has your area covered!”
You may recall that Arcati’s Mark Lillycrop and I were involved in a Networking Lounge conversation during last year’s mainframe madness.
The great thing about this event is that you don’t need to leave your desk. There’s no travel costs, hotel costs, meals, replacement staff costs etc. You just log-in from your laptop.
The same applies to the Virtual CICS user group meeting on Tuesday 8 May. At 10:30am CDT, Stephen Mitchell, Managing Director of Matter of Fact Software Limited, will be discussing “Utilizing the Dojo Toolkit for Web browser-driven applications from CICS”.
Modern Web applications need a user interface that gives a positive experience, is functionally effective, and pleasing on the eye. Creating such user interfaces can be quite difficult using the browser’s native Javascript language. Javascript libraries such as the Dojo Toolkit facilitate the creation and delivery of modern Web applications. CICS on z/OS is fully capable of servicing the needs of Web applications. This presentation discusses how the Dojo Toolkit can be exploited by CICS Web applications. Reference is made to the business issues encountered when deciding to use the Dojo Toolkit in a software solution that already uses the CICS Web interface.
If you want to register for the presentation, you need to go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/624487633. If you want to find out more go to http://www.fundi.com/virtualcics/. Or if you’re an IMS specialist go to http://www.fundi.com/virtualims/ to find out about future IMS-related presentations.
Online events like CA’s May Mainframe Madness and virtual user group meetings like the Virtual CICS user group this coming week save attendees time while delivering the information they’d get from physically attending an event. And for their organization, the savings are huge – which is why we’re seeing more events of this type, and why they are so successful.
Saturday, 14 January 2012
The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2012 has been published
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.
What makes this annual publication so important? The answer is that it provides a one-stop shop for everything a mainframer needs to know. For example, the technical specification section includes model numbers, MIPS, and MSUs for zEnterprise processors (z196s and z114s). There’s also a hardware timeline, and a display of mainframe operating system evolution.
In addition, there’s the glossary of terminology section explaining simply what all those acronyms stand for, but in a way that means you can understand them.
In addition, there’s the glossary of terminology section explaining simply what all those acronyms stand for, but in a way that means you can understand them.
One section provides a media guide for IBM mainframers. This includes information on newsletters, magazines, user groups, blogs, and social networking information resources for the z/OS environment. Amongst the things it highlights are zJournal, INSIGHT-SPECTRA, IBM Listservs, SHARE’s Five Minute Briefing on the Data Center, Facebook fan pages, and LinkedIn discussions. As well as user groups such as SHARE and IDUG.
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. There are a number of new organizations in the list this year, and, sadly, a few familiar names have ceased trading.
The mainframe strategy section contains articles by industry gurus and vendors on topics such as: Why incremental process-driven IT modernization is relevant for your business; Network management for the modern data centre; Next-generation mainframe management; Best practices for application release management; Peeling the onion of SFTP: options for securing file transfer to and from z/OS.
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 my next blog.
The other great thing about the Yearbook – as far as many of the 15,000 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 sponsors were: CA Technologies, Serena Software, Software AG, Software Diversified Services (SDS), Type80 Security Software, and William Data Systems.
To see this year's Arcati Mainframe Yearbook, click on www.arcati.com/newyearbook12. If you don't want to download a large PDF, again this year, each section is available as a separate PDF file.
Don't miss out on this excellent publication.
Sunday, 14 August 2011
We’re all friends now
There used to be a time when selling software was a cut-throat game. A salesman would turn up saying how good their product was and quietly poison the prospective client’s mind against alternative products from other vendors – listing their weaknesses and down-playing their strengths. In fact, I’ve even been paid to write documents for sales teams to use doing exactly that!
But now there is a much more grown-up approach to business. It seems that nowadays sales people are working together to move products. And where their own product may be gappy in some way, they are recommending the software of an erstwhile competitor. The benefits of this cooperative approach means that the customer gets a better service from vendors and a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the products. And it also means that those companies are able to sell more products – which, after all, is how you stay in business!
So what prompted these thoughts? At this week’s SHARE in Orlando, Florida CA Technologies started off by announcing a new release of the CA VM:Manager Suite for Linux on System z and a new capability for CA Solve Operations Automation. There have been lots of anecdotes appearing on the Internet of organisations benefitting hugely from virtualizing their Linux servers on System z and eliminating the server sprawl that preceded it. And, clearly, Linux continues (after its slow start) to be one of the fastest growing segments of the mainframe market. So anything that helps to make zLinux users’ lives easier has got to be a good thing.
According to CA’s press release: “The new release of the CA VM:Manager Suite includes enhancements across product areas, which extend integrated management capabilities designed to control costs, improve performance, increase user productivity, and more efficiently manage and secure z/VM systems that support Linux on System z.. It also adds tape management capabilities for Linux on System z, along with improvements that help CA Technologies customers install, deploy, and service their CA z/VM products quickly and more effectively.”
The new capability in CA Solve Operations Automation means Linux applications can be managed as if they were System z applications, which reduces the need for mainframe Linux operations expertise.
The synergy comes with the announcement of a partnerships between CA and INNOVATION Data Processing and Velocity Software, which, they claim, are designed to help customers increase cost savings by optimizing Linux management. CA will distribute INNOVATION Data Processing’s UPSTREAM for Linux on Z and UPSTREAM for UNIX on Z, and Velocity Software’s zVPS Performance Suite.
UPSTREAM for Linux on Z is, they say, an intuitive, easy-to-use, data protection solution for what was once distributed data that is now the foundation for Linux applications being consolidated on the mainframe. UPSTREAM for Linux on Z can help reduce backup, restore, and disaster recovery costs, while increasing business resiliency by enabling customers to leverage the use of existing mainframe resources to meet their enterprise data protection needs. The UPSTREAM for Linux on Z solution is designed so that users can easily schedule timely backups and still meet the need for immediate reliable recovery; of a file, disk volume, or an entire data centre with confidence.
zVPS offers, again according to their press release, easy-to-use graphical and Web-based tools to help analyse capacity requirements, establish operational alerts, and determine chargeback usage. Its detailed information helps IT staff optimize performance and effectively manage the cost of their Linux on System z environment. By gathering data from Linux on System z and distributed environments, such as VMWare, Microsoft, Linux, and Unix servers, zVPS supports server consolidation projects and facilitates decisions on the most cost-effective placement of workloads.
Cynical observers, who are slightly longer in the tooth, will remember a time when Computer Associates would have bought the company (in that Victor Kiam, Remington Rand sort of way!). Clearly, CA Technologies is now all about ‘working with’ other vendors.
But now there is a much more grown-up approach to business. It seems that nowadays sales people are working together to move products. And where their own product may be gappy in some way, they are recommending the software of an erstwhile competitor. The benefits of this cooperative approach means that the customer gets a better service from vendors and a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the products. And it also means that those companies are able to sell more products – which, after all, is how you stay in business!
So what prompted these thoughts? At this week’s SHARE in Orlando, Florida CA Technologies started off by announcing a new release of the CA VM:Manager Suite for Linux on System z and a new capability for CA Solve Operations Automation. There have been lots of anecdotes appearing on the Internet of organisations benefitting hugely from virtualizing their Linux servers on System z and eliminating the server sprawl that preceded it. And, clearly, Linux continues (after its slow start) to be one of the fastest growing segments of the mainframe market. So anything that helps to make zLinux users’ lives easier has got to be a good thing.
According to CA’s press release: “The new release of the CA VM:Manager Suite includes enhancements across product areas, which extend integrated management capabilities designed to control costs, improve performance, increase user productivity, and more efficiently manage and secure z/VM systems that support Linux on System z.. It also adds tape management capabilities for Linux on System z, along with improvements that help CA Technologies customers install, deploy, and service their CA z/VM products quickly and more effectively.”
The new capability in CA Solve Operations Automation means Linux applications can be managed as if they were System z applications, which reduces the need for mainframe Linux operations expertise.
The synergy comes with the announcement of a partnerships between CA and INNOVATION Data Processing and Velocity Software, which, they claim, are designed to help customers increase cost savings by optimizing Linux management. CA will distribute INNOVATION Data Processing’s UPSTREAM for Linux on Z and UPSTREAM for UNIX on Z, and Velocity Software’s zVPS Performance Suite.
UPSTREAM for Linux on Z is, they say, an intuitive, easy-to-use, data protection solution for what was once distributed data that is now the foundation for Linux applications being consolidated on the mainframe. UPSTREAM for Linux on Z can help reduce backup, restore, and disaster recovery costs, while increasing business resiliency by enabling customers to leverage the use of existing mainframe resources to meet their enterprise data protection needs. The UPSTREAM for Linux on Z solution is designed so that users can easily schedule timely backups and still meet the need for immediate reliable recovery; of a file, disk volume, or an entire data centre with confidence.
zVPS offers, again according to their press release, easy-to-use graphical and Web-based tools to help analyse capacity requirements, establish operational alerts, and determine chargeback usage. Its detailed information helps IT staff optimize performance and effectively manage the cost of their Linux on System z environment. By gathering data from Linux on System z and distributed environments, such as VMWare, Microsoft, Linux, and Unix servers, zVPS supports server consolidation projects and facilitates decisions on the most cost-effective placement of workloads.
Cynical observers, who are slightly longer in the tooth, will remember a time when Computer Associates would have bought the company (in that Victor Kiam, Remington Rand sort of way!). Clearly, CA Technologies is now all about ‘working with’ other vendors.
Saturday, 19 February 2011
Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2011 user survey
The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2011 has been available for download free from www.arcati.com/newyearbook11 for nearly a month now. Each new Yearbook is always greeted with enthusiasm by mainframers everywhere because it is such a unique source of information. And each year, many people find the results of the user survey especially interesting.
The 100 respondents who completed the survey on the Arcati site did so between 1 November and 3 December 2010. 32% were from Europe and 52% from North America, with 16% from the rest of the world.
44% of the respondents worked in companies with upwards of 10,000 employees worldwide, while 14% of respondents had 0-200 staff, 10% had 201-1000, 14% had 1001 to 5000, and 14% had 5001-10,000 staff. In terms of MIPS, 50% of respondents had fewer than 1000 MIPS installed, 24% fell into the mid-sized category between 1000 and 10,000 MIPS, and 22% were at the high end.
Looking at MIPS growth produced some interesting results. Larger, more mature businesses (above 10,000 MIPS) were almost all experiencing some growth, but predominantly in 0 to 10% per year category. Sites in the 1000-10,000 MIPS range were showing a range of results with some sites suggesting a decline while others predicted growth in excess of 50%. Sites below 1000 MIPS were most likely to be experiencing growth of less than 10%, with the largest percentage (of these three groups) predicting a decline. The mainframe market does appear to be quite fragmented with competitive pressures at the lower end of the mainframe market, and some respondents commented about lack of understanding amongst management about the value of mainframe computing.
With the environment and environmental issues getting so much coverage in the media these days, the survey asked whether IBM’s recent green initiatives on things like power consumption and cooling had made the mainframe more or less attractive. Nearly three-quarters (72% – the same as the previous year) said that IBM’s green initiatives made no difference at all. 17% felt it made the mainframe a little more attractive, and 11% felt it made the mainframe a lot more attractive. Clearly “greenness” isn’t much of a selling point for mainframes.
With so much talk about Cloud Computing, for the first time the survey asked the mainframe population for their opinion. It asked whether respondents currently used their mainframe for cloud computing. Only 2% of respondents said they did. 34% said they didn’t, and the rest weren’t sure. Bearing in mind that it is still early days for a cloud computing initiative, the survey asked whether respondents were planning to adopt cloud computing as a strategy. 22% said they weren’t at present. 8% thought some mainframe applications would be cloud-enabled in the future, and a similar number thought most would be cloud-enabled in the future. However, 4% didn’t see a use for cloud computing. It will be interesting to follow these figures in future surveys.
The survey asked respondents which specialty processors (IFL, zIIP, and zAAP) they had. 6% of sites had all three (down from last year’s value of 12%) and a further 28% of sites had two of the three specialty processors (up from last year’s 12%). More sites had zIIP processors (44%) than any other. 36% had IFL processors, and 24% had zAAP specialty processors. 36% of sites don’t have a specialty processor installed.
It seems that at many sites, mainframes are losing out due to management ignorance. The survey quotes one respondent who said: “We do not expect to have a mainframe within 2-3 years. The CIO sees the mainframe as obsolete and expensive, whether or not either of those is true”. Another respondent complained: “Our architects do not understand mainframes and seem to be mostly knowledgeable about Windows. Project funding is project based and not enterprise based, hence a tendency to prefer perceived cheaper solutions, eg Windows.”
The appearance of the z196 processor had a big impact within the industry. High-profile TV appearances of Watson on Jeopardy keep people familiar with the name IBM. However, there is still a lack of understanding of what a mainframe does and what it can do amongst far too many IT managers and other corporate executives.
Anyway, full details of the responses to many other questions can be found in the user survey section of the Yearbook. It’s well worth a read.
The Yearbook can only be free to mainframers because of the support given by sponsors. This year’s sponsors were CA Technologies, Canam Software, DataKinetics, and Type80 Security Software.
The 100 respondents who completed the survey on the Arcati site did so between 1 November and 3 December 2010. 32% were from Europe and 52% from North America, with 16% from the rest of the world.
44% of the respondents worked in companies with upwards of 10,000 employees worldwide, while 14% of respondents had 0-200 staff, 10% had 201-1000, 14% had 1001 to 5000, and 14% had 5001-10,000 staff. In terms of MIPS, 50% of respondents had fewer than 1000 MIPS installed, 24% fell into the mid-sized category between 1000 and 10,000 MIPS, and 22% were at the high end.
Looking at MIPS growth produced some interesting results. Larger, more mature businesses (above 10,000 MIPS) were almost all experiencing some growth, but predominantly in 0 to 10% per year category. Sites in the 1000-10,000 MIPS range were showing a range of results with some sites suggesting a decline while others predicted growth in excess of 50%. Sites below 1000 MIPS were most likely to be experiencing growth of less than 10%, with the largest percentage (of these three groups) predicting a decline. The mainframe market does appear to be quite fragmented with competitive pressures at the lower end of the mainframe market, and some respondents commented about lack of understanding amongst management about the value of mainframe computing.
With the environment and environmental issues getting so much coverage in the media these days, the survey asked whether IBM’s recent green initiatives on things like power consumption and cooling had made the mainframe more or less attractive. Nearly three-quarters (72% – the same as the previous year) said that IBM’s green initiatives made no difference at all. 17% felt it made the mainframe a little more attractive, and 11% felt it made the mainframe a lot more attractive. Clearly “greenness” isn’t much of a selling point for mainframes.
With so much talk about Cloud Computing, for the first time the survey asked the mainframe population for their opinion. It asked whether respondents currently used their mainframe for cloud computing. Only 2% of respondents said they did. 34% said they didn’t, and the rest weren’t sure. Bearing in mind that it is still early days for a cloud computing initiative, the survey asked whether respondents were planning to adopt cloud computing as a strategy. 22% said they weren’t at present. 8% thought some mainframe applications would be cloud-enabled in the future, and a similar number thought most would be cloud-enabled in the future. However, 4% didn’t see a use for cloud computing. It will be interesting to follow these figures in future surveys.
The survey asked respondents which specialty processors (IFL, zIIP, and zAAP) they had. 6% of sites had all three (down from last year’s value of 12%) and a further 28% of sites had two of the three specialty processors (up from last year’s 12%). More sites had zIIP processors (44%) than any other. 36% had IFL processors, and 24% had zAAP specialty processors. 36% of sites don’t have a specialty processor installed.
It seems that at many sites, mainframes are losing out due to management ignorance. The survey quotes one respondent who said: “We do not expect to have a mainframe within 2-3 years. The CIO sees the mainframe as obsolete and expensive, whether or not either of those is true”. Another respondent complained: “Our architects do not understand mainframes and seem to be mostly knowledgeable about Windows. Project funding is project based and not enterprise based, hence a tendency to prefer perceived cheaper solutions, eg Windows.”
The appearance of the z196 processor had a big impact within the industry. High-profile TV appearances of Watson on Jeopardy keep people familiar with the name IBM. However, there is still a lack of understanding of what a mainframe does and what it can do amongst far too many IT managers and other corporate executives.
Anyway, full details of the responses to many other questions can be found in the user survey section of the Yearbook. It’s well worth a read.
The Yearbook can only be free to mainframers because of the support given by sponsors. This year’s sponsors were CA Technologies, Canam Software, DataKinetics, and Type80 Security Software.
Friday, 28 January 2011
The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2011 - now available
Every year, about this time, we welcome a new edition of the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook. It really is the standard reference work for all IBM mainframe professionals – whether they’re grizzled old-timers nearing retirement or that new batch of recently graduated enthusiasts, and everyone in between.
Why is it such an important publication each year? The simple answer is that it provides a one-stop shop for everything you need to know. For newcomers (and people moving to an area slightly outside their comfort zone) there’s a technical specification section that includes model numbers, MIPS, and MSUs for z196 and z10 processors. There’s a hardware timeline, and a display of mainframe operating system evolution. In addition, there’s the glossary of terminology section explaining simply what those acronyms mean.
One section provides a media guide for IBM mainframers. This includes information on newsletters, magazines, user groups, and social networking information resources for the z/OS environment. Amongst the things it highlights are zJournal, INSIGHT-SPECTRA, IBM Listservs, SHARE’s Five Minute Briefing on the Data Center, blogs, Facebook fan pages, and LinkedIn discussions. As well as user groups such as SHARE and IDUG.
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. There are a number of new organizations in the list this year, and a few have ceased trading.
The mainframe strategy section contains articles by industry gurus and vendors on topics such as: XML and SOAP data binding for enterprise applications; DataKinetics solutions for mergers and acquisitions; Thinking outside the box – monitoring DB2 security on z/OS; and CA Mainframe Chorus.
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 my next blog.
The other good thing – as far as many of the 15,000 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 sponsors were CA Technologies, Canam Software, DataKinetics, and Type80 Security Software.
To see this year’s Arcati Mainframe Yearbook, click on www.arcati.com/newyearbook11. If you don’t want to download a large PDF, again this year, each section is available as a separate PDF file.
Don’t miss out on this excellent publication.
Why is it such an important publication each year? The simple answer is that it provides a one-stop shop for everything you need to know. For newcomers (and people moving to an area slightly outside their comfort zone) there’s a technical specification section that includes model numbers, MIPS, and MSUs for z196 and z10 processors. There’s a hardware timeline, and a display of mainframe operating system evolution. In addition, there’s the glossary of terminology section explaining simply what those acronyms mean.
One section provides a media guide for IBM mainframers. This includes information on newsletters, magazines, user groups, and social networking information resources for the z/OS environment. Amongst the things it highlights are zJournal, INSIGHT-SPECTRA, IBM Listservs, SHARE’s Five Minute Briefing on the Data Center, blogs, Facebook fan pages, and LinkedIn discussions. As well as user groups such as SHARE and IDUG.
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. There are a number of new organizations in the list this year, and a few have ceased trading.
The mainframe strategy section contains articles by industry gurus and vendors on topics such as: XML and SOAP data binding for enterprise applications; DataKinetics solutions for mergers and acquisitions; Thinking outside the box – monitoring DB2 security on z/OS; and CA Mainframe Chorus.
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 my next blog.
The other good thing – as far as many of the 15,000 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 sponsors were CA Technologies, Canam Software, DataKinetics, and Type80 Security Software.
To see this year’s Arcati Mainframe Yearbook, click on www.arcati.com/newyearbook11. If you don’t want to download a large PDF, again this year, each section is available as a separate PDF file.
Don’t miss out on this excellent publication.
Saturday, 20 November 2010
Cloud and the future of mainframes
CA Technologies released a survey on Wednesday entitled “Mainframe as a Mainstay”. The survey was conducted on 200 senior level US-based mainframe executives by Decipher Research. Amongst the results was the information that 73% of respondents confirmed that the mainframe is – or will be – part of their organization’s cloud computing strategy. The question posed at CA’s recent webinar was whether that result came as a surprise.
Now, as you may know, I’m a big fan of cloud computing. In fact, I’ve an article about cloud computing and IMS in the current issue of zJournal. It struck me that these results were very much in line with the recent results, also published by CA, from a survey carried out by Vanson Bourne, a market research company based in the UK. They conducted more than 300 interviews during August with European IT decision makers. Their report was called “Mainframe - The Ultimate Cloud Platform?”. They found a slightly higher figure of 79% of organisations believing the mainframe is an essential component of their cloud computing strategy. The also found 70% of respondents agreeing that cloud computing will sustain or extend the mainframe environment.
On the other hand, only 10 per cent of mainframe sites in BMC’s survey in October said that using their System z machines to run cloud computing or SaaS applications was an important priority for them in the coming year. Quite a difference! Similarly, my own straw poll at the Guide Share Europe conference at the beginning of November, in an IMS session, found that no-one seemed interested in cloud computing. I think that reflects real-life economics in that they were very much focused on what was available now that would make the business run better and their lives easier – how they could do more with less.
I think what we’re seeing is a difference between the attitude of mainframe staff, who want to get the job done with the tools available now and the pressure of fewer staff etc, and senior managers who are looking more strategically towards the next step.
The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2011 user survey has a couple of questions about cloud computing. It will be interesting to see the results from that. And, by-the-way, if you haven’t completed a survey yet, you can do so by going to www.arcati.com/usersurvey11.
Among the survey’s other findings we see:
Now, as you may know, I’m a big fan of cloud computing. In fact, I’ve an article about cloud computing and IMS in the current issue of zJournal. It struck me that these results were very much in line with the recent results, also published by CA, from a survey carried out by Vanson Bourne, a market research company based in the UK. They conducted more than 300 interviews during August with European IT decision makers. Their report was called “Mainframe - The Ultimate Cloud Platform?”. They found a slightly higher figure of 79% of organisations believing the mainframe is an essential component of their cloud computing strategy. The also found 70% of respondents agreeing that cloud computing will sustain or extend the mainframe environment.
On the other hand, only 10 per cent of mainframe sites in BMC’s survey in October said that using their System z machines to run cloud computing or SaaS applications was an important priority for them in the coming year. Quite a difference! Similarly, my own straw poll at the Guide Share Europe conference at the beginning of November, in an IMS session, found that no-one seemed interested in cloud computing. I think that reflects real-life economics in that they were very much focused on what was available now that would make the business run better and their lives easier – how they could do more with less.
I think what we’re seeing is a difference between the attitude of mainframe staff, who want to get the job done with the tools available now and the pressure of fewer staff etc, and senior managers who are looking more strategically towards the next step.
The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2011 user survey has a couple of questions about cloud computing. It will be interesting to see the results from that. And, by-the-way, if you haven’t completed a survey yet, you can do so by going to www.arcati.com/usersurvey11.
Among the survey’s other findings we see:
- A majority (80%) responded they will be maintaining or increasing spend on mainframe staff in the next 12-18 months.
- More than three-quarters (76%) will maintain or increase their investment in mainframe software during the next 12-18 months.
- Nearly half of respondents (46%) are looking for industry leadership from vendors on the evolving role of the mainframe in the enterprise.
- 61% of respondents don’t believe the IT industry does enough to promote mainframe career opportunities to recent graduates.
- 35% believe that recent graduates are not as proficient in mainframe technology as their counterparts that entered the workforce 10-years ago.
- 61% said that hiring either took much longer than expected, took long enough to negatively impact their IT operation or are still looking for talent after more than six months.
Picking up on the 35% of respondents who believe recent graduates are not as technology proficient as their counterparts that entered the workforce 10-years ago, webinar panellists were asked whether this was something they were seeing in the workforce.
I think the truth is that even the ancient Greeks felt that youngsters weren’t as good as they used to be! Certainly when I started working on mainframes, we were a mixed bag of youngsters, and many of those less capable or that-way-inclined left – leaving the enthusiasts and the highly technically-capable. I assume the criticism can always be applied. New people at any job just aren’t very good. And once they are quite good, they’re promoted to a different one.
We hear the mainframe referred to as a dinosaur – even though we know signs point in the opposite direction – in addition, the mainframe has a reputation as older technology with a middle-aged workforce, so the panellists were asked whether the fact that 52% of those surveyed cited Facebook and LinkedIn as the most effective recruiting tools came as a surprise.
My first response whenever a sentence includes the words mainframe and dinosaur is to point out that dinosaurs ruled the Earth for 160 million years. Humans have existed for say 200,000 years. Draw your own conclusions!
I’m not at all surprised that middle-aged people are using Facebook and LinkedIn and many other examples of social media. At the end of 2008, the answer may have been surprising, at the end of 2009 it may have surprised some people, but not at the end of 2010. These are IT people we’re talking about – of course they’re going to know what’s going on in the cyber world. I also imagine, next year, that figure will be much higher than 52%. Mainframers know about social networking. Look how many of them blog and are on Twitter.
You can find more information about the survey at www.ca.com/us/news/Press-Releases/na/2010/CA-Technologies-Survey-Reveals-Mainframes-Role-as-Anchor-in-Cloud.aspx.
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