Achieving Open and Integrated Development with IBM Z
“DevOps” and “mainframe” are not words you often hear in the same sentence. Yet, the reality is that even in our current age of DevOps, mainframes remain the mainstays of many companies’ IT infrastructure. That’s why it’s critical for organizations to find ways to bring mainframe software delivery up to speed with modern DevOps practices, […]
Going Cloud-Native with IBM Z as a Hybrid Cloud Platform
When people use the phrase “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore,” 100-year-old bridges, Jon Snow’s sword and American muscle cars often come to mind. If the topic of discussion happens to be computer technology, however, mainframes are without a doubt the Valyrian steel of the enterprise and lucky for us, are still in production […]
CAP Theorem No Match for Mainframes
One of the biggest problems in modern distributed computing is data management. These days data are spread out all over the place. As a result, getting the data you need, exactly when you need it, becomes a problem. Wider distribution creates more network latency. If you have a system in which some machines are in […]
IBM Extends z/OS Toward DevOps Again
A few months ago, I wrote about the release of Zowe, the first Open Source project based on z/OS. Zowe is a framework for including z/OS in your applications with less pain than we have traditionally suffered. IBM supported this project as part of its view that enterprises need to have interoperability between platforms. This […]
Mainframes: The Cloud Before the Cloud
Here’s something to think about: Despite the fact that IBM stopped manufacturing personal computers in 2005, deciding instead to focus on higher margin business services, the company continues to produce mainframes and by all estimates will continue manufacturing them well into the future. The question is, why? The answer: because there is still significant demand […]
ABO and the Mystical Art of Source Code Compilation
Compilation can make or break the performance quality of an application. A developer might spend weeks creating the most elegant, efficient algorithm known to man, only to have it run at a snail’s pace in production because the compiler used to create the application’s executable binary is old, and not optimized to take advantage of […]
IBM Adds Automated Testing Tool for Mainframe to DevOps Portfolio
IBM has added an automated testing tool to the portfolio of DevOps tools it has developed for mainframes. Sanjay Chandru, director of Z DevOps for IBM, said IBM Z Open Unit Test adds a continuous testing capability to the continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD) platform based on an instance of an open source Git repository developed […]
Best of 2018: The Beauty of the COBOL Programming Language
As we close out 2018, we at DevOps.com wanted to highlight the five most popular articles of the year. Following is the first in our weeklong series of the Best of 2018. Well-written code is a work of art. Always has been, always will be. A programmer pulls a thought pretty much out of nowhere […]
Let’s Bury Bimodal Thinking in Enterprise IT
We still hear a lot about mode-1 and mode-2 in enterprise IT. Like many other large enterprises, you might have adopted the terminology introduced by Gartner and use it every day to shape the way you deliver and operate technology. However, I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of bimodal, as it ignores architectural […]
Where is the Next Generation of Mainframe Talent?
Are we potentially facing a shortage of mainframe talent? “Three of us set up this tool in 1989. One is retired, and the other person is somewhere in heaven!” That was the remark of Alf (name changed), the senior mainframe architect at a large European enterprise, as he pointed toward the ceiling of the meeting […]
Dependency Based Build Promotes the Freedom to Program
Whenever I want to be amazed, all I need to do is reflect on the fact that the continuing development of the Linux operating system is done essentially by a community of volunteers. That’s right! One of the most popular and important operating systems is updated and maintained through donated labor. Any programmer anywhere in […]
Implementing DevSecOps in the Mainframe-Driven Enterprise
DevSecOps is emerging as an important trend in corporate IT. It makes sense. With each passing day more applications serve a larger user base. Whereas in the past the typical business application was accessible only from within the confines of an enterprise’s internal network, today, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) paradigm enables millions of users work with […]
When It Comes to Mainframe Computing, There’s More to Containers Than Containers
When people in the DevOps world hear the word “containers,” most of the time they imagine the lightweight, standalone, executable Docker binaries that have become commonplace in today’s cloud infrastructure. It might come as a surprise, however, that the world of mainframe computing not only supports traditional Docker containers, but also expands the concepts of […]
Machine Learning: Essential in Cloud Service Management
As businesses today compete more and more on digital experience, you need to ensure that what’s delivered performs optimally and provides an outstanding customer experience. With increasing complexities, growth and change in your IT infrastructure, you need complete visibility into the performance and availability of IT infrastructure, and also the applications that ride on it. […]
IBM Think 2018: DevOps Integrated Everywhere
With the onset of conference season I have been running a bit ragged. But something I noticed at the recent IBM Think 2018 Conference really needs to be called to attention: DevOps was still a prominent theme at IBM Think. But instead of having a dedicated DevOps theater or DevOps section of the show floor, […]
ADDI Addresses the Problem of Dependency Management
Want to know what a bad day looks like? Imagine you’re a developer working your way up the career ladder. One day your manager comes by your cube to tell you that you’ve been assigned to implement a critical, new feature in the company’s premiere application. You’re elated. At last you get to show off […]
IBM: DevOps Begins and Ends with Culture
Making the transition to DevOps requires as much a shift in cultural mindset as it does new platforms for building, deploying and managing applications. Between the two, however, it’s often the extent of the cultural challenges needed to be overcome that gets most underestimated. Michael Elder, a IBM Distinguished Engineer, said one of the most […]
Mainframe Computing and the API Economy
The API economy has come a long way since the days when I worked at a very well-known automotive website back in 2007. Back then, APIs were the thing that application programmers used at a very low level. Programming using web-based APIs was a rarity. In those days, we downloaded libraries into our local codebase […]
Application Discovery and the Value Proposition of IBM Z ADDI
Discovering how an application works can be a difficult, expensive undertaking. That’s why architectures based on REST are so popular. The architectural style provides an easy-to-implement interface that allows consumers to use an application productively without having to understand anything at all about its internals. All a developer needs to know to work an application […]
DevOps Chat: Rosalind Radcliffe, IBM, on DevOps and Mainframe Systems
In this DevOps Chat we sit down with a frequent guest on DevOps Chat, Rosalind Radcliffe, distinguished engineer and mainframe expert from IBM. Rosalind talks to us about the latest generation of Big Iron from IBM, the z14 systems. Also, we discuss some of the new API and functionality that allows you to do just […]
IBM Z: It’s Not the Dog. It’s the Trick
There’s a piece of conventional wisdom that runs rampant in the tech-o-sphere: You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Supposedly, once people become enamored with a technology and use it for a long period, they are loathe to adopt new ones. We’ve all heard it, and some believe it. Me? I not buying it […]
DevOps Chat: IBM’s Cloud Private with Mike Kaczmarski, CTO DevOps and Service Management
In this DevOps Chat we discuss IBM’s Cloud Private. Cloud Private is the new offering from IBM that encompasses much of the different cloud offerings the company has developed over the years. Our guest on this DevOps Chat is Michael Kaczmarksi, an IBM Fellow and CTO of DevOps and Service Management. In his distinguished career […]
IBM Z: An Architecture That Scales for Modern Computing
The architectures I like best are the ones that are built to scale. I can’t tell you how many time I’ve run across applications that have hit the wall when the request count goes up from hundreds to thousands of simultaneous users. The next thing you know the CPUs start to peg, memory get maxed […]