Wow - it's been too long since my last blog entry - but I can explain. Since the last time, I've had the opportunity to meet with mainframers literally around the world. I've been to South Africa (Johannesburg and Capetown), Australia (Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne), France (Paris), Sweden (Stockholm) and Great Britain (GSE at Warwick), and talked about regulatory compliance, security, storage, Linux and CA's strategy, all on the mainframe.

And one of the things I can tell you based on this experience is that, no matter where you go, mainframers are great people to meet, and have many of the same concerns and challenges.

One of those challenges is what to do about mainframe Linux. It seems that many organizations are holding their collective breaths waiting to see what every other organization is doing with it. There are a few interesting exceptions who are leading the way, and it seems clear that Linux is on the mainframe to stay. But many organizations are still on the verge of their first big step forward in this area.

Another challenge, which I've written about before, is what to do about the imminent departure of the current generation of mainframers and the arrival of an insufficiently-experienced new generation to take their place.

A related challenge is finding the time to maintain and take advantage of new features in all the various mainframe management products out there, especially when each has a different SMP/E installation style.

And, of course, dealing with the growing number of regulations that affect mainframe organizations around the world is an ongoing challenge.

The cool thing is, having gone around the world and heard all these questions, my next trip will be around CA World where I'll get to hear and talk about the answers, from CA's mainframe Linux solutions to some excellent announcements of new technologies and innovations to all our business-enabling solutions for dealing with challenges such as regulatory compliance.

I look forward to telling you about it all... stay tuned!

And, if you'd like more information in the meantime, check out http://caworld.com/, and also http://ca.com/knowhow.