The Purpose of this Site
Mainframe architecture offers enterprises a myriad of ways to reduce operational costs -- while providing greater efficiency and easier management than distributed computing environments.  But most IT executives tend to dismiss mainframe technology as:
 
1)  too costly;
2)  old technology, and,
3)  hard to staff. 

This site takes aim at these three common objections.  It provides opposing opinions based upon research conducted on site at many mainframe customer sites.  This site also advocates the use of mainframe technology wherever possible to help enterprises reduce the cost of operations while helping to improve overall operational efficiency.

It is my fervent hope that GOMAINFRAME.com will help you better understand mainframes.  And, based upon this understanding, I hope that you conclude that mainframes should be part of your organization's IT strategic plans. 

If you find this approach useful, please let me know at jclabby1@AOL.com.

Sincerely,
Joe Clabby
President, Clabby Analytics 
jclabby1@AOL.com
 (207) 239 1211 (USA -- Mobile)

Viewpoints

The Great Big Sucker-Inner-Blower-Outer Story
Back in the late 1980s, a friend of mine and I worked in product marketing for Data General.  And both of us constantly heard from our clients that they wished there was an architecture that could make applications from Windows, Unix, MVS, and other operating environments work together -- and they wished data sharing between different databases could be simplified.  Further, they asked that infrastructure be standardized so applications and databases could communicate with one and other over common infrastructure using common communications (back then, TCP/IP, OSI, SNA, DecNet, Asynch and Bisynch dominated the communications industry). 

My friend and I took a systems design that we had dreamed up over to the Data General research and development organization -- and were quickly told that what we wanted couldn't be done.  (In fact, IBM tried to do something like this a few years later (called "SAA") and could not get all the speeds and feeds to work...

Since then, application-to-application communications has standardized around Web services; data sharing around XML; and communications and networking around TCP/IP and SNA.  The two remaining hurdles to our great-big-sucker-inner-blower-outer, however, remained standardizing the infrastructure across heterogeneous systems -- and a common consistent management/governance scheme between these systems.

What IBM has just announced with its new zEnterprise/zBX/Unified Resource Manager is exactly what we asked our developers for over twenty years ago -- a system that can unify program-to-program communications, data, management, and governance.  Needless to say, we at Clabby Analytics are extremely excited by IBM's new announcement.  We see it as an industry "game changer" -- and we hope you do too!

Sincerely,
Joe Clabby
President, Clabby Analytics 
jclabby1@AOL.com
 (207) 239 1211 (USA -- Mobile)

News -- IBM's New Mainframe!
IBM has recently announced a new version of its mainframe -- the zEnterprise. 

Here are some questions that you should be asking about this new architecture:

What is a mainframe -- and how is it different from a distributed systems architecture?  (Answer). 

How is this new mainframe different from its predecessor (the z10)?  (Answer).

What is IBM's new zEnterprise/zBX hybrid architecture all about -- and how does it change the way computer architectures can be designed?  (Answer).

What will moving to this new z hybrid cost?
(Unknown at this point -- but we expect it to be priced as part of a services engagement (special pricing on a case-by-case basis) and/or packaged like IBM's new Solution Editions -- see here).

Can you describe how the new z/blade hybrid will be managed?  (At a high-level, process flows and high level services will be managed by Tivoli software products as part of IBM's SMCz (service management environment).  When managing physical systems and when managing virtualization across heterogeneous servers, Systems Director and Systems Director VMControl will be used.  When managing and controling hypervisors on the mainframe and in the blades, IBM's new Unified Resource Manager (also known as zManager -- described on pages 5-6-7 in this document) will be used.

Can you describe how this new z hybrid environment will be used?  (Case Study to be published shortly).

Why do you believe that this architecture will change organizational dynamics in the data center?  (Answer).

You talk alot about heterogeneous, workload optimized systems.  Why is workload optimization important?  And, can you compare what IBM is doing to what Oracle is doing in the workload optimization space?  (Answer).

You mention that the new System z has new "personalities".  More specifically you talk about its ability to compete head-to-head with application servers -- as well as its new position in business analytics.  Can you explain how the System z now fits in the business analytics market?  (Answer 1; Answer 2).

You've recently been challenging Gartner positions on the mainframe.  Why?
(Answer 1; Answer 2).