Jim Utsler
Contributor
Jim Utsler, freelance writer and former senior writer, has been writing about technology since the mid-1990s. He has covered myriad technological advances—and seen numerous IBM platform name changes. Although he currently focuses on customer success stories, he also writes articles of general computing interests and about new and emerging technologies. He has also written stories for magazines like Automotive News, Electronic Commerce World and PGA Magazine. Jim is a freelance illustrator and the author of two currently unpublished novels (one a thriller about the early days of PC development). Jim has a degree from the University of Michigan. While in school, he was a copy editor for Mathematical Reviews, an experience that taught him that math actually does make sense. His now, oft-repeated rebuke of himself is, “If I had been born smart enough, I would have been a physicist.” Jim can be reached at jjutsler@provide.net.
Insurance for Db2 for z/OS
December 8, 2022
Log-On Software’s Total Utility Control can automate many database tasks, as the North Carolina Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company recently discovered
ArticlesThe Mainframe Ecosystem: A Community Effort
January 10, 2022
Community. That’s the driving force behind the burgeoning IBM Z mainframe ecosystem, whether supported by IBM itself, ISVs, universities or end users—or more likely, all of the above. Indeed, each of these segments benefits from the others by working toward common goals, such as improving mainframe ease of use, cultivating skills for the future or developing open-source […]
ArticlesProtecting Data Within New HA/DR Parameters
September 30, 2021
There are two types of organizations in the world: those that have experienced unplanned system downtime and those that will. Of the first group, many have likely tightened up their high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) methods and tools as a result of their incidents, moving, for example, to hosted cloud-based HA/DR services. Within the […]
ArticlesEmbracing Automation Enables Effective IBM i HA/DR Planning
June 4, 2021
Automation is a boon for systems administrators. They can, for example, schedule jobs to run at specific times and days, considering issues such as job types and runtimes, differing time zones, end-of-day office closings and resource consumption. Although not entirely hands off—admins may have to respond to various job alerts—automation has addressed some particularly acute […]
ArticlesCOBOL Supports the World’s Business Operations
March 17, 2021
“Fine wine gets better with age,” or so the phrase goes. Oddly, this aphorism also in a way applies to COBOL. It was great when it was developed, but over the 60-plus years it’s been around, it’s actually improved in some ways, even enabling many companies to enter the digital age. Reports suggesting hundreds of […]
ArticlesThe Business Benefits of Modernizing IBM Z and IBM i
January 8, 2021
The title of a new white paper from IDC and sponsored by Rocket Software, “The Quantified Business Benefits of Modernizing IBM Z and IBM i to Spur Innovation,” authored by Peter Rutten, an IDC research director in the infrastructure group, pretty much gives away the report’s central premise. But what are the factors behind this […]
Articles4 Customer Journeys From Tape to Cloud
December 8, 2020
Necessity, it’s been said, is the mother of invention. Such was the case when information technology outsourcing (ITO) company Blue Hill Data Services faced a number of obstacles as it prepared for the data migration of four mainframe-based customers (including a state pension fund, a large state government, a state government department of labor and […]
ArticlesSensitive Data Control
September 1, 2020
It’s an unfortunate fact of business life that bad actors are out there trolling for sensitive data. For them, the risk-reward is relatively low. For those whose data is breached, though, the costs can be exorbitant, whether from loss of intellectual property (IP), being socked with massive fines or losing customer goodwill. The news isn’t […]
ArticlesNew Levels of Computing Flexibility
May 4, 2020
Designing a comprehensive computing environment was once a relatively straightforward endeavor: install a server and other hardware, load an OS and applications, and offer access to end users. This has become a bit more complicated as computing moves outside the confines of data center walls to become part of hybrid multicloud environments, which is a […]
ArticlesPowerAI Vision Democratizes the Development of Visual AI Models
January 2, 2020
It used to be that only programmers actually programmed—that was their area of expertise. End users simply worked within the parameters set before them. But then something happened that began to alter that relationship. Tools like spreadsheets allowed average employees to essentially do their own programming, building smart columns, rows and cells that could predictably […]