Mainframe going strong

OK, I know I don't have to convince you readers of this blog of the strengths of the mainframe. An often heard comment during presentations or meetings is "I wish my management knew about this" or "tell that to my management". And that's exactly one of the difficulties we're often facing. More and more managers do not have a mainframe background any more. They definitely do not take it for granted to take the mainframe along in the equation. But the best advocates for the mainframe are the mainframe people themselves who have the most contact with their managers.

I think it still boils down to the remarks Marcel den Hartog made a couple of years ago in his presentation '10 Reasons to fall in love with the mainframe' which you can still download over here : 'Nice, but how do we tell the others ?'. I quote some of it :

This is all nice but . . .

• New applications are often NOT developed on Mainframe
• Mainframe people are not replaced when they retire
• We do more with less, and less and less

So:

• We must promote our box AND ourselves more and better
• We must emphasize the good things and make sure the “bad” things are seen in context (expensive is not always expensive…)
• We have to think like “them”….

This is a nice starting point if you have to convince the 'others'.

So I thought I might also try and help a bit myself. In the three years I've been blogging now, I've also tried to put the mainframe strengths in the spotlight from time to time. So, all of my posts that might help you in your struggle to convince others about the mainframe are now labelled 'Mainframe going strong'. You can find all labels at the right hand side of the blog. Or just click here.

How did I come to this ?
Well, I saw two different sources telling me how great the mainframe is and how much it is still used and what an important workload is still running on the mainframe. And my reaction was, you don't have to convince me ! So I thought, why not put this all together so it can help you to convince your management with valuable arguments. The two sources ?
The first one is @MainframeZone on Twitter. OK, yes, I'm taking my daily look at Twitter too, nowadays. @MainframeZone has posted, euh, tweeted about some very nice positive articles etc. on the mainframe.
The second one is yet another survey from CA (next to the ones I mentioned before). Here's the title of the press release summing up the content of this survey : "Survey Reveals Mainframe Persists as Cornerstone of Multi-Tier Enterprise Computing - Respondents Cite Reliability, Resilience, and Security Among Platform’s Most Compelling Advantages". The survey results can be found over here.

And while I'm at it : don't forget this all time favorite : 'The Dynosaur Myth'. If you don't know this one, you surely have to check it out. The last update is from five years ago, but lots of it is still very relevant.

Well, I hope this will help some people convincing their management to re-think the role of the mainframe. Go on, go tell the others now !