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 . . .
Showing posts with label Mainframe Anniversary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mainframe Anniversary. Show all posts
Monday, January 13, 2014
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Counting down towards April 7, 2014
You might have noticed I have this counter running at the right side of my blog.
If you wonder what it's doing there : I'm counting down towards April 7, 2014. I still vividly remember the day I read the S/360 announcement on April 7, 1964 and how excited I was about it. No, just kidding, as a three year old toddler I had other problems and joys than that at the time. But if you want to have a look at the announcement, it's over here in the IBM Archives. It strikes me that it's way much shorter than recent announcements. But, that was then . . .
I myself started out just half way in 1988 with an IBM mainframe training. The very first courses were assembler (!), Cobol, JCL, DASD ... But I do remember April 7 so well because in 2004 it marked the 40th anniversary of the S/360 ànd the announcement of the z890. It was the first announcement I attended in the presales function I'm doing now. So, we're almost ten years later and those ten years were quite exciting ones.
I'm not sure what 'festivities' will be held next year but I can see on Twitter that IBM (mainly marketing) people are more and more referring to the event. So just to warm you up, I have this nice document from Chuck Boyer called 'The 360 Revolution' that you can find over here. It was written back in 2004 and it focuses mainly on that sixties era. I can tell you, it's a great document. The pictures alone are worth a look. So let me share a couple of them with you.
And let me finish with the most famous quote about System/360 from Tom Watson Jr.
If you wonder what it's doing there : I'm counting down towards April 7, 2014. I still vividly remember the day I read the S/360 announcement on April 7, 1964 and how excited I was about it. No, just kidding, as a three year old toddler I had other problems and joys than that at the time. But if you want to have a look at the announcement, it's over here in the IBM Archives. It strikes me that it's way much shorter than recent announcements. But, that was then . . .
I myself started out just half way in 1988 with an IBM mainframe training. The very first courses were assembler (!), Cobol, JCL, DASD ... But I do remember April 7 so well because in 2004 it marked the 40th anniversary of the S/360 ànd the announcement of the z890. It was the first announcement I attended in the presales function I'm doing now. So, we're almost ten years later and those ten years were quite exciting ones.
I'm not sure what 'festivities' will be held next year but I can see on Twitter that IBM (mainly marketing) people are more and more referring to the event. So just to warm you up, I have this nice document from Chuck Boyer called 'The 360 Revolution' that you can find over here. It was written back in 2004 and it focuses mainly on that sixties era. I can tell you, it's a great document. The pictures alone are worth a look. So let me share a couple of them with you.
"[System/360] was the biggest, riskiest decision I ever made, and I agonized about it for weeks, but deep down, I believed there was nothing IBM couldn’t do".
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