When 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 […]
ArticlesApplication Performance and Tuning
May 14, 2019
As the original author of “CICS Performance Bulletin” published by IBM Dallas System Center, and co-author of the subsequent IBM “CICS TS Performance Guide” in conjunction with IBM Hursley CICS TS Development, performance and tuning has been a big part of my job. I’ve performed more CICS performance studies than I can count, and almost […]
ArticlesMaking Informed Technological Decisions
September 1, 2018
In my early system engineering years with IBM, my primary account was a large insurance company in central Wisconsin that was a leading-edge user of CICS [1] and one of the higher volume online systems in the world. Their advanced, heavily-used, real-time and transaction-based business applications stressed IBM’s largest S/370 processors to their limits. Transaction growth […]
ArticlesWriting Applications Means Knowing the Process and Its Users
July 1, 2018
A few years ago, I helped a client modify and enhance applications in key business processes like marketing, accounting, inventory management, order processing and customer service. I wasn’t an expert in application design or coding; my specialty was system software like CICS, Db2, VSAM and MVS, but I did know the COBOL, PLI and Assembler […]
ArticlesIT Change and Renewal
April 30, 2018
Approaches and tactics to address challenges like breathing new life into applications.
Things to Consider When Doing a Network Redesign
January 2, 2018
When I started my career, my assignment was singular: Support CICS/VS on the mainframe. My clients were few, because online processing was relatively new, but two of the clients had grown into major players in online and were significantly expanding outside their home offices. In fact, these clients had offices spread across a substantial portion […]
ArticlesOptimize Memory to Enhance Speed of CICS Functions
December 1, 2017
This article focuses on CICS performance across all platforms. On the mainframe CICS is known as CICS Transaction Server (TS), but on other platforms it’s called TXSeries, with CICS Transaction Gateway providing standardized CICS interfaces and secure access. All products are developed and supported by CICS development, and interact with each other via facilities like […]
ArticlesStreamline Processes and Reduce Processor Overhead in CICS
November 1, 2017
This article focuses on CICS performance across all platforms. On the mainframe CICS is known as CICS Transaction Server, but on other platforms it’s called TXSeries, with CICS Transaction Gateway providing standardized CICS interfaces and secure access. All products are developed and supported by CICS development, and interact with each other via facilities like CICS […]
ArticlesIBM Z Offerings Help Clients Take Advantage of the Cloud
November 1, 2017
The cloud was once considered simply part of the computing stack—an extension of the data center that hosted non-critical applications and data sets seemingly in the air. Now for many organizations, however, it’s become an essential part of operations, allowing them to more quickly deploy new technologies and nimbly respond to changing market forces. As […]
ArticlesMonitoring and Administration Needed for CICS Effectiveness
September 1, 2017
This article focuses on CICS performance across all platforms. On the mainframe CICS is known as CICS Transaction Server (TS), but on other platforms the product is named TXSeries, and for special functions, CICS Transaction Gateway. All products are developed and supported by CICS development, and are designed to interact with each other via facilities […]