Monday, January 13, 2014

Mainframe turns 50 : CA Technologies - Mainframe 50, donations and a contest

In december I blogged about the 50th anniversary of the mainframe coming up April 7, 2014. As you can guess that definitely wasn't my last post about it. So here I am already back with a first post in 2014 about the mainframe turning 50.

CA Technologies has set up a 'Mainframe 50' site. It starts with this video about the mainframe



There's a couple of sections and I guess the section about the Dynamic Data Center (Get Dynamic, Get Results) is the most elaborate for the moment. But turning 50 asks for some celebration too, so there's also the 'Celebrate, Give and Share' section. There you can click in order for CA Technologies to donate US $1 per day. The money goes to "global organizations focused on science, technology, engineering and math education, to support future generations of innovators, technologists and scientists".

And last but not least, there's also a contest called "Think you know the mainframe". "To participate in the Mainframe Contest , you must be one of the first 500 participants to submit two correct answers to a multiple choice question posted on mainframe50.com during the contest period between January 13, 2014 through February 11, 2014." Well, just check it out. And I must say, I have a bit of a spoiler alert for non US residents. Apparantly you must reside in the US in order to be able to participate. Oh, well . . .