One thing I always get a kick out of is browsing through old PDSes and finding members that were created or last updated in the 1970's. It's kind of like digging through your grandparents' attic, except that what you find may still be in use.

In fact, that's one of the cool things about the mainframe: when IBM announced it on April 7, 1964, they promised that whatever was developed for it would continue to be usable into the future, and they've pretty much kept that promise.

However, there's a downside to this: we get used to something that works so well that the old adage kicks in, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Which would be fine if the world never changed. But it does, and the organization your work for changes, and the business realities, opportunities and challenges you're facing change as well.

Too often, in the mainframe world, when faced with this change, we've either said that we weren't able to respond to it, or we had to write a work-around to deal with it, or it would be very expensive and time-consuming at the least.

This is why I'm excited about a new insight that's making its rounds: today's mainframe software already has untapped features that are ready to respond to today's new business realities. All you have to do is find out about them and implement them.

The problem, of course, is: how do you find out about these hidden treasures?

I'm fortunate enough to work for an organization that asked this question and came up with an answer: document them from a business perspective!

So, that's what we've been doing, and plan to continue doing for the foreseeable future. We've created a series of documents currently named "Releasing Latent Value" which start with specific business needs you're likely experiencing today, then talk about their cause, how to respond to them, and how you can use the CA software you already have to do this.

We've already made a number of them available at http://www.ca.com/us/content/campaign.aspx?cid=187624#section4, and we'll be adding more.

Let me know what you think of them - do they hit the target? Are there other ways they could be more beneficial to you?

While the idea of finding hidden treasures is as old as history, these documents are completely new, so your responses will help us develop them to be more responsive to your business needs.

I look forward to your feedback!