Published:
May 01 2009, 07:43 AM
by
Reg Harbeck
It's May first! May Day! And, for the first time ever, CA is beginning our month-long celebration of the mainframe that we're calling "May Mainframe Madness."
Now, if you don't live in the United States, or maybe just aren't a big basketball fan, you may not catch the reference to a popular American tradition called "March Madness." Suffice to say that it's a celebration of excellence that leads to the emergence of a single, best team at the end of a month of amazing efforts and results.
Which has inspired CA's mainframe team to likewise spend a month celebrating excellence on the mainframe with great educational and informative webcasts, new product and product enhancement announcements, a world "Mainframe Infinity Tour," and, most importantly, the official release of our Mainframe 2.0 strategy including the first cut of our Mainframe Software Manager, which will enable mainframe people, both new and experienced, to far more effectively and easily manage their CA mainframe software.
Of course, there is more to this than just a few announcements and webcasts. After all, the mainframe is the computer that keeps the most important organizations on earth running, and it's important to keep this platform alive, well, and moving forward.
That means adapting it to the emerging needs and opportunities of today's businesses that use the mainframe, beginning with the need for business-enabling simplification and cost-effectiveness. So we're standardizing the SMP/E installation of our mainframe products in a manner that not only makes it easier for both new and experienced people to maintain all their CA software, but also enables us to create and automated graphical user interface which can handle those tasks for you.
We're also taking advantage of IBM's Health Checker for z/OS, having written over 100 health checks already, with many more to come.
Then there are our other initiatives, such as Releasing Latent Value - a set of initiatives that span from our Mainframe Value Program and the Mainframe Solution Center to our Releasing Latent Value Articles and CA Know-How Knowledge Center, and now even a book titled "Releasing Latent Value." (If you'd like a complimentary copy, ask your CA rep or send me a note through this blog.)
And, if all the webcasts, announcements, new products and innovations, and Releasing Latent Value initiatives weren't enough, we're also doing something we call Out Tasking, an initiative to allow customers to get new business value without increasing their staff workload.
As you can tell, I'm pretty excited about what we're doing on the mainframe, and how we're letting the world know about it this month of May. And the even better news is, next year, and the year after, we're planning to do it again.
In other words, to complement the tradition of excellence inherent in the mainframe and the CA software that manages it, we're establishing a new annual tradition, this month of amazing announcements, efforts and celebration of the mainframe: May Mainframe Madness.
Enjoy!