In my blog a few days ago I described what type of solutions my employer (CA Technologies) has announced in the past days to help you run the mainframe as a component of a Dynamic Datacenter. Some people might say; “ Our datacenter is already very dynamic! That is why it’s such a very complex and fragile environment already !” So what exactly does “dynamic” mean? The Encarta Dictionary tells us: “characterized by vigorous activity and producing or undergoing change and development” As you can read, just vigorous activity and a lot of change…… But “dynamic” also means “able to change and to adapt” Unfortunately, many datacenters look and behave like the description I took from The Encarta Dictionary. And this is why many business people will...
Ok, I admit it, when I found out that I was not going to CA World this year, my first thought was; “ Ah! No 14 hours travel and no jet lag!! ” But my second thought was; “@#$ @!*^#!!, I will not be there to hear first-hand what some of the new developments will be, I will not experience the excitement, the buzz and I will not meet some of the people (customers, colleagues, journalists & analysts) that I have known for many years!! ”. And then I started getting the details about the 150 mainframe sessions that we would give this time. The mainframe track “ Transform – Modernize and Optimize Your Mainframe ” was filled with interesting and entertaining sessions and, like previous years, I realized that I would have been able to fill my days...
In case you missed it; yesterday, during his keynote address @ CA World in Las Vegas , Mike Madden talked about the future of the mainframe. And CA Mainframe Chorus is an important part of this strategy. Those of you who have followed me for a while have heard me talk and write about Chorus. And I bet that many of you thought; “ Yeah, yeah, another effort to convince me, the mainframer with 30+ year’s experience, that there is a technology that will help me to work faster and more efficient. I have seen people try it before, and it never worked !!”. And it’s true, you have seen a lot and nothing ever really lived up to the expectations.. So, why do I think it is different this time? Well, to help you understand this, I have to take you back...
Today, at the mainframe keynote session @ CA World in Las Vegas, Mike Madden, General Manager of CA Technologies mainframe business, spoke about the future of the mainframe and its role in today’s dynamic datacenters. Almost everybody in the IT industry agrees that we are in the era of the hybrid datacenter. Our business managers require more flexibility and while a large part of the IT processes will still run “in da house”, we will use more and more Cloud based services. And while more and more decisions will be made by Line Of Business (LOB) Managers, IT will have to support these very complex environments. Let’s face it, integrating and managing an IT Infrastructure we can SEE is already difficult enough, now we are also asked to integrate...
A long time ago, I watched the movie Groundhog Day . I quickly found after watching it that it is based on an actual folklore to predict the start of spring based on the shadow a groundhog casts on February 2nd when it emerges from its burrow ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day ). In the movie, the main character finds himself in a time loop, repeating the same day again and again. When reading many of the analyst predictions lately about (Line of) Business Managers having an ever growing influence on IT and making many of the strategic decisions, I can’t help thinking back…. Many moons ago, the IT department I worked for was in panic. We found that one of the business managers of our company had acquired an application that happened...
There! I have done it. I finally got it out of my system. I finally asked someone who could give me a valuable answer the question which has been bothering me a lot (not losing-my-sleep-over-it as I have a whole other list for that purpose, but still bothering me enough to not being able to let it go…) lately. The question is: isn’t almost everything, these days, a solution looking for a problem? And why is that bad? And the person I asked is Sir Richard Branson . Why the question and why him you might wonder…. Well, the question started buzzing in my head after reading this blog . And Sir Richard Branson is one of my idols ever since, while in the midst of one of my entrepreneurial disasters, I read something he said: "for every successful...
Many moons ago, I worked on mainframes and other systems 12 hours a day. The company I worked for was developing new markets, and competing heavily in existing markets. All my IT colleagues (both on the System side as well as on the Application side) were well aware of the pressure our management was under and we worked hard to try and make IT work for us the best way possible. IT was slowly outgrowing its infancy and many products we used were quite new. This was the time of the 4GL's, the rise of relational databases, connections with PC's etc. Life was exciting, challenging and complex. And quite often, things didn't work as expected and we needed support. Most IT Vendors were also still learning and support was something that...
In meetings with a lot of mainframers in the past days, I went over some industry trends and the impact I believe some of them will have on our beloved mainframes. And especially when I mention that many analysts believe that Mobile traffic will continue to grow even more in the coming years, and that this can cause serious issues, I noticed quite a few raised eyebrows. But if you think about it, it’s really not that complex to explain; mobile apps create a lot of traffic and this traffic is a lot less predictable than the "ordinary” traffic that hits our datacenters. Why? Well, look at how YOU use your mobile devices.... How much more often do you check your banking account from your tablet or smartphone, just because it’s so easy and...
A longer and more in-depth version of this article was originally published by my colleague Umair Khan in Enterprise Executive . If you recognize some of the signs below, I suggest you read the full article for the solutions…. Workload automation lies at the very heart of data centers. It ensures that key business processes—ones that directly impact a company’s customers, employees, and bottom line—run in a timely and cost-effective manner. But here’s the challenge: More and more businesses are realizing the strategic importance of workload automation, but are unable to reap its benefits because they currently rely on disparate or legacy job scheduling tools. Have a look at the seven signs below and if you recognise a few of them, you may be...
In today's economy, it is more important than ever that we make the maximum of what we have. And given the fact that almost everybody has to do that with an ever shrinking staff means that we not only need to work harder, but smarter as well. And this is not easy and unfortunately the "smarter" bit suffers from the "work harder" bit. For many companies that make use of a mainframe there is the additional problem that a lot of investments simply have not been made in the past 4-5 years. Proper tuning, implementing new features in existing products and simply making things more efficient has been almost impossible due to the daily pressure to simply keep the mainframe up.. The Mainframe however has never been more relevant...
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