December 16, 2008
One of the knocks on the mainframe recently has been the lack of college grads entering the IT workforce with a focus on the IBM mainframe. Well the strong resurgence of the mainframe has been attracting interest in a number of colleges and universities around the country including; the University of Arkansas, Marist College, North Carolina Central University, Illinois State University, Syracuse University, as well as others.
As an incentive for students to concentrate on learning the skills necessary to work with IBM mainframes we have partnered with IBM Destination z and several mainframe-centric vendors (see logos below) to launch and fund the Mainframe Scholarship Fund several months ago. Interested students were invited to complete an application with a goal of obtaining a scholarship. It’s a pleasure to announce the first four winners of $1,000 scholarships toward furthering their education on enterprise systems. Congratulations to each of these winners who have demonstrated excellence through their mainframe coursework.
- Adam Norwood: University of Arkansas, Management Information Systems master’s program
- Sandeep Basnet: Illinois State University, Information Systems master’s program, mainframe specialization
- Scott Wetter: Marist College, Computer Science undergraduate program
- Bob Molerio: Marist College, On-Demand with Enterprise Systems certificate program
We look forward to continuing to work with IBM Destination z in increasing the involvement of additional sponsors and awarding many more students with scholarships from the Mainframe Scholarship Fund. If you are interested in becoming involved with Destination z and the Mainframe Scholarship Fund please contact Marc Smith at smarc[at]us.ibm.com.
IMS/DB Continues Pre-Relational Dominance
December 8, 2008
In a survey we recently conducted we found that IMS/DB, IBM’s original mainframe database platform, has maintained its position as the leading pre-relational database in the z/OS environment since the ‘70s. Millions of applications, running in thousands of blue-chip companies around the globe, continue to deliver secure, high-availability service to users in a wide range of industries. Thanks to IBM’s continuing investment in enhancements and supporting tools, these systems can now integrate with other legacy and Web services-based applications.
Again related to IMB/DB, our survey also found almost 73 percent challenged by the absence of relational query capabilities and the difficulty of maintaining and enhancing applications. Clearly IBM’s efforts in recent years have had limited success in helping users with this challenge.
Cost also remains a significant concern to IMS/DB users. Even where IBM’s more flexible licensing policies have created a more realistic cost base for the core database for some users, many more are reliant on third party IMS management tools. More than 20 percent of our respondents highlighted the ongoing costs of these applications as a deep concern.
Despite these challenges, less than half of our respondents have put in place a defined plan to migrate away from IMS/DB. A similar number have reviewed and dismissed the idea of rewriting these applications owing to the huge cost and considerable risk inherent in such a move. In our next issue (January/February 2009) of Mainframe Executive look for more detailed information in the article titled, “IMS Modernization Survey Reveals Concerns for the Future”.
