Mainframe COBOL » it

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.

Eight Signs You’ve Been in IT Too Long

Mike — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:49:21 +0000

Are you an old-school techie? In a world where IT workers are hip, the old image of geeks without a shred of modern sensibility has been shattered. The invisible nerds of yesteryear, eating leftover pizza in the middle of the night at their cubicles, have been replaced by 21st Century technorati, a legion of iPhone-toting, night-clubbing, courier bag-carrying, California cuisine-eating fashionistas.

Lessons learned from a long IT career

Mike — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:15:27 +0000

* When something goes ‘blooie’, check the physical layer first!!

* As a programmer, I was under the mistaken impression that not documenting something amounted to job security. No more. Document, and keep it updated!

* As good as your skills may be, working with your peers will make everybody better.

* There is no such thing as a dumb question.

* Communicate! Keep your supervisor and co-workers in the loop, and don’t hold back anything.

* You never stop learning, so if you think you know it all, go back and look again. You missed something.

* Practice random acts of kindness toward your co-workers. You’ll feel better, and they’ll be more inclined to regard you in a better light.

* Be polite! The surly ‘IT Guy’ is a myth, and needs to stay one!

From Lessons learned from a long IT career, by Michael Thompson

Much Work to be Done Before the Boomers Bolt

Mike — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:00:08 +0000

Though more marathon than sprint, insurers are indeed in a race to glean as much as they can from a graying IT workforce possessing increasingly rare skill sets and a vast amount of institutional and system-specific knowledge.

Considering the stakes, carriers need to make tactical considerations, including shifting internal staff and outsourcing certain functions, in order to maximize the effectiveness of these workers. READ MORE

Trying to save money through outsourcing? Why you should think again

Mike — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:47:43 +0000

In the realm of IT outsourcing, disengaging from a multiyear, multimillion dollar agreement can be so difficult and costly for customers that it makes a Trump divorce seem like a tea party. But that’s exactly what Kellwood did last year, despite the upheaval the company anticipated from ending its 13-year IT outsourcing arrangement with EDS.

And it turns out, the move to insourcing increased flexibility and saved money. READ MORE

Trickle-Up Economics: How Consumers Turned Corporate Technology on its Head

Mike — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:52:47 +0000

To reduce operating costs and to get a leg up on their competitors, corporations and businesses have historically been among the first to evaluate and adopt expensive new technologies. With their deep pockets and hefty IT departments, large businesses often work closely with hardware and software vendors to get the newest, fastest, and most whiz-bang technology on the market. Tech-savvy executives, like the rest of us, also enjoy the bonuses and bragging rights they get for implementing a new IT platform or a game-changing information process. READ MORE

Mainframe Computing: Not Sexy, But Essential to US DoD IT

Mike — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:30:41 +0000

While it might be more thrilling to imagine US Special Operations Forces getting critical intelligence about enemy movements through a laptop computer in the field, the bread and butter of US Department of Defense IT are mainframe computers. They have the computing power necessary to process the huge amount of information generated by the sprawling DoD bureaucracy. MORE

Entrepreneurs need to help California’s IT systems

Mike — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:50:30 +0000

They run under operating systems like CICS and IMS.” There was a time when there was a big difference between these enterprise systems and the PC and Web applications that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs build. …

Why IT Matters More Than Ever

Mike — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:13:31 +0000

Over time, this management behavior at Company X resulted in a “Rube Goldberg” system requiring the work of hordes of COBOL programmers just to keep running. Overnight order processing required more than 200 manual steps. …

2010 will be a wild ride for IT

Mike — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:45:22 +0000

Oh, yeah, a new z11 mainframe generation is rumored. Did I miss anyone? Probably.

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