Mainframe COBOL

How IBM hopes to make the cloud proprietary

Mike — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 11:00:31 +0000

IBM hopes to embrace and extend the cloud into its mainframe monopoly, and keep filing patents on the technology so as to make it an eternal lock on the top end of the business.

Water cooling returns to IBM mainframe

Mike — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:00:29 +0000

Last water-cooled IBM mainframe computer family, the ES/9000, was unveiled in 1995

IBM next will will begin shipping a computer with something that customers have not seen in a new mainframe from the company since 1995 — water cooling.

Buyer’s guide to IT infrastructure

Mike — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:55:11 +0000

Best practice in datacentre design dictates that as much IT infrastructure as possible should be virtualised. Doing so improves agility, allowing the IT department to flex resources up and down to meet the demands of the business.

Given that virtualisation is happening, IT departments have a choice: roll out a scale-out architecture using a large volume of x86 servers to run virtual machines, or deploy a scale-up architecture, comprising fewer much larger, and often more expensive, Unix and Linux server boxes over commodity Windows hardware.

IBM’s new z/196 mainframe aims to tackle datacentre complexity by pulling together different applications, or workloads, in a single system. The system comprises a mainframe and Power and x86 blades, which enables the datacentre to run mainframe, Aix and Linux applications in the same floor space.

Fidelity’s payment systems strategy takes shape

Mike — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:25:42 +0000

Fidelity Information Systems (FIS) has put in place a strategy for integrating its myriad payment systems. This is centred on a ‘wrapper’ approach, using the newest of its offerings, its Nomad Software-derived Cortex debit and prepaid card system. Cortex is intended to provide a web services layer and standard look and feel. Functionality will be moved into this layer so that the back-end systems will increasingly become pure transaction engines.

FIS covers both the acquiring and switching sides of the sector. There is some overlap between the applications but the positioning is reasonably clear. On the switch side, the eFunds-derived Connex is one of FIS’s long-established workhorses. It runs on Hewlett-Packard’s Tandem-derived NonStop or IBM zOS platforms, with flat files or DB2, and is written in Cobol and Assembler at the back-end.

IBM Describes Fastest Microprocessor Ever

Mike — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:00:54 +0000

PALO ALTO–IBM revealed more details of its 5.2-GHz chip on Tuesday, the fastest microprocessor ever announced. Don’t bet that you’ll ever be able to buy it, though.

At the Hot Chips 2010 conference here, IBM executives described the z196, which will power its Z-series of mainframes, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not over a million. IBM will ship the chip in September, said Brian Curran, an IBM distinguished engineer. The mainframe itself was announced in July.

The Cloud Fails Again

Mike — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:46:32 +0000

We’ve become too reliant on the cloud. The Internet is down, and I can’t do a thing.

The cloud has failed me. Again. There is a serious power outage in the Berkley area, and now I am writing my column when I should be doing my No Agenda podcast. I’m not sure if a squirrel ate through an important cable or a car hit a telephone pole, but hours and hours have gone by without resolution.

This is a Comcast connection, but all the ISPs have these problems. With Comcast, one of my readers coined the term “Comcastrated” when it goes down, since you lose more than just the Internet. I’d hate to go to 100 percent redundancy for a situation that occurs probably twice a year, but I may have to if this sort of thing becomes more routine. I cannot see how it won’t, with everyone cutting back on everything in this economy.

There’s a reason that desktop computing evolved the way it did. The evolution of the PC stemmed from Mainframe computing and batch processing to distributed computing running off of a main computer—the minicomputer era—to stand-alone systems destined to become more powerful than the early mainframes. The difference was that these stand-alone microcomputing machines were controlled by one person. They were not shared by many and restricted by some guy in charge.

Veryant Helps Transform COBOL Investments into Strategic Assets

Mike — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 09:55:54 +0000

PHOENIX–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Veryant, the COBOL and Java technology innovator, today announced a new update to isCOBOL Application Platform Suite (APS), its powerful COBOL development, deployment, and modernization platform. The new software release helps organizations maximize the business value of existing application assets with important new capabilities to better customize and control application management and modernization tasks, simplify migration to isCOBOL, and enhance resource management.

How to Approach an Application Modernization Project

Mike — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:15:41 +0000

Today’s IT executives are managing very complex environments that contain a large variety of platforms and technologies – many of which are past their expected life, beyond vendor support and slowing down the business with the costs to maintain/support/change. The key to reducing costs and improving application change delivery (through enhancements, new product support, and new features and options) is simplifying the IT landscape and finding the most cost-effective operating environment. Recent estimates suggest that the typical IT budget is 80 percent “keeping the lights on” (support) and 20 percent new business (what the business wants), with support costs increasing.

Fortunately, this sort of thing could never happen today

Mike — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:29:07 +0000

It’s the mid-1970s, and this programmer pilot fish works for an IT service provider that supports several big insurance companies.

“We ran a huge (at that time) mainframe and a nationwide network and, of course, a large computer room,” says fish.

Read the rest of the Shark Tank here.

IBM Breaks Double Digit Performance Barrier With 10 Million Transactions Per Minute

Mike — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 01:57:22 +0000

IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today an IBM POWER7-based system with IBM DB2 database software and IBM System Storage broke all previous records and topped the 10 million transactions per minute mark using the industry standard TPC performance benchmark, easily besting all results previously achieved by competitors such as HP and Oracle.