On Thursday IBM unveiled their new mainframe, the z15. Overall, the z15 represents an evolutionary change over its predecessor, the z14. However, there are plenty of enhancements across the board.
This goes way over my head, but it’s still immensely cool.
In addition to hardware improvements, IBM has developed new, innovative, and exciting ways of licensing your hardware and software!
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I never see anybody from IBM on campus, and iyn not sure of any instructors on my campus that have a mainframe background. How does one go about getting into z/OS? Do you first have to get hired at an org that has these?
Drumhellar,
I’ve worked with a company that specializes in mainframe development (ironically they don’t actually have a mainframe in-house). But yeah the primary target for mainframes are large companies with “irreplaceable” legacy code bases, We don’t see too many new faces in the mainframe world. Not that it’s bad tech, IBM has really done great pioneering with virtualization on the mainframe, but very few startups are willing to burn through their funds on IBM mainframes for new applications when there are more affordable commodity alternatives. Also, jobs are kind of limited (a position opens up when somebody retires), so it doesn’t surprise me that your campus doesn’t offer classes, neither did mine.
https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/X6ME0NBO
My school is on their list, so I guess either they started offering mainframe classes or else maybe the list isn’t very accurate.
Probably one of the most famous companies dealing with mainframe solutions, is the Computer Associates and probably the best place to look for a job.
https://www.ca.com/us/why-ca/mainframe/mainframe-product-portfolio.html
For me personally there are two fields I still want to work at, one is the mainframe tech and another would be aviation and avionics and for that I would probably have to knock on the door of UTC United Technologies Corporation. which has the Collins Aerospace as one of their branches. https://utc.com/en/Our-Company/Products-and-Brands/ca
Drumhellar,
Sometimes IBM runs master the mainframe courses. Elsewhere there is a publicly available system that you have to request an account with a reason to.
IBM has all the manuals online in web and PDF format, to let you get the sense of the system. The basics to read up on is ISPF and JCL. ISPF is the curses like interface. JCL is the batch language. TSO is a command-line environment that most people don’t use. They either use ISPF, or they run JCL from decades old collections passed down from neckbeard to neckbeard.
MVS is the traditional OS, but most companies install CICS, IMS and DB2 on top and work directly in those environments rather than on MVS (via ISPF or TSO) directly.
IBM has been trying to push Websphere Java on the mainframe, but it’s a nightmare to install and set up the security for, and runs dog slow and chews up memory. They really should just double down on CICS, IMS and DB2 because they are really not that hard to learn.
z15 is the 15th generation of the technology and has been around for more than half a century. Early use cases were people running businesses, but also one of the first customers was NASA who used it to land on the moon,