Why mainframe application performance is important?

Hello friends,

IBM mainframes dominate the mainframe market at well over 90% market share.
& as we know most of the banking systems uses the mainframe technology as front end as well as back end. Now a days some of them are using GUI at the front end designed by using .net, java, php or any other system, but at the back end definatly they are using mainframe because for them maintaining the customer information & there financial record is a major challenge. As mainframe can do it very nicely with high performance, they prefer for IBM mainframe.

   Form the above para u people come to know that how important mainframe is. In such a case it is also important to maintain the performance of mainframe application. 

    Form one of the survey, i observed following things- 

• 81 percent of global respondents say mainframe is already strategic or highly strategic to current and future IT plans
• 58 percent says mainframe is already or will be critical to cloud strategy
• 46 percent will spend more on mainframe software and 44 percent will spend more on services
• 44 percent already have or will be enabling mobile management of mainframe
• 54 percent want IT staff with cross-functional expertise.

        That’s why I was a little surprised to see one of our competitors announcing that mainframe application performance suddenly matters. Hasn’t it always?
        I came to IBM 10 months ago and, admittedly, was one of those people that didn’t think much about how “old” mainframe systems impact my use of modern applications. But most end-to-end systems from today’s large enterprises touch the mainframe in some way, that’s why it’s important to be able to measure transaction performance all the way from a web-front end through the back end mainframe.
     So what do u think about mainframe technology? is it really use in spite of being older one ?

Feature computing technologies

Hi friends. . 

       Now a days there is full environment of cloud computing, but here is something that u can find very interesting. u can read the following para to get to know what are all the new feature computing technologies, go through it.                   

         From the initial days of number-crunching by languages of FORTRAN, to the procedural methodology of Pascal or C, and later, the object-oriented paradigm of C++ and Java, we have come a long way. In this age of information overload, technologies that can just solve problems through steps and procedures are no longer adequate.

                     We need technology to detect complex patterns, trends, understand nuances in human language and to automatically solve problems. In this new era, the following three technologies are furthering the frontiers of computing technology:

Predictive analytics

By 2016, 130 exabytes will rip through the Internet. The number of mobile devices will exceed the human population this year, and by 2016, the number of connected devices will touch 10 billion.

Devices connected to the Net will range from cellphones, laptops, tablets, sensors and the millions of devices based on the ‘Internet of things’. A hot and happening trend in computing is the ability to make business and strategic decisions by determining patterns, trends and outliers among mountains of data. Predictive analytics will be a key discipline in our future and its experts will be much sought after.

Predictive analytics uses statistical methods to mine intelligence, information and patterns in structured, unstructured and streams of data. Predictive analytics will be applied across many domains, including banking, insurance, retail, telecom and energy.

There are also applications for energy grids and water management, besides those that determine user sentiment by mining data from social networks.

Cognitive computing

                   The most famous technological product in the domain of cognitive computing is IBM’s supercomputer, Watson, an artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language.

             Watson is best known for successfully trouncing a national champion in the popular U.S. TV quiz competition, Jeopardy. What made this victory more astonishing was that the supercomputer was able to decipher the nuances of natural language and pick the correct answer.

                   Following the success at Jeopardy, Watson has now been employed by a leading medical insurance firm in the U.S. to diagnose medical illnesses and recommend treatment options for patients. Watson will be able to analyse 1 million books, or roughly 200 million pages of information. Another well-known example of cognitive computing is Siri, the voice recognition app on the iPhone. The earlier avatar of cognitive computing was expert systems based on artificial intelligence. These expert systems were inference engines that were based on knowledge rules.

       The most famous among the expert systems were ‘Dendral’ and ‘Mycin’.

Autonomic computing

                  This is another computing trend that is set to become prevalent in the networks of tomorrow. Autonomic computing refers to the self-managing characteristics of a network. Typically, it signifies the ability of a network to self-heal in the event of failures or faults.

                   Autonomic network can quickly localise and isolate faults in the network while keeping other parts of the network unaffected. Besides, these networks can quickly correct and ‘heal’ the faulty hardware without human intervention. Autonomic networks are typical in smart grids where a fault can be quickly isolated and the network healed without resulting in a major outage in the electrical grid.

            These are truly exciting times in computing as we move towards true intelligence. 

Source: www.thehindu.com, www.ibm.com

Mainframe feature for students

Hello friends….

      Worried @ your career?  I can suggest one good option, not good according to me it’s a best, ….that is MAINFRAME .

                    After the event like 9/11, it is very important for all organizations so keep their data safe, specially its challenge in front of bank & trade centers.  Most of the organizations, not most I can say almost all,  are maintaining their data in mainframe.  If we are talking about all world data then “More than 70 percent of the world’s data still resides on mainframes. The market is growing in terms of revamping the older mainframes and adding new features and software to the oldies. Also, the new mainframes are smaller, cheaper, more powerful and e-business ready, so the market is growing steadily.”

            Now for maintaining this data, it is very important to find mainframe skilled workers in feature.  As I mentioned in one of my last post that about 70 to 80% mainframe workers are going to retire in next 5 years. So its again very big challenge for IT firms like IBM, HP etc to find the new skilled individuals. By keeping this thing in mind, IBM has  already taken few steps for this.

     IBM is now working with over 250 universities around the world to provide mainframe courses. The help comes in:

• The creation of course material covering all the basics including ISPF, JCL, VSAM and Assembler, that all go back to the original 360 days, as well as the slightly newer z/VM, CICS and DB2 and finally the newer boy on the block, Linux.
• The provision of mainframe resources either on the campus or as a shared worldwide resource so that student can try it for real and begin to understand the power and complexity of the environment.
• Internships of six months or a year in IBM as part of a university course.

                          In India also, IBM have Mainframe labs in some of the top engineering institutes & universities. The only thing is that, it will be little costly, because mainframe ID cost very huge per hour.

        

         So frnds….start thinking about your career, take the right steps from today………good luck.

Which Operating system is not Hacked Yet? ......That is mainframe

Hello friends,

The only operating System & server which is not hacked yet, & not possible  in feature also is MAINFRAME. That is why almost all the banks, Insurance companies, & those who are dealing with money, use to prefer mainframe only. That is the most secured server in the world. 

        As it is most secured. on the other hand it is very very much costly. In the survey it is found that banks spend nearly 70% of their expenditure on IT infrastructure.

                 Windows is an operating system started off as being meant for one user only, and they could run only one program at a time, and it was written to manage real devices in the PC, that is, it was limited to what the PC had.

                       When it was realised that this approach meant that programs which required more hardware capacity (like memory) could not be written, special routines that virtualised hardware had to be written. However, the underlying operating system files etc were all open to anyone who wanted to install software, that is, any programmer could overwrite system software causing malicious or unintended damage.The operating system grew organically and tries to mimic multi- user environment, virtualisation and allowing multiple programs at the same time etc, but this has been developed as additions and not designed from ground up. Hence the stability issues and issues of hacking because the entire system software etc was open for anybody to overwrite with their own code.

                                Mainframe OZ (zOS) on the other hand was written ground up to be virtual,multi user system, multi program system. The hardware was always virtualised and programmers do not deal with physical limitations of the system.

 Next, Operating system files and production code always was protected by the creation of a strict discipline and the creation of special libraries from which they could be run. This is controlled by system programmers.

          Application programs never replace operating system files unlike in Windows or UNIX (to a lesser extent).

         This created this environment never to be hacked to date.

                   If you want proof of this claim, consider what you can find by searching news archives and trade journals, looking for references to mainframes and data loss, hacking, security breaches, and similar topics. Recent research included checking the archives of ComputerWorld, InformationWeek, and The Wall Street Journal for reports of unauthorized access of any traditional mainframe environment via userid/ password exploitation, corruption of a mainframe-based networking resource, or contamination of a mainframe sys- tem software component.

 

True Facts about Mainframe

Hello Dear Friends, 
     I am herewith some of the true & important facts @ Mainframe, Its Very Interesting & much more demanding. So some of the facts are as  
 
Mainframe facts.....!!!!!

1. All 25 of the world’s top banks still use mainframes, while 71 per cent of global Fortune 500 companies are mainframe clients as well. Additionally, nine out of the top 10 global health insurance providers process all of their high-volume transactions on a mainframe. This shows that, despite incursions being made by software as a service (SaaS) providers, an overwhelming majority of the world’s big business still value the reliability and security of mainframes, particularly for mission-critical functions.

2. Around 63 per cent of mainframe sites in the Asia-Pacific region believe the lack of skills in the current generation of mainframers is a major concern. In Europe, 66 per cent of mainframe sites believe mainframes are already suffering from a serious skills shortage.

3. About 72% of mainframe sites have mainframe staff eligible for retirement. (CA 2011)

4. The mainframes hold approximately " 70 % " of the entire data stored in this planet
5. The latest ones can support over 25,000 users
6. They can support devices spread over 26 miles using fibre optics
7. The size of the "basic" OS is about 14 GB
8. This OS comes in about 57 magnetic tapes, But latest with 4 tapes
9. It takes ATLEAST a month to install and customize a basic mainframe OS configuration
10. It takes around 3 full days for a mainframe to get up and running
11. Basic configuration for development environment costs 8 crores (hardware + Software)
12. A full team of qualified system operators are always required to be on stand by to ensure successful operation
13. Earlier mainframes were provided with cooling pipes through which cold water was passed to cool the system - TCS have one in Chennai facility
14. Recent mainframes have variable speed fans in the cabinet to keep it cool
15. Have u ever heard of a mainframe system being hacked??? Mainframes are one of the most secure data installations ever
16. You cannot buy the mainframe OS, but u'll have to pay a license to use it. The cost?? cool ......1.5 crores a year.
17. Finally, mainframes today r the most preferred data servers for even the most hi-fi of the organizations!
18. So far no virus has attacked Mainframes
      
    So this is how mainframe is...!!!!