It's a tough time to be an US-based technology multinational in China. Sure, there's always been the risk of intellectual property theft and concerns about local copycat companies popping up overnight…
With over 90 million customers in over 60 countries, MetLife is one of the world's largest insurance companies. They are also one of the best examples of a Fortune 500 company combining mainframe and…
I want my 360 This post was originally hosted on the Millennial Mainframer blog
On April 7, 1964, Tom Watson Jr. stood at the front of a conference room in IBM's Poughkeepsie, NY research lab. Looking beyond the podium and out into the audience, Watson saw two hundred influential…
A few months ago, IBM slapped me on the wrist. No, this wasn’t really physical punishment or like hazing like at the Military Academy. Rather, it was a Notes Inbox slap named Action Required: Hercules…
Once the plebes burst through the door, the upperclassman’s roommate attacked up from our right flank. This disoriented the biggest plebes leading the charge, and forced me to assume point and…
In discussions on efforts to combat the impending mainframe skills shortage, programs such as the IBM Academic Initiative and the Master the Mainframe Contest typically play center stage. The…
This post was originally hosted on the Millennial Mainframer blog
Mac 3270? Water and Vinegar? How Mainframers began to use Macs It may seem strange to think that users, application developers, and systems programmers of IBM mainframes may use a Mac 3270 solution…
This is the second installment of our five-part series on efforts to inspire, educate, and train millennials towards gainful employment in mainframe positions, such as systems programming and…
For the past two years, Millennial Mainframer has sought to provide a “fresh perspective on all things mainframe.” Nearly all of this “fresh perspective” has come from young millennials working in…
So the mainframe blogosphere has already written up and down about the new zBC12 mainframe that IBM announced yesterday. Big woopdie do. So what that it’s harder, better, faster, stronger? Most…
I am often surprised by how quickly time can fly by. At the beginning of this year, I was an IBM System z Client Architect based out of Chicago. Despite the day-to-day stress of being in a demanding…
This post was originally hosted on the Millennial Mainframer blog
This post was originally hosted on the Millennial Mainframer blog
If you’re a millennial like me, there is a significant chance that you saw the show “ReBoot” during your childhood. Due to it’s status as the first full-length cartoon to be fully computerized, this…
One of the more unique aspects of being a Millennial Mainframer is working on teams with coworkers far older than ourselves. While this generational gap impacts day-to-day life in a mainframe shop in…
In honor of our 1,000th hit, behold System Z's answer to Ruby on Rails: COBOL on Cogs! In all seriousness, the modern mainframe has come a long way towards embracing modern web technologies. Due to…
Check out Roger Kay's Forbes article “Kids See A Future In Mainframes.” Much like our discussion of Marist College, Roger writes about Dave Dischiave’s efforts at Syracuse University to train up new…
By the very nature of being young professionals in a specialized and mature technical community, most millennial mainframers face the constant challenge of skill acquisition and credentialing. While…
It is commonly understood in the mainframe community that many tech folks today do not understand the difference between a mainframe and a cluster of distributed servers. This is highly ironic given…
Despite derision as a dinosaur doomed to gradual extinction, a recent breakthrough in mainframe technology has the potential to transform the world of modern data centers. On July 22, 2010, IBM…