Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
On 8/21/2014 7:08 PM, Shane Ginnane wrote: Some 23 of the world's top 25 retailers, 92 of the top 100 banks, and the 10 largest insurers all entrust core operations to Cobol programs running on IBM mainframes, says Deon Newman, vice president, IBM System z. Since 2010, around 50 to 75 customers have left the mainframe fold, IBM says, while some 270 of IBM's 3,500 mainframe customers have come aboard as new clients since then, Newman says. Hmmm. Note the careful wording - System z. How many of those leaving the platform were legacy (say z/OS) customers ?. How many of the new clients were non-zLinux ?. What's the delta ?. IIRC, when Greg Lotko referenced these same statistics during his keynote address at SHARE in Boston, he mentioned that approximately 40% of those new customers were z/OS. Having said that, my understanding is that this count of new customers includes customers that completely reversed previously confirmed, in-progress business plans to migrate off the mainframe. IMHO, it is completely fair to count them as new since their moribund 9672s running just a few hard-to-kill apps under OS/390 V2R4 have now been replaced with zEC12s running z/OS 2.1 and a renewed business focus to move work onto the platform. -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
On Thu, 21 Aug 2014 23:26:05 -0700, Ed Jaffe wrote: IIRC, when Greg Lotko referenced these same statistics during his keynote address at SHARE in Boston, he mentioned that approximately 40% of those new customers were z/OS. I wonder where I was at the time - I'm pretty sure that would have piqued my interest had I been present. Having said that, my understanding is that this count of new customers includes customers that completely reversed previously confirmed, in-progress business plans to migrate off the mainframe. IMHO, it is completely fair to count them as new since their moribund 9672s running just a few hard-to-kill apps under OS/390 V2R4 have now been replaced with zEC12s running z/OS 2.1 and a renewed business focus to move work onto the platform. They're not all moribund 9672s - a local customer here was turfing out a couple of 196s and had to hurriedly roll in a couple of EC12 when the backflip occurred. And no, unlike yourself, I don't count them as new. Shane ... -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
On 22/08/2014 3:08 PM, Shane Ginnane wrote: Having said that, my understanding is that this count of new customers includes customers that completely reversed previously confirmed, in-progress business plans to migrate off the mainframe. IMHO, it is completely fair to count them as new since their moribund 9672s running just a few hard-to-kill apps under OS/390 V2R4 have now been replaced with zEC12s running z/OS 2.1 and a renewed business focus to move work onto the platform. They're not all moribund 9672s - a local customer here was turfing out a couple of 196s and had to hurriedly roll in a couple of EC12 when the backflip occurred. And no, unlike yourself, I don't count them as new. I would love to know who that customer is ;) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
Hi Ed, I recollect the same as you do from Greg Lotko. IMHO opinion though, one big thing I see as missing are the user focused tv commercials and print ads. The end user customer used to push for each new upgrade. Now the voices of the tech folks are hard for them to hear above the noise from the move-off crowd. Linda Sent from my iPhone On Aug 21, 2014, at 11:26 PM, Ed Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com wrote: On 8/21/2014 7:08 PM, Shane Ginnane wrote: Some 23 of the world's top 25 retailers, 92 of the top 100 banks, and the 10 largest insurers all entrust core operations to Cobol programs running on IBM mainframes, says Deon Newman, vice president, IBM System z. Since 2010, around 50 to 75 customers have left the mainframe fold, IBM says, while some 270 of IBM's 3,500 mainframe customers have come aboard as new clients since then, Newman says. Hmmm. Note the careful wording - System z. How many of those leaving the platform were legacy (say z/OS) customers ?. How many of the new clients were non-zLinux ?. What's the delta ?. IIRC, when Greg Lotko referenced these same statistics during his keynote address at SHARE in Boston, he mentioned that approximately 40% of those new customers were z/OS. Having said that, my understanding is that this count of new customers includes customers that completely reversed previously confirmed, in-progress business plans to migrate off the mainframe. IMHO, it is completely fair to count them as new since their moribund 9672s running just a few hard-to-kill apps under OS/390 V2R4 have now been replaced with zEC12s running z/OS 2.1 and a renewed business focus to move work onto the platform. -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
I see variants on the moribund 9672s running just a few hard-to-kill apps under OS/390 V2R4 have now been replaced with zEC12s running z/OS 2.1 and a renewed business focus to move work onto the platform (to quote Ed) scenario quite frequently. It then becomes a matter of dragging said customer up the learning curve, given they've been forced to neglect their systems and applications for so very long. I suspect quite a lot of consultancy is driven by that poise recovery dynamic. Cheers, Martin Martin Packer, zChampion, Principal Systems Investigator, Worldwide Banking Center of Excellence, IBM +44-7802-245-584 email: martin_pac...@uk.ibm.com Twitter / Facebook IDs: MartinPacker Blog: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/MartinPacker From: Linda linda.lst...@comcast.net To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Date: 22/08/2014 08:37 Subject:Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans Sent by:IBM Mainframe Discussion List IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Hi Ed, I recollect the same as you do from Greg Lotko. IMHO opinion though, one big thing I see as missing are the user focused tv commercials and print ads. The end user customer used to push for each new upgrade. Now the voices of the tech folks are hard for them to hear above the noise from the move-off crowd. Linda Sent from my iPhone On Aug 21, 2014, at 11:26 PM, Ed Jaffe edja...@phoenixsoftware.com wrote: On 8/21/2014 7:08 PM, Shane Ginnane wrote: Some 23 of the world's top 25 retailers, 92 of the top 100 banks, and the 10 largest insurers all entrust core operations to Cobol programs running on IBM mainframes, says Deon Newman, vice president, IBM System z. Since 2010, around 50 to 75 customers have left the mainframe fold, IBM says, while some 270 of IBM's 3,500 mainframe customers have come aboard as new clients since then, Newman says. Hmmm. Note the careful wording - System z. How many of those leaving the platform were legacy (say z/OS) customers ?. How many of the new clients were non-zLinux ?. What's the delta ?. IIRC, when Greg Lotko referenced these same statistics during his keynote address at SHARE in Boston, he mentioned that approximately 40% of those new customers were z/OS. Having said that, my understanding is that this count of new customers includes customers that completely reversed previously confirmed, in-progress business plans to migrate off the mainframe. IMHO, it is completely fair to count them as new since their moribund 9672s running just a few hard-to-kill apps under OS/390 V2R4 have now been replaced with zEC12s running z/OS 2.1 and a renewed business focus to move work onto the platform. -- Edward E Jaffe Phoenix Software International, Inc 831 Parkview Drive North El Segundo, CA 90245 http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/ -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
In 53f69bf0.40...@acm.org, on 08/21/2014 at 08:25 PM, Joel C. Ewing jcew...@acm.org said: I don't know how colleges train people in IT these days, but in the old days students were taught basic programming concepts and algorithms and exposed to many different programming languages in order to appreciate that no single programming language is optimal for all tasks. The high schools are teaching the language du jour, not concepts. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT ISO position; see http://patriot.net/~shmuel/resume/brief.html We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress. (S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003) -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
Am 22.08.2014 03:25, schrieb Joel C. Ewing: As for the coming critical shortage of COBOL programmers: I don't know how colleges train people in IT these days, but in the old days students were taught basic programming concepts and algorithms and exposed to many different programming languages in order to appreciate that no single programming language is optimal for all tasks. Once you understood programming concepts and were functionally literate in several languages, learning a new programming language was not that difficult: just read a language reference manual and an introductory text, learn how to map constructs and algorithms in known programming languages into the new language, learn what is unique about the language, and study existing programs. In a few days it was possible to write simple programs in the new language and certainly in at most a few months be competent enough to understand and potentiallly maintain programs in the language. Unless the new generation of programmers is much dumber than we were, I think the alarms about the future lack of COBOL programmers is overblown. Acquiring a new language skill is a better understood process and simpler than teaching complex application designs unique to one installation. It would certainly be better if younger programmers were brought on board and introduced to COBOL applications while some of the retiring COBOL programmers are still around, but that overlap is desireable just for passing on knowledge about installation programming conventions, complex application designs and inter-application relationships. If some IT-management types believe that this overlap requirement will just magically vanish or be significantly reduced if they migrate off COBOL to any of the existing alternatives or if they migrate to a different platform, they are in for a unpleasant surprise. I believe that we should modernize the software development using COBOL in a smooth way by providing the COBOL developer with modern libraries and tools that make some tasks easier while maintaining the spirit and the strengths of COBOL. I did the same thing for our legacy PL/1 environment, and I will try to give you an example. If you use in-storage tables in COBOL or PL/1 programs (for example tables of keys to lookup while processing a database or file sequentially), you normally use in those old languages a table with fixed limits, so you have to do an estimation, how large this table could get; maybe you read the table from a file at the beginning of the processing, and the number of entries is varying. I use a library instead, which puts the keys in a weighted tree (AVL tree) and allows the PL/1 or COBOL program to search very fast for the existence of the key in this AVL tree. There is virtually no limit to the number of entries; the AVL tree resides in dynamic storage. There is no problem, if there are 1000, 1 or even a million keys (which is far from realistic numbers). The coding for the COBOL user is very simple and straightforward; he or she only has to take care that the tree (as a whole) is freed when it is no longer needed (by a simple call, again). This is what the C++ and Java guys do all the time ... I don't like their languages much, but I do like the concepts and how easy they can be used. And the programs are really fast, if the libraries are implemented in the right way. So I think we should provide our COBOL and PL/1 programmers with the right solutions, to enable them to bring new life to old or new COBOL and PL/1 applications. Another similar topic is: enable PL/1 and COBOL programs to do XML parsing and writing of XML documents in an easy and efficient way. I have some problems with the performance implications of XML processing, too; but when communicating with external partners, it is a necessity, and so you have to cope with it. The existing solutions in the market work well with C++ and Java, but not so well with PL/1 and COBOL. I have solutions for this problem, too. If you want to know more about my efforts to modernize COBOL and PL/1 development, please contact me offline. Kind regards Bernd -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
On Thu, 21 Aug 2014 13:16:33 -0500, Ed Gould wrote: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9250527/ Meet_Cobol_s_hard_core_fans?source=CTWNLE_nlt_shark_2014-08-21 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9250527/Meet_Cobol_s_hard_core_fans?source=CTWNLE_nlt_shark_2014-08-21 Computerworld - With the long-anticipated Cobol skills shortage starting to bite, many businesses have been steadily migrating applications off the mainframe. Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina has been doubling down. Some 23 of the world's top 25 retailers, 92 of the top 100 banks, and the 10 largest insurers all entrust core operations to Cobol programs running on IBM mainframes, says Deon Newman, vice president, IBM System z. Since 2010, around 50 to 75 customers have left the mainframe fold, IBM says, while some 270 of IBM's 3,500 mainframe customers have come aboard as new clients since then, Newman says. I'm somewhat surprised to see an IBM employee publicly disclosing such business statistics. -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
But I'm not surprised to see that Gartner is still predicting mass migrations off the mainframe in 3 to 5 years: For these mainframe-centric businesses, the Cobol application suite that runs the heart of the business isn't going anywhere. But they still need to deal with the declining Cobol workforce . . . to keep these systems viable for the next decade or two, says Dale Vecchio, research vice president at Gartner Inc. As for the other 90% of businesses running mainframes today, Vecchio thinks the Cobol brain drain will be the catalyst for more extensive migrations off the platform, through rewrites, moves to packaged applications or recompiling and re-hosting Cobol on distributed computing platforms. After years of foot dragging, the looming Cobol brain drain will force many organizations into making a decision -- one way or the other -- within the next three to five years. Increasingly, I see this transition happening, Vecchio says. Waiting isn't going to make this any cheaper, and it isn't going to reduce the risk. They've been predicting that for close to 20 years now, I think. Greg Shirey Ben E. Keith Company -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Paul Gilmartin Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2014 3:20 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans I'm somewhat surprised to see an IBM employee publicly disclosing such business statistics. -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
On 21 August 2014 16:48, Greg Shirey wgshi...@benekeith.com wrote: As for the other 90% of businesses running mainframes today, Vecchio thinks the Cobol brain drain will be the catalyst for more extensive migrations off the platform, through rewrites, moves to packaged applications or recompiling and re-hosting Cobol on distributed computing platforms Not entirely clear to me how the COBOL brain drain is addressed by recompiling and re-hosting Cobol on distributed computing platforms. Tony H. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
On 8/21/2014 at 05:47 PM, Tony Harminc t...@harminc.net wrote: Not entirely clear to me how the COBOL brain drain is addressed by recompiling and re-hosting Cobol on distributed computing platforms. It's magic, I guess. Suddenly someone other than a long-time COBOL developer will be able to maintain it. Mark Post -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
On 8/21/2014 at 04:19 PM, Paul Gilmartin 000433f07816-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu wrote: I'm somewhat surprised to see an IBM employee publicly disclosing such business statistics. IBM executives get away with a lot of !@#$ like that. Pre-announcing stuff, etc. IBM executive presentations are a gold mine of such disclosures. Mark Post -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
On 08/21/2014 03:19 PM, Paul Gilmartin wrote: On Thu, 21 Aug 2014 13:16:33 -0500, Ed Gould wrote: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9250527/ Meet_Cobol_s_hard_core_fans?source=CTWNLE_nlt_shark_2014-08-21 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9250527/Meet_Cobol_s_hard_core_fans?source=CTWNLE_nlt_shark_2014-08-21 Computerworld - With the long-anticipated Cobol skills shortage starting to bite, many businesses have been steadily migrating applications off the mainframe. Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina has been doubling down. Some 23 of the world's top 25 retailers, 92 of the top 100 banks, and the 10 largest insurers all entrust core operations to Cobol programs running on IBM mainframes, says Deon Newman, vice president, IBM System z. Since 2010, around 50 to 75 customers have left the mainframe fold, IBM says, while some 270 of IBM's 3,500 mainframe customers have come aboard as new clients since then, Newman says. I'm somewhat surprised to see an IBM employee publicly disclosing such business statistics. -- gil Since these statistics show a trend that goes counter to the common perception, it makes perfect business sense for IBM to make them public, assuming they wish the mainframe to continue to be a viable platform. I'm sure one of the arguments used by those who have a financial self-interest in moving workloads off mainframes is that those other platforms must be the only viable long-term strategy since everyone is moving workloads from, not to, mainframes and everyone else can't be wrong. If more customers are moving to mainframes than leaving, that destroys that argument. As for the coming critical shortage of COBOL programmers: I don't know how colleges train people in IT these days, but in the old days students were taught basic programming concepts and algorithms and exposed to many different programming languages in order to appreciate that no single programming language is optimal for all tasks. Once you understood programming concepts and were functionally literate in several languages, learning a new programming language was not that difficult: just read a language reference manual and an introductory text, learn how to map constructs and algorithms in known programming languages into the new language, learn what is unique about the language, and study existing programs. In a few days it was possible to write simple programs in the new language and certainly in at most a few months be competent enough to understand and potentiallly maintain programs in the language. Unless the new generation of programmers is much dumber than we were, I think the alarms about the future lack of COBOL programmers is overblown. Acquiring a new language skill is a better understood process and simpler than teaching complex application designs unique to one installation. It would certainly be better if younger programmers were brought on board and introduced to COBOL applications while some of the retiring COBOL programmers are still around, but that overlap is desireable just for passing on knowledge about installation programming conventions, complex application designs and inter-application relationships. If some IT-management types believe that this overlap requirement will just magically vanish or be significantly reduced if they migrate off COBOL to any of the existing alternatives or if they migrate to a different platform, they are in for a unpleasant surprise. -- Joel C. Ewing,Bentonville, AR jcew...@acm.org -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Meet Cobol's hard core fans
Some 23 of the world's top 25 retailers, 92 of the top 100 banks, and the 10 largest insurers all entrust core operations to Cobol programs running on IBM mainframes, says Deon Newman, vice president, IBM System z. Since 2010, around 50 to 75 customers have left the mainframe fold, IBM says, while some 270 of IBM's 3,500 mainframe customers have come aboard as new clients since then, Newman says. ... Since these statistics show a trend that goes counter to the common perception, Hmmm. Note the careful wording - System z. How many of those leaving the platform were legacy (say z/OS) customers ?. How many of the new clients were non-zLinux ?. What's the delta ?. In this part of the world I see no evidence of increased prospects. Shane ... -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
