Mainframe and IT 2021 Review, With a Look Toward 2022
January 28, 2022
2020 continued into 2021, giving us more of the COVID-19 era’s new normal. The Oxford Dictionary’s 2021 Word of the Year was “vax”—like vax sites, vax cards, getting vaxxed and being fully vaxxed. Collins Dictionary chose non-fungible token (NFT) as its word of the year. An NFT is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data—e.g., […]
ArticlesStreamline Fintech Data Management With IBM Hyper Protect Services
January 28, 2022
Many banks and financial institutions are modernizing their IT systems and applications to become more agile and responsive by adopting a hybrid multicloud strategy, which involves minimal lift and shift. IBM is a major provider of hardware, software and services that are geared towards helping customers through their mainframe modernization journey. The process of migrating […]
ArticlesCounting the Benefits Part 2: IBM Z and the Global Economy
January 17, 2022
In Part 1 of this article, I set the stage for recognizing that the IBM Z mainframe has many relevant differentiators that need to be specifically accounted for in RPFs and cost-benefits analyses in order to create a fair playing field where implicit strengths of the mainframe are not assumed as being part of other […]
ArticlesPaving a Path Forward on IBM i and AIX
January 10, 2022
As organizations accelerate their digital transformations, IBM i and AIX partners and customers are re-evaluating their approach and planning their path forward. While the pandemic added new challenges, many organizations are facing the same or similar challenges that were present before COVID-19 and now are just at a heightened level of importance. Modernizing RPG Applications […]
ArticlesLog4Shell Part 2: 3 Best Practices for Software Security
January 6, 2022
Log4Shell and others provide a constant reminder that IT security is a perpetual task. Jesse Gorzinski highlights three security best practices you should follow to keep software secure.
Apache Log4j Vulnerability, AIX Tips and Tools, a Look at Time Drift, and More
January 4, 2022
IBM Champion Rob McNelly on the Log4j security vulnerability, helpful AIX tips and tools, time drifts on POWER8 and POWER9 servers, and more
ArticlesThe History of Business Computing Part 1: Counting the Benefits
December 20, 2021
How did we go from the joy of the freedom that personal, commodity computing brought us, to unidimensional cynicism about industrial-strength computing, valuing everything by gross costs without a consideration of the nature and amount of what was being delivered? For that matter, how did we get to a place where requests for proposals (RFPs) […]
ArticlesAre Containers on Mainframes Safe?
December 20, 2021
Let’s just start with some basics: What is a container? A container is a standard unit of software that packages up code and all of its dependencies, so the application runs quickly and reliably in different computing environments. In effect, this container can be taken from one computing platform to another, and it will still […]
ArticlesWhat Is the TLS Handshake Process?
December 15, 2021
A vast majority of web applications and websites today use the HTTPS protocol that enables data encryption between the client and server. It is, therefore, always a good idea to have at least a very basic understanding of how the whole encryption process works—how the encryption begins and how it is established, and that is […]
ArticlesLog4Shell Part 1: Answering FAQs on the Log4Shell Security Vulnerability
December 14, 2021
Jesse Gorzinksi on the Log4Shell security vulnerability, what it impacts and how to remediate the problem in Java programs