Mainframe COBOL » big-iron

Living to tell the tale

Mike — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:53:13 +0000

High obsolescence is a hallmark of information technology. By industry standards, 18 months, at best, is the longevity of a product or technology. But the IT space’s longest survivor, one that is there from the beginning, is the most unlikeliest of them all, the mainframe.

Its epitaph was written long ago. Universities rusticated mainframe from their curriculum decades back, thinking that skinny personal computers will drive out the bulky box that needs almost a whole room and all the paraphernalia, not to speak of a dedicated team of eternally confounded operators, to run it. But now, the storied PCs are on their way out, but the ‘big iron’ is firmly stay put, though a lot slimmer and trimmer.

Survey Says: Mainframe Revival Has Legs

Mike — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 12:00:52 +0000

New workloads account for almost one-third of MIPS growth, and mainframers are as optimistic as ever about the future of Big Iron.

The mainframe has never been more essential. That’s the not-so-surprising upshot of BMC Software Corp.’s sixth annual Worldwide Mainframe Survey, which — like previous years — suggests Big Iron is doing just fine, thank you.

Big mainframe shops are big MIPS consumers. MIPS capacity continues to expand: more than two-thirds of respondents (67 percent) said their transaction volumes for existing applications are growing; almost as many (65 percent) cited business growth as an important engine for MIPS expansion. Almost one-third (31 percent) said new workloads are driving MIPS growth.

Looking for job security? Try Cobol

Mike — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 10:00:59 +0000

As long as there are mainframes, there will be Cobol. Learn the language and the culture and you might land a job that that lasts until retirement

A career as a Cobol programmer might not be as sexy as slinging Java code or scripting in Ruby, but if you buckle down and learn hoary old Cobol, you could land one of the safest, most secure jobs in IT.

Analyst reports indicate that Cobol salaries are on the upswing. The language is easy to learn, there’s a healthy demand for the skills, and offshore Cobol programmers are in short supply — plus, the language itself holds the promise of longevity. All that loose talk about mainframes going away has subsided, and companies committed to big iron need Cobol pros to give them love.

60% see mainframe taking on new work: survey

Mike — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 21:53:30 +0000

Most firms expect to increase Big Iron usage, according to a survey by BMC. So why is the platform still attracting new workloads?

Demand for the trusty old mainframe has survived the recession and is still a vital part of many companies’ IT infrastructure, according to BMC Software’s 2010 Mainframe User survey.

The survey, now in its fifth year, quizzed 1,765 IT professionals, managers and executives from businesses all over the world. The majority of respondents (84%) said they expect to see growing or steady MIPS (millions of instructions per second) usage on the mainframe while 60% believe the mainframe will grow and attract new workloads over the next year.

Big iron sticking around, mainframe survey finds

Mike — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:45:34 +0000

Big iron isn’t going away anytime soon, say mainframe users polled by BMC. In fact, 84% of mainframe shops expect to see growing or steady MIPS usage on the platform. READ MORE

Shark Tank – Just our way of showing we care

Mike — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:54:05 +0000

Flashback to the 1980s, when IBM is still shipping source code for big-iron internals, says this mainframe pilot fish.

“IBM discontinued supporting BTAM under CICS, but we had a major customer who communicated via CICS BTAM,” fish says.

Translation: The big customer uses the CICS transaction-processing system, and connects to it over telecommunication lines using the very old BTAM protocol — and IBM has just stopped supporting that approach. READ MORE

Editor’s note: Sharky is one of my favorite ComputerWorld features!