z/OS and Friends: CICS Changing With the Times While Serving Longstanding Applications
April 7, 2025
Joe Gulla explains how the Customer Information Control System (CICS) relates to the programmer experience, and how it has evolved to handle growing workloads while embracing web services and new languages like Java
Articles5 Modern Technologies for IBM Z ‘Optimization’
December 11, 2024
Kyndryl’s Pat Stanard and Brenno Oliveira explore the tools that are enhancing the mainframe’s capabilities and demonstrating the community’s commitment to innovation
PodcastsThe Triumphant Return of Centralized Systems
April 5, 2024
Greg Szabo on his long mainframe career and still loving what he does. (There's also a quick lesson on Canadian geography.)
ArticlesThe Comprehensive Beginners’ Guide to AI
February 15, 2024
Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the hottest topic in the tech world today. But what is AI, really? And what are its implications? AI really started in the 1950s with Alan Turing and later the Dartmouth Conference. You can read more details here. IBM’s Deep Blue computer beating the reigning world chess champion, Gary Kasparov, […]
PodcastsOn the Mainframe and a Changing, Challenging IT World
November 17, 2023
Joe Winchester of IBM Hursley and Reg Harbeck engage in a discussion and debate on ISPF, molecular biology and the cello
Performance Implications for CICS Applications Using COBOL Version 6
August 2, 2023
Rocket Software’s Ezriel Gross highlights a methodology for CICS problem analysis and performance tuning—and shares how it led to a 92% savings in CPU for a heavily used transaction
ArticlesWhy Ansible Is Emerging as a Top Automation Tool for Mainframes
August 12, 2022
Mainframe sites used to be like small factories in terms of the number of people that were needed to keep the machine running. There were lots of operators who spent their time feeding in card decks and changing tapes on the tape drives. There were systems programmers and application programmers, and a whole host of […]
ArticlesCan IMS Connect to the Outside World?
April 21, 2022
Information Management System (IMS) was developed by IBM, with Rockwell and Caterpillar Inc., starting in 1966 as a bill of materials system for the Apollo space program. It went live in 1968, making it over 50 years old. Like everything else on the mainframe, it has been updated and extended since that time. As you […]
PodcastsSeeing the World Via the Mainframe
April 4, 2022
Reg Harbeck: Hi, I'm Reg Harbeck, and today I'm here with my colleague and co-author Karl-Erik Stenfors, who has been in the mainframe space for a very good long time. Well Karl-Erik, let's start by telling us about how did you end up on the mainframe? Karl-Erik Stenfors: Well, a bit of a point. […]
PodcastsCharles Mills on His Mainframe Journey and the Future of IBM Z
November 8, 2021
Reg Harbeck: Hi, this is Reg Harbeck and today I’m here with my friend and colleague Charles Mills who has written all kinds of applications both on the mainframe and talking to the mainframe and just been really involved in the whole journey of the mainframe. Well before telling you all about him myself, Charles why […]