Z Open Terminal Emulation

You can spend a lot of time working with the Z and not find much new in terminal emulation. But there actually are a few new things, mainly because times change and people work differently, using different devices and doing new things. Sure, it all goes back to the mainframe, but it is a new world.

Terminal emulator screen

Rocket Software’s latest wrinkle in terminal emulation is BlueZone Web, which promises to simplify using the mainframe by enabling users to access host-based applications anywhere and on any type of device. It is part of a broader initiative Rocket calls Open AppDev for Z. From DancingDinosaur’s perspective its strength lies in being Zowe-compliant, an open source development environment from the Open Mainframe Project.This makes IBM Z a valuable open platform for an enterprise DevOps infrastructure.

Zowe is the first open source framework for z/OS. It facilitates DevOps teams to securely manage, control, script and develop on the mainframe like any other cloud platform. Launched in a collaboration of initial contributors IBM, CA Technologies, and Rocket Software, and supported by the Open Mainframe Project. The goal is to cultivate the next generation of mainframe developers, whether or not they have Z experience. Zowe promotes a faster team on-ramp to productivity, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and communication.

This is the critical thing about Zowe: you don’t need Z platform experience. Open source developers and programmers can use a wide range of popular open source tools, languages, and technologies–the tools they already know. Sure it’d be nice to find an experienced zOS developer  but that is increasingly unlikely, making Zowe a much better bet.   

According to the Open Source Project, IBM’s initial contribution to Zowe was an extensible z/OS framework that provides REST-based services and APIs that will allow even inexperienced developers to rapidly use new technology, tools, languages, and modern workflows with z/OS. 

IBM continues to invest in the open source environment through Zowe and other open source initiatives.  Zowe also has help from Rocket Software, which provides a web user interface, and CA, which handles the Command Line Interface. You can find more about zowe here.

IBM introduced Linux, a leading open source technology, to the Z over 20 years ago. In time it has expanded the range of the Z through open-source tools that can be combined with products developed by different communities. This does create unintentional regulatory and security risks. Rocket Open AppDev for Z helps mitigate these risks, offering a solution that provides developers with a package of open tools and languages they want, along with the security, easy management, and support IBM Z customers require.

“We wanted to solve three common customer challenges that have prevented enterprises from leveraging the flexibility and agility of open software within their mainframe environment: user and system programmer experience, security, and version latency,” said Peter Fandel, Rocket’s Product Director of Open Software for Z. “With Rocket Open AppDev for Z, we believe we have provided an innovative secure path forward for our customers,” he adds. Businesses can now extend the mainframe’s capabilities through the adoption of open source software, making IBM Z a valuable platform for their DevOps infrastructure.”

But there is an even bigger question here that Rocket turned to IDC to answer. The question: whether businesses that run mission-critical workloads on IBM Z or IBMi should remain on these platforms and modernize them by leveraging the innovative tools that exist today or replatform by moving to an alternative on-premises solution, typically x86 or the cloud.

IDC investigated more than 440 businesses that have either modernized the IBM Z or IBMi or replatformed. The results: modernizers incur lower costs for their modernizing initiative than the replatformers.  Modernizers were more satisfied with the new capabilities of their modernized platform than replatformers; and the modernizers achieved a new baseline for which they paid less in hardware, software, and staffing. There is much more of interest in this study, which DancingDinosaur will explore in the weeks or months ahead.

Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer, is DancingDinosaur. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/.

5G Will Accelerate a New Wave of IoT Applications and Z

Even before the advent of 5G DancingDinosaur, which had ghostwritten a top book on IoT, believed that IoT and smartphones would lead back to the Z eventually, somehow. Maybe the arrival of 5G and smart edge computing might slow the path to the Z. Or maybe not.

Even transactions and data originating and being processed at the edge will need to be secured, backed up, stored, distributed to the cloud, to other servers and systems, to multiple clouds, on premises, and further  processed and reprocessed in numerous ways. Along the way, they will find their ways back to a Z somehow and somewhere, sooner or later.

an edge architecture

“5G is driving change in the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s a powerful enabling technology for a new generation of use cases that will leverage edge computing to make IoT more effective and efficient,” writes Rishi Vaish and Sky Matthews. Rishi Vaish is CTO and VP, IBM AI Applications; Sky Matthews is CTO, Engineering Lifecycle Management at IBM.  DancingDinosaur completely agrees, adding only that it won’t just stop there.

Vaish and Matthews continue: “In many ways, the narrative of 5G is the interaction between two inexorable forces: the rise in highly reliable, high-bandwidth communications, and the rapid spread of available computing power throughout the network. The computing power doesn’t just end at the network, though. End-point devices that connect to the network are also getting smarter and more powerful.” 

True enough, the power does not just end there; neither does it start there. There is a long line of powerful systems, the z15 and generations of Z before it that handle and enhance everything that happens in whatever ways are desired at that moment or, as is often the case, later. 

And yes, there will be numerous ways to create comparable services using similarly smart and flexible edge devices. But experience has shown that it takes time to work out the inevitable kinks that invariably will surface, often at the least expected and most inopportune moment. Think of it as just the latest manifestation of Murphy’s Law moved to the edge and 5G.

The increasingly dynamic and powerful computational environment that’s taking shape as telcos begin to redesign their networks for 5G will accelerate the uptake of IoT applications and services throughout industry,  Vaish and Matthews continue. We expect that 5G will enable new use cases in remote monitoring and visual inspection, autonomous operations in large-scale remote environments such as mines, connected vehicles, and more.

This rapidly expanding range of computing options, they add,  requires a much more flexible approach to building and deploying applications and AI models that can take advantage of the most cost-efficient compute resources available.

IBM chimes in: There are many ways that this combination of 5G and edge computing can enable new applications and new innovations in various industries. IBM and Verizon, for example, are developing potential 5G and edge solutions like remote-controlled robotics, near real-time video analysis, and other kinds of factory-floor automation.

The advantage comes from smart 5G edge devices doing the analytics immediately, at the spot where decisions may be best made. Are you sure that decisions made at the edge immediately are always the best? DancingDinosaur would like to see a little more data on that.

In that case, don’t be surprised to discover that there will be other decisions that benefit from being made later, with the addition of other data and analysis. There is too much added value and insight packed into the Z data center to not take advantage of it.

Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer, is DancingDinosaur. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/.

AI Powered Enterprise

IBM has been proclaiming the power of AI for several years. It has not, however, shown much of it in action. A customer reference here and there, but mostly it takes the form of hints of great capabilities coming at some point. 

At first DancingDinosuar feared Seth Earley was following IBM down the AI vagueness path. Then I received an early copy of his book and the table of contents alone had more tangible descriptions than we’ve seen from IBM in a year. For instance, Chapter 7: Customer Service: Delivering Higher Quality at a Lower Cost; Chapter 8: Accelerating Employee Productivity; Chapter 9: Physical Meets Digital; Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Logistics.

That’s not to say that Earley can’t get mushy like IBM.  AI is “reinventing the way we invent” and “will usher in a new era of human capabilities.” Or,  “We are at an inflection point in human history,” he says early at the start of his new book, The AI Powered Enterprise, published by LifeTree Media Ltd. But just a few pages in we should be able to cut him some slack; he needs some puffy sound bytes to grab the reviewers or marketing suits, and we know how they dumb down complex technology in their hope to make it more accessible.

So, what can Earley talk about that is different from what we get from IBM’s suits. It starts in the Forward; “The book is heavily focused on the importance of ontologies in conversational AI systems, and ontologies were also very important in knowledge management,” writes Thomas H. Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor at Babson College, Research Fellow at MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He continues: “I do not know of any books that have such useful and detailed advice on the relationship between data and successful conversational AI systems.”

DancingDinosaur was dearly hoping to not write about ontologies, a subject he resorted to taking pass-fail decades ago as an undergraduate. But it can’t be avoided.  Writes Earley “AI needs the key that unlocks that understanding as an ontology; a representation of what matters within the company and makes it unique, including products and services, solutions and processes, organizational structures, protocols, customer characteristics, manufacturing methods, knowledge, content, and data of all types…Simply put, an ontology reveals what is going on inside your business— it’s the DNA of the enterprise.”

Earley then cites a company desperately needing effective search capabilities. It had one but in practice, the navigation within the system was poorly organized, topic areas were unclear or ambiguous, content was not properly labeled or tagged, and search operated so poorly that some workers joked of it as a “random document generator” when the same search entered at different times could produce different results. 

Earley describes the revamp of the search. All aspects of the business and its core knowledge were redeveloped from the foundation up. The blueprints for the new development began with, you guessed it, ontologies and a knowledge architecture. The resulting overhaul led to increases in user satisfaction (from 20% to 80% approval), greater trust in the system, and more.

And Earley is not done yet with ontologies. As the search example showed, ontologies are the DNA of the enterprise… a consistent representation of data and data relationships that can inform and power AI technologies. In different contexts, it can be expressed as any of the following–stuff we’re all familiar with:  a data model, a content model, an information model, a data/content/information architecture, master data, or metadata… an ontology is not a single, static thing; he writes, it is never complete, and it changes as the organization changes and as it is applied throughout the enterprise. The ontology is the master knowledge scaffolding of the organization.” 

IBM improved at describing AI lately. It has Watson and builds and deploys AI learning, manages machine learning models, AI concepts, and more. You can find a slew of IBM AI and machine learning offerings here. 

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/

  

IBM Wazi cloud-native devops for Z

In this rapidly evolving world of hybrid and multicloud systems, organizations are required to quickly evolve their processes and tooling to address business needs. Foremost among that are development environments that include IBM Z as part of their hybrid solution face, says Sanjay Chandru, Director, IBM Z DevOps.

IBM’s goal, then  is to provide a cloud native developer experience for the IBM Z that is consistent and familiar to all developers. And that requires cross platform consistency in tooling for application programmers on Z who will need to deliver innovation faster and without the backlogs that have been expected in the past.

Wazi, along with OpenShift,  is another dividend from IBM purchase of Red Hat. Here is where IBM Wazi for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces comes in: an add-on to IBM Cloud Pak for Applications. It allows developers to use an industry standard integrated development environment (IDE),  such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) or Eclipse, to develop and test IBM z/OS applications in a containerized, virtual z/OS environment on Red Hat OpenShift running on x86 hardware. The container creates a sandbox. 

The combination of IBM Cloud Pak for Applications goes beyond what Zowe offers as an open source framework for z/OS and the OpenProject to enable Z development and operations teams to securely manage, control, script and develop on the mainframe like any other cloud platform. Developers who are not used to z/OS and IBM Z, which are most developers, now can  become productive faster in a familiar and accessible working environment, effectively  improving DevOps adoption across the enterprise

As IBM explained: Wazi integrates seamlessly into a standard, Git-based open tool chain to enable continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) as part of a fully hybrid devops process encompassing distributed and z systems.

IBM continues: Wazi is offered with deployment choices so that organizations can flexibly rebalance entitlement over time based on its business needs. In short, the organization can 

protect and leverage its IBM Z investments with robust and standard development capabilities that encompasses IBM Z and multicloud platforms.

The payoff comes as developers who are NOT used to z/OS and IBM Z, which is most of the developer world, can become productive faster in a familiar and accessible working environment while  improving DevOps adoption across the enterprise. IBM Wazi integrates seamlessly into a standard, Git-based open tool chain to deliver CI/CD and is offered with deployment choices so that any organization can flexibly rebalance over time based on its business needs. In short, you are protecting and leveraging your IBM Z investments with robust and standard development capabilities that encompass the Z and multicloud platforms.

As one large IBM customer put it: “We want to make the mainframe accessible. Use whatever tool you are comfortable with – Eclipse / IDz / Visual Studio Code. All of these things we are interested in to accelerate our innovation on the mainframe” 

An IT service provider added in IBM’s Wazi announcement: “Our colleagues in software development have been screaming for years for a dedicated testing environment that can be created and destroyed rapidly.” Well, now they have it in Wazi.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work athttp://technologywriter.com/

Apps and Ecosystem Critical for 5G Edge Success

According to the gospel of IBM, Edge computing with 5G creates opportunities in every industry. It brings computation and data storage closer to where data is generated, enabling better data control, reduced costs, faster insights and actions, and continuous operations.

Edge computing IBM Cloud Architecture

By 2025, 75% of enterprise data will be processed more efficiently on devices at the edge, compared to only 10% today. It will eliminate the need to relay data acquired, and often used for decision making in the field back to a data center for processing and storage. 

In short, the combination of 5G and smart devices on the edge aids this growing flow of data and processing through the proliferation of a variety of clouds: private, public, multi, and hybrid. But more is needed.

To get things rolling, IBM announced a handful of applications and tools and an edge ecosystem. As IBM notes: organizations across industries can now fully realize the benefits of edge computing, including running AI and analytics at the edge to achieve insights closer to where the work is done and the results applied. These new solutions include:

• IBM Edge Application Manager – an autonomous management tool to enable AI, analytics and IoT enterprise workloads to be deployed and remotely managed, delivering real-time analysis and insight at scale. It aims to enable the management of up to 10,000 edge nodes simultaneously by a single administrator. It is the first to be powered by Open Horizon, which is folded into the Linux Foundation. 
• IBM Telco Network Cloud Manager – runs on Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Open Stack,  a cloud computing platform that virtualizes resources from industry-standard hardware, organizes them into clouds, and manages them to provide new services now and going forward as 5G adoption expands.
• A portfolio of edge-enabled applications and services, including IBM Visual Insights, IBM Production Optimization, IBM Connected Manufacturing, IBM Asset Optimization, IBM Maximo Worker Insights and IBM Visual Inspector. All aim to deliver the flexibility to deploy AI and cognitive applications and services at the edge and at scale. 
• Red Hat OpenShift, which manages containers with automated installation, upgrades, and lifecycle management throughout the container stack—the operating system, Kubernetes cluster services, and applications—on any cloud.
• Dedicated IBM Services teams for edge computing and telco network clouds that draw on IBM’s expertise to deliver 5G and edge-enabled capabilities across all industries.

In addition, IBM is announcing the IBM Edge Ecosystem, through which an increasingly broad set of ISVs, GSIs and more will be helping enterprises capture the opportunities of edge computing with a variety of solutions built upon IBM’s technology. IBM is also creating the IBM Telco Network Cloud Ecosystem, bringing together a set of partners across the telecommunications industry that offer a breadth of network functionality that helps providers deploy their network cloud platforms. 

These open ecosystems of equipment manufacturers, networking and IT providers, and software providers include Cisco, Dell Technologies, Juniper Networks, Intel, NVIDIA, Samsung, Packet, Equinix Company, Hazelcast, Sysdig, Turbonomic, Portworx, Humio, Indra Minsait, Eurotech, Arrow Electronics, ADLINK, Acromove, Geniatech, SmartCone, CloudHedge, Altiostar, Metaswitch, F5 Networks, and ADVA as members. 

Making the promise of edge computing a reality requires an open ecosystem with diverse participants. It also requires open standards-based, cloud native solutions that can be deployed and autonomously managed at massive scale throughout the edge and can move data and applications seamlessly between private data centers, hybrid multiclouds, and the edge. IBM has already enlisted dozens of organizations in what it describes as its open edge ecosystem.  You can try to join the IBM ecosystem or start organizing your own.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/

5G Joins Edge Technology and Hybrid Multicloud

At IBM’s virtual Think Conference the first week in May the company made a big play for edge computing and 5G together. 

From connected vehicles to intelligent manufacturing equipment, the amount of data from devices has resulted in unprecedented volumes of data at the edge. IBM is convinced the data volumes will compound as 5G networks increase the number of connected mobile devices.

z15 T02  and the LinuxONE 111 LT2

Edge computing  and 5G networks promise to reduce latency while improving speed, reliability, and processing. This will deliver faster and more comprehensive data analysis, deeper insights, faster response times, and improved experiences for employees, customers, and their customers.

First gaining prominence with the Internet of Things (IoT) a few years back IBM defined edge computing as a distributed computing framework that brings enterprise applications closer to where data is created and often remains, where it can be processed. This is where decisions are made and actions taken.

5G stands for the Fifth Generation of cellular wireless technology. Beyond higher speed and reduced latency, 5G standards will have a much higher connection density, allowing networks to handle greater numbers of connected devices combined with network slicing to isolate and protect designated applications.

Today, 10% of data is processed at the edge, an amount IBM expects to grow to 75% by 2025. Specifically, edge computing enables:

• Better data control and lower costs by minimizing data transport to central hubs and reducing vulnerabilities and costs
• Faster insights and actions by tapping into more sources of data and processing that data there, at the edge
• Continuous operations by enabling systems that run autonomously, reduce disruption, and lower costs because data can be processed by the devices themselves on the spot and where decisions can be made

In short: the growing number of increasingly capable devices, faster 5G processing, and the increased pressure to drive the edge computing market beyond what the initial IoT proponents, who didn’t have 5G yet, envisioned. They also weren’t in a position to imagine the growth in the processing capabilities of edge devices in just the past year or two.

But that is starting to happen now, according to IDC: By 2023, half of the newly deployed on-premises infrastructure will be in critical edge locations rather than corporate datacenters, up from less than 10% today.

Also unimagined was the emergence of the hybrid multicloud, which IBM has only recently started to tout. The convergence of 5G, edge computing, and hybrid multicloud, according to the company, is redefining how businesses operate. As more embrace 5G and edge, the ability to modernize networks to take advantage of the edge opportunity is only now feasible. 

And all of this could play very well with the new z machines, the z15 T02  and LinuxONE lll LT2. These appear to be sufficiently capable to handle the scale of business edge strategies and hybrid cloud requirements for now. Or the enterprise class z15 if you need more horsepower.

By moving to a hybrid multicloud model, telcos can process data at both the core and network edge across multiple clouds, perform cognitive operations and make it easier to introduce and manage differentiated digital services. As 5G matures it will become the network technology that underpins the delivery of these services. 

Enterprises adopting a hybrid multicloud model that extends from corporate data centers (or public and private clouds) to the edge is critical to unlock new connected experiences. By extending cloud computing to the edge, enterprises can perform AI/analytics faster, run enterprise apps to reduce impacts from intermittent connectivity, and minimize data transport to central hubs for cost efficiency. 

Deploying a hybrid multicloud model from corporate data centers to the edge is central to capitalizing on  new connected experiences. By extending cloud computing to the edge, organizations can run AI/analytics faster  while minimizing data transport to central hubs for cost efficiency. By 2023, half of the newly deployed on-premises infrastructure will be in critical edge locations rather than corporate datacenters, up from less than 10% today. It’s time to start thinking about making edge part of your computer strategy. 

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/ 

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform on z

IBM is finally starting to capitalize on last year’s $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat for z shops. If you had a new z and it ran Linux you would have no problem running Red Hat products so the company line went. Well, in mid February IBM announced Red Hat’s OpenShift Container Platform is now available on the z and LinuxONE, a z with built-in Linux optimized for the underlying z.

OpenShift comes to z and LinuxONE

As the company puts it:  The availability of OpenShift for z and LinuxONE is a major milestone for both hybrid multicloud and enterprise computing. OpenShift, a form of middleware for use with DevOps,  supports cloud-native applications being built once and deployed anywhere, including to on premises enterprise servers, especially the z and LinuxONE. This new release results from the collaboration between IBM and Red Hat development teams, and discussions with early adopter clients.

Working with its Hybrid Cloud, the company has created a roadmap for bringing the ecosystem of enterprise software to the OpenShift platform. IBM Cloud Paks containerize key IBM and open source software components to help enable faster enterprise application development and delivery. In addition to the availability of OpenShift for z it also announced that IBM Cloud Pak for Applications is available for the z and LinuxONE. In effect, it supports the modernization of existing apps and the building of new cloud-native apps. In addition, as announced last August,it is the company’s intention to deliver additional Cloud Paks for the z and LinuxONE.

Red Hat is a leader in hybrid cloud and enterprise Kubernetes, with more than 1,000 customers already using Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. With the availability of OpenShift for the z and LinuxONE, the agile cloud-native world of containers and Kubernetes, which has become the defacto open global standard for containers and orchestration,  but it is now reinforced by the security features, scalability, and reliability of IBM’s enterprise servers.

“Containers are the next generation of software-defined compute that enterprises will leverage to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives,” says Gary Chen, Research Director at IDC, in a published report.  “IDC estimates that 71% of organizations are in the process of implementing containers and orchestration or are already using them regularly. IDC forecasts that the worldwide container infrastructure software opportunity is growing at a 63.9 % 5-year CAGR and is predicted to reach over $1.5B by 2022.”

By combining the agility and portability of Red Hat OpenShift and IBM Cloud Paks with the security features, scalability, and reliability of z and LinuxONE, enterprises will have the tools to build new cloud-native applications while also modernizing existing applications. Deploying Red Hat OpenShift and IBM Cloud Paks on z and LinuxONE reinforces key strengths and offers additional benefits:

• Vertical scalability enables existing large monolithic applications to be containerized, and horizontal scalability enables support for large numbers of containers in a single z or LinuxONE enterprise server
• Protection of data from external attacks and insider threats, with pervasive encryption and tamper-responsive protection of encryption keys
• Availability of 99.999%  to meet service levels and customer expectations
• Integration and co-location of cloud-native applications on the same system as the data, ensuring the fastest response times

IBM z/OS Cloud Broker helps enable OpenShift applications to interact with data and applications on IBM Z. IBM z/OS Cloud Broker is the first software product to provide access to z/OS services by the broader development community.

To more easily manage the resulting infrastructure organizations can license the IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center. This is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering which provides simplified infrastructure management in support of z/VM-based Linux virtual machines on the z and LinuxONE.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/

Meet IBM’s New CEO

Have to admire Ginny Rometty. She survived 19 consecutive losing quarters (one quarter shy of 5 years), which DancingDinosaur and the rest of the world covered with monotonous regularity, and she was not bounced out until this January. Memo to readers: Keep that in mind if you start feeling performance heat from top management. Can’t imagine another company that would tolerate it but what do I know.

Arvind Krishna becomes the Chief Executive Officer and a member of the I BM Board of Directors effective April 6, 2020. Krishna is currently IBM Senior Vice President for Cloud and Cognitive Software, and was a principal architect of the company’s acquisition of Red Hat. The cloud/Red Hat strategy has only just started to show signs of payback.

As IBM writes: Under Rometty’s leadership, IBM acquired 65 companies, built out key capabilities in hybrid cloud, security, industry and data, and AI both organically and inorganically, and successfully completed one of the largest technology acquisitions in history (Red Hat).  She reinvented more than 50% of IBM’s portfolio, built a $21 billion hybrid cloud business and established IBM’s leadership in AI, quantum computing, and blockchain, while divesting nearly $9 billion in annual revenue to focus the portfolio on IBM’s high value, integrated offerings. Part of that was the approximately $34 billion Red Hat acquisition, IBM’s, and possibly the IT industry’s, biggest to date. Rometty isn’t going away all that soon; she continues in some executive Board position.

It is way too early to get IBM 1Q2020 results, which will be the last quarter of Rometty’s reign. The fourth quarter of 2019, at least was positive, especially after all those quarters of revenue loss. The company reported  $21.8 billion in revenue, up 0.1 percent. Red Hat revenue was up 24 percent. Cloud and cognitive systems were up 9 percent while systems, which includes the z, was up 16 percent. 

Total cloud revenue, the new CEO Arvind Krishna’s baby, was up 21 percent. Even with z revenue up more than cloud and cognitive systems, it is probably unlikely IBM will easily find a buyer for the z soon. If IBM dumps it, they will probably have to pay somebody to take it despite the z’s faithful, profitable blue chip customer base. 

Although the losing streak has come to an end Krishna still faces some serious challenges.  For example, although DancingDinosaur has been enthusiastically cheerleading quantum computing as the future there is no proven business model there. Except for some limited adoption by a few early adopters, there is no widespread groundswell of demand for quantum computing and the technology has not yet proven itself useful. Also there is no ready pool of skilled quantum talent. If you wanted to try quantum computing would you even know what to try or where to find skilled people?

Even in the area of cloud computing where IBM finally is starting to show some progress the company has yet to penetrate the top tier of players. These players–Amazon, Google, Microsoft/Azur–are not likely to concede market share.

So here is DancingDinosaur’s advice to Krishna: Be prepared to scrap for every point of cloud share and be prepared to spin a compelling case around quantum computing. Finally, don’t give up the z until the accountants and lawyers force you, which they will undoubtedly insist on.To the contrary, slash the z prices and make it an irresistible bargain. 

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/ 

Montana Sidelines the Mainframe

Over the past 20+ years DancingDinosaur has written this story numerous times. It never ends exactly the way they think it will. Here is the one I encountered this past week.

IBM z15

But that doesn’t stop the pr writers from finding a cute way to write the story. This time the  writers turned to references to the moon landings and trilby hats (huh?). Looks like a Fedora to me, but what do I know; I only wear baseball hats. But they always have to come up with something that makes the mainframe sound completely outdated. In this case they wrote: Mainframe computers, a technology that harkens back to an era of moon landings and men in trilby hats, are still widely used throughout government, but not in Montana for much longer.

At least they didn’t write that the mainframe was dead and gone or forgotten. Usually, I follow up on stories like this months later and call whichever IT person is still there. I congratulate him or her and ask how it went. That’s when I usually start hearing ums and uhs. It turns out the mainframe is still there, handling those last few jobs they just can’t replace yet.

Depending on how playful I’m feeling that day, I ask him or her what happened to the justification presented at the start of the project. Or I might ask what happened to the previous IT person. 

Sometimes, I might even refer them to a recent DancingDinosaur piece that explains about Linux on the mainframe or Java or describes mainframes running the latest Docker container technology or microservices. I’m not doing this for spite; I’m just trying to build up my readership. DancingDinosaur hates losing any reader, even if it’s late in their game.  So I always follow up with a link to DancingDinosaur. 

In an interview published by StateScoop, Chief Information Officer Tim Bottenfield described how for the last several years, the last remaining agencies using the state’s mainframe have migrated their data away from it and are now developing modern applications that can be moved to the state’s private and highly virtualized cloud environment. By spring 2021, Montana expects to be mainframe-free. Will make a note to call Bottenfield in Spring 2021 and see how they are doing.  Does anyone want to bet if the mainframe actually is completely out of service and gone by then?

As you all know, mainframes can be expensive to maintain, particularly if it’s just to keep a handful of applications running, which usually turn out to be mission-critical applications. Of the three major applications Montana still runs on its mainframe, two are used by the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, which is in the process of recoding those programs to work on modern platforms, as if the z15 isn’t  modern.

They haven’t told us whether these applications handle payments or deliver critical services to citizens. Either way it will not be pretty if such applications go down. The third is the state’s vehicle titling and registration system, which is being rebuilt to run out of the state’s data center. Again, we don’t know much about the criticality of these systems. But think how you might feel if you can’t get accurate or timely information from one of these systems. I can bet you wouldn’t be a happy camper; neither would I.

Systems like these are difficult to get right the first time, if at all. This is especially true if you will be using the latest hybrid cloud and services technologies. Yes, skilled mainframe people are hard to find and retain but so are any technically skilled and experienced people. If I were a decade younger, I could be attracted to the wide open spaces of Montana as a relief from the congestion of Boston. But I’m not the kind of hire Montana needs or wants. Stay tuned for when I check back in Spring 2021.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/ 

IBM Cloud Pak–Back to the Future

It had seemed that IBM was in a big rush to get everybody to cloud and hybrid cloud. But then in a recent message, it turned out maybe not such a rush. 

What that means is the company believes coexistence will involve new and existing applications working together for some time to come. Starting at any point new features may be added to existing applications. Eventually a microservices architecture should be exposed to new and existing applications. Whew, this is not something you should feel compelled to do today or next quarter or in five years, maybe not even in 10 years.

Here is more from the company earlier this month. When introducing its latest Cloud Paks as enterprise-ready cloud software the company presents it as a containerized software packaged with open source components, pre-integrated with common operational services and a secure-by-design container platform and operational services consisting of  logging, monitoring, security, and identity access management. DancingDinosaur tried to keep up for a couple of decades but in recent years has given up. Thankfully, no one is counting on me to deliver the latest code fast.

IBM has been promoting packaged software  and hardware for as long as this reporter has been following the company, which was when my adult married daughters were infants. (I could speed them off to sleep by reading them the latest IBM white paper I had just written for IBM or other tech giants. Don’t know if they retained or even appreciated any of that early client/server stuff but they did fall asleep, which was my intent.)

Essentially IBM is offering as enterprise-ready Cloud Paks, already packaged and integrated with hardware and software, ready to deploy.  It worked back then as it will now, I suspect, with the latest containerized systems because systems are more complex than ever before, not less by a long shot. Unless you have continuously retained and retrained your best people while continually refreshing your toolset you’ll find it hard to  keep up. You will need pre-integrated and packaged containerized cloud packages that will work right out of the box. 

This is more than just selling you a pre-integrated bundle. This is back to the future; I mean way back. Called Cloud Pak for data system, IBM is offering what it describes as a  fusion of hardware and software. The company chooses the right storage and hardware; all purpose built by IBM in one system. That amounts to convergence of storage, network, software, and data in a single system–all taken care of by IBM and deployed as containers and microservices. As I noted above, a deep trip back to the future.

IBM has dubbed it  Cloud-in-a-box. In short, this is an appliance. You can start very small, paying for what you use now. If later you want more, just expand it then. Am sure your IBM sales rep will be more than happy to provide you with the details. It appears from the briefing that there is an actual base configuration consisting of  2 enclosures with 32 or 128 TB. The company promises to install this and get you up and running in 4 hours, leaving only the final provisioning for you.

This works for existing mainframe shops too, at least those running Linux on the mainframe.  LinuxONE shops are probably ideal. It appears all z shops will need is DB2 and maybe Netezza. Much of the work will be done off the mainframe so at least you should  save some MIPS.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/ 

This is the last appearance of DancingDinosaur this year. It will reappear in the week of Jan. 6, 2020. Best wishes for the holidays.