Comment by: rstinnett at 2005-08-30 07:59
It amazes me when I sit in on meeting and hear some of our developers talking about this "cool, new" feature that "is the best thing since sliced bread" that they read about in some magazine. Things such as Virtual Machines (aka VMWare) and the such. It is all I can do to hold back from rolling my eyes and going into my mainframe spiel. Virtual environments have been around for years on the mainframes, and just because they are finally making it to the PC arena doesn't make it new.
There is an IBM commercial out there that shows a guy turning his back and the servers growing and growing behind him. That is exactly how I feel in our current environment. I see every project that comes along needing a new server, at about $10,000 a pop. The sad part about is these servers are busy about 5% of the day, and sitting 95% idle.
I have tried to tell anyone that will listen about how our problems and server-creep could be solved by using a mainframe. Centralize our systems, especially our database. Reduce and consolidate and sit back and watch the savings just roll in. The problem is -- the moment you mention the word mainframe people let out a sigh and act like you are talking about 1964.
I'm only 31, but I started my career in mainframes and have been a fan ever since. I believe that mainframes not only have a place in today's technology, but in many cases they are the better solution to many of the situations in many data centers. We have to break out of this "mainframe is old technology" mentality if we ever want to use these guys for the power and technology they hold.
Any ideas on how to do this... I'm all ears.
Emotion Prevails
Posted by
jalbee
at
2005-08-31 09:44
<With the excitement of getting my first comment I inadvertently erased the original comment ...but have re-instated it without edits>
Like most decisions today, the major hurdle for mainframe acceptance is not logical it is psychological. Thus to prevail a stronger psychological bias in favor of mainframes needs to be established. RISK may be the driver which has both a logical and a psychological component. Logically companies deploying mainframes and their associated applications have reduced the financial risk to the business via the inherent availability and security of the mainframe. There are plenty of other logical reasons related to reduced costs as well. We need to equate this business success with personal success of mainframe folks like yourself. We need to make mainframers heroes. It would be interesting to discover how many CIOs and IT Executives have mainframe backgrounds as opposed to Open System / Distributed backgrounds.
If my thoughts that it is highly skewed to mainframe are correct we have a psychological angle: "You'll never be successful in IT until you embrace the Mainframe".
Recently I saw some PR by IBM & Share: http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,104104,00.html?SKC=careers-104104
which talks about their zNextGen program to attract new mainframers. This will help raise the awareness early on, and create IT workers with a mainframe bias.
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It amazes me when I sit in on meeting and hear some of our developers talking about this "cool, new" feature that "is the best thing since sliced bread" that they read about in some magazine. Things such as Virtual Machines (aka VMWare) and the such. It is all I can do to hold back from rolling my eyes and going into my mainframe spiel. Virtual environments have been around for years on the mainframes, and just because they are finally making it to the PC arena doesn't make it new.
There is an IBM commercial out there that shows a guy turning his back and the servers growing and growing behind him. That is exactly how I feel in our current environment. I see every project that comes along needing a new server, at about $10,000 a pop. The sad part about is these servers are busy about 5% of the day, and sitting 95% idle.
I have tried to tell anyone that will listen about how our problems and server-creep could be solved by using a mainframe. Centralize our systems, especially our database. Reduce and consolidate and sit back and watch the savings just roll in. The problem is -- the moment you mention the word mainframe people let out a sigh and act like you are talking about 1964.
I'm only 31, but I started my career in mainframes and have been a fan ever since. I believe that mainframes not only have a place in today's technology, but in many cases they are the better solution to many of the situations in many data centers. We have to break out of this "mainframe is old technology" mentality if we ever want to use these guys for the power and technology they hold.
Any ideas on how to do this... I'm all ears.
Like most decisions today, the major hurdle for mainframe acceptance is not logical it is psychological. Thus to prevail a stronger psychological bias in favor of mainframes needs to be established. RISK may be the driver which has both a logical and a psychological component. Logically companies deploying mainframes and their associated applications have reduced the financial risk to the business via the inherent availability and security of the mainframe. There are plenty of other logical reasons related to reduced costs as well. We need to equate this business success with personal success of mainframe folks like yourself. We need to make mainframers heroes. It would be interesting to discover how many CIOs and IT Executives have mainframe backgrounds as opposed to Open System / Distributed backgrounds.
If my thoughts that it is highly skewed to mainframe are correct we have a psychological angle: "You'll never be successful in IT until you embrace the Mainframe".
Recently I saw some PR by IBM & Share: http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,104104,00.html?SKC=careers-104104
which talks about their zNextGen program to attract new mainframers. This will help raise the awareness early on, and create IT workers with a mainframe bias.
I can hope .....