The majority of data processing tasks required by large corporations, universities, healthcare facilities, financial institutions, and other organizations are performed on mainframe computers. In part, this is because of the tremendous power and stability that mainframe computers prov

Walk into a typical mainframe site and chances are that most of the individuals in the room will be on the verge of retirement. Although mainframes play a key role in a wide range of industries, there is a shortage in the number of IT specialists capable of operating and maintaining t

You’ve probably heard some variation of the line, “We need to access the mainframe,” in countless old movies and TV shows. The implication was that you need a big computer to handle a big problem like, say, an alien invasion. But are mainframe computers still relevant today? After all

This past January, it was revealed that there are two significant design vulnerabilities in the majority of microprocessor chips used to run our digital world. Meltdown and Spectre are design vulnerabilities inherent in the majority of chipsets used since 1995, including the mainframe

Next time you hear a Millennial say, “Who is Billy Joel?” or “That technology disappeared along with the dinosaurs?” Consider the following. I was catching up with a friend recently who works in IT security on the open systems side. He is in his early 30s and has done very well in his

While at a lunch meeting a few months back, I brought up that most of the people who work for New Iron Solutions are in their late 40’s and older. Almost all of them had in excess of 20+ years of experience in their specific skill set, along with significant strengths in several relat

You know the story… A Mainframe systems programmer with limited or no experience in managing storage is assigned the responsibility of managing the entire storage environment. As long as there is enough storage available, they can carve up the storage resources necessary based on the

I have been reading about the data breach at Equifax and how it may have affected up to 143 million Americans. As of this writing, it appears that the breach happened due to a vulnerability in the Open Source Software, Apache Struts. A patch for the vulnerability was released back in

The IMS database is a very interesting database. In many environments, it just runs and runs and runs for years with little if any maintenance. I have heard it referred to as the “brick wall” of databases as you almost need to use a sledgehammer to bring it down. It is a wonderful pro