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Marlaina Chirdon on Assembler, IBM Z User Groups and zNextGen
January 2, 2020
Reg Harbeck: Hi, this is Reg Harbeck and I'm here today with my friend Marlaina Chirdon who is somebody I've known for quite a while which considering that she is still a relatively new mainframer but we've worked at the same employer. We've had a shared mentor but before I spend too much time introducing […]
ArticlesWomen in IT Value Community and Mentorship
December 19, 2019
As anyone associated with the industry can tell you, far more men than women have followed career paths in IT—but that trend has been shifting. To amplify the voices of women who are making their own path in IT and innovating on the IBM Z platform, IBM Systems magazine interviewed a group of IT professionals […]
ArticlesMinimizing Project Plan Delays With Debugging
December 16, 2019
Project planning has been a way of life for me since my career’s early days, learned from an IBM senior systems engineer who was my comrade providing support to a large, leading edge insurance company, driven by their appetite for CICS First Customer Shipment, then Early Support Programs as IBM’s early introduction programs evolved. Project […]
ArticlesMaximum Spooled Files by Job
December 9, 2019
There may be times when a specific job requires more than the default number of spooled files. Here’s how to increase the maximum spooled files on a job.
PodcastsDusty Rivers on IMS, CICS, Db2 and IBM Z
December 5, 2019
Reg Harbeck: Hi, this is Reg Harbeck and today I'm here with Dusty Rivers, an experienced IBM mainframe expert, an IMS person who has been working all across the mainframe ecosystem especially in areas that has gotten enough attention that he has been able to be an IBM Champion for the past 10 years as […]
ArticlesThe Benefits of Working Remotely in IT
November 15, 2019
When I was rewriting a student records system for my graduate college, I spent most of time in a tiny room with a keypunch and desk filled with old and new program printouts, plus the punched card versions of each. When I wrote code, it was an instruction per card (or more if putting an […]
ArticlesActive_Job_Info() for Prestart Server Jobs
November 5, 2019
This article continues upon the series of blogs Dawn May has written related to prestart jobs, one of which detailed retrieving the current SQL statement for a job using QSYS2.ACTIVE_JOB_INFO()
ArticlesMichelle Yeager and Hayley Owens on COBOL Programming
November 4, 2019
Reg Harbeck: I'm Reg Harbeck and today I'm here with Michelle Yeager and Hayley Owens. They are both new COBOL programmers whom I met at SHARE. So maybe let's start; Michelle if you could begin by telling us how did you end up working on the mainframe and being a COBOL programmer? Michelle Yeager: […]
ArticlesClosing the COBOL Programming Skills Gap
October 25, 2019
The backbone of today’s electronic commerce is COBOL on an IBM Z computing platform. There are 240 billion lines of COBOL in operation, and another 5 billion new lines are added each year. $3 trillion of commercial transactions are processed by COBOL applications each day. COBOL is what business runs on. Some reports indicate that […]
ArticlesCapacity Planning and Management: Don’t Let the Tank Go Dry
October 8, 2019
IT computing complexes are fluctuating, growing, evolving entities, characterized by continual, erratic growth, intertwined with shifting business volumes. The long-term trend is continual system growth driven by business volumes, as well as new forms of usage. A daunting challenge for most IT operations is to have a “crystal ball” that predicts IT resource demand growth, […]
ArticlesRay Mullins on Assembler, COBOL and PL/1
October 1, 2019
Reg Harbeck: Hi, this is Reg Harbeck and today I'm here with Ray Mullins who is a friend of mine and fellow mainframer who I've known from SHARE and various other parts of the mainframe ecosystem for quite some time. It turns out we have a lot of common interests, including languages and of course […]
ArticlesIBM POWER9 and Composable Systems
October 1, 2019
Once upon a time, advances in computing speeds were defined by Moore’s Law. That’s no longer the case, however, with the law having hit a wall. As a result, tech providers have had to become more creative when addressing compute speeds, especially when it comes to new technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing […]
Articlesz15: Next-Gen Security and Resiliency for Hybrid Multicloud
September 12, 2019
On Sept. 12, IBM announced the new IBM z15. The mantra for this new generation of the enterprise platform is “the cloud you want with the privacy and security you need,” announcing to the world that IBM Z is ready to help integrate sensitive workloads into the hybrid multicloud. IBM is rolling out major steps […]
ArticlesManaging the IT Project Backlog
September 11, 2019
While IT seems to be an exercise in reading the future and transforming it into business processes, IT often misuses its most vital resource—the people that turn hardware, software and networks into business applications that improve productivity, provide new function, and increase employee effectiveness. Analysts are pulled off projects barely halfway complete, designers are reassigned […]
Podcasts‘Captain COBOL’ Tom Ross on the Evolution of COBOL on Z
September 3, 2019
Reg Harbeck: Hi, this is Reg Harbeck and today I'm here with Tom Ross whose nickname is Captain COBOL and he has been working at IBM on COBOL since the early 1980s. Well Tom before I describe you to the world, why don’t you tell us, how did you end up working at IBM on […]
ArticlesGet Started With Go Language on AIX
September 3, 2019
Go toolchain, the self-hosted toolchain of the new high-performance networking and multiprocessing language, is now available on AIX* 7.2 for POWER8*. This toolchain aims to complement the previous port of Go for AIX, which was made within gcc (known as the gccgo toolchain). What Is Go Language? Go is a new imperative language inspired by […]
ArticlesWhen the Phone Rings in the Middle of the Night
August 16, 2019
It’s been decades since I had a 9:00 to 5:00 job, only the earliest weeks of my IT career. Training kept me out of town a lot, and becoming a participating project member took a few months to attain, but once I’d become an accountable project member, my working hours extended into evenings because of […]
ArticlesIBM Redbooks: A Look at the Website’s 3 Tabs
August 12, 2019
Joseph Gulla explains the different tabs on the IBM Redbooks website.
ArticlesLuisa Martinez on zNextGen and SHARE
August 1, 2019
Reg Harbeck: Hi, this is Reg Harbeck and today I'm here with Luisa Martinez who is the IBM rep to the zNextGen project at SHARE. Luisa, maybe if you can start by just telling us, how did you end up on the mainframe? Luisa Martinez: All right. Well thank you for having me and […]
ArticlesValuable Sessions Continue on Day 2 of the 2019 ECC Conference
July 19, 2019
Joseph Gulla highlights sessions from the 2019 ECC conference.
ArticlesCompute Trends and the Evolution of the IBM Mainframe
July 18, 2019
The past 40-plus years of commercial computing has been a story of three waves (acts) of increasing integration of processes coupled with increasing scale of computing. This article describes each wave, and provides insights of where the current wave of cloud computing is heading. For many of the world’s largest enterprises, modern businesses were built […]
ArticlesSHARE Women in IT Effort Works to Increase Representation and Support Those in the Tech Industry
July 17, 2019
SHARE recently launched a new effort to encourage more women to pursue careers in technology, increase representation at the conference, and support women already working in the industry. The result of this Women in IT initiative became clear back in March 2019 at SHARE Phoenix, where several sessions focused on women in technology and shattering […]
ArticlesManagement by Intimidation Is a Formula for Failure
July 16, 2019
Over the decades I’ve seen scores of management staff in action, some competent and motivating, others technology savvy yet people ignorant, some just the opposite, some political and back-stabbing, and some truly cost-obsessed. I spent 17 years with IBM and flourished under their management style, then founded an IT consulting firm. Instead of being managed […]
ArticlesIBM Research Is Revamping the Global Food Supply Chain
July 10, 2019
According to the United Nations, the earth’s human population could grow to 8 billion people over the next few years. Go to research.ibm.com/5-in-5/ to read more about IBM Research’s five seed to shelf predictions. Unfortunately, the global food chain—from farms to processors to grocers to the table—may not be able to safely and effectively keep […]
ArticlesGetting Started With IFS Containers
July 8, 2019
IBM i expert Jesse Gorzinski explains set up a container running Node.js version 10