A blend of opinions & news on tech topics like cloud, mobile, big data, app development and app performance from geniuses inside the technology industry.
I studied physics in college, but I’ve never particularly used it other than for the occasional IKEA project. When you think about it though, physics can be used to describe certain business and market trends. For example, classical mechanics provides a unique perspective when analyzing the lifecycle of technological innovations, particularly those from established companies. Let’s borrow three physics concepts for the purposes of this … [Read more...]
Last week I had the honor of joining other mainframers for an annual sales kick off meeting, marking the beginning of our (Compuware’s) fiscal year. While attending this year, I had the following observations about folks in mainframe sales, the state of IT and the power of connection. About Mainframe Sales You can teach an old dog a new trick. (I’m one of those old dogs, so it’s OK.) With the introduction of new application … [Read more...]
I came across an interesting article last week entitled “Tassie retailer rejects cloud for mainframe.” It described how an Australian supermarket chain was bucking the “cloud computing” trend by upgrading to the latest Unisys mainframe technology to run its core business, including a 20+ year-old application suite. The article highlights the common perception among a surprising number of commentators that mainframes and cloud computing … [Read more...]
“It is all a matter of perspective!” This old adage rings particularly true when trying to solve a complex IT problem that spans mainframe, distributed, and mobile platforms. Mainframe programs are increasingly interfacing with distributed systems to support consumer facing web and mobile applications. When a transaction is initiated via a mobile phone, the path it takes from the edge of the Internet and deep into the mainframe and back … [Read more...]
My co-workers have been lovingly teasing me for months (or has it been a year?) about my continued use of a Blackberry. But this phone does what I need to do: make/receive phone calls and read/send emails. I tell them I don’t care; at least I didn’t until the other day. Compuware shares a beautiful downtown Detroit building with Quicken Loans. I don’t know what the average age of a Compuware employee is versus that of a Quicken employee, … [Read more...]
Compuware recently released the results of a global study on CIO attitudes and experiences with mainframe outsourcing. The study found that reducing costs is a major business driver for outsourcing mainframe application development, maintenance and infrastructure. Yet, for all of their intentions to save money by outsourcing, companies are often hit with multiple hidden costs resulting from increases in MIPS consumption, as well as higher … [Read more...]
I was asked to give a presentation at 1DevDay 2012. This is a local conference that has been widely embraced by developers of many stripes. The request surprised me since the conference attendees are mainly distributed and mobile developers. I am, at heart, a mainframe developer. However, I have written almost exclusively in Java for a number of years. It should come as no surprise that my session was Java on the Mainframe. I really did not know … [Read more...]
Today's modern applications are not restricted to a single platform. Yet, in many ways, mainframe management and administration professionals are still tackling performance issues and problem resolution using the same methods they did when mainframe applications were all COBOL and never strayed off of the centralized mainframe computing platform. And this causes many problems. The IT infrastructure of most organizations is multi-tiered, and … [Read more...]
Many of my jobs at Compuware (since 1984) have involved interacting with development teams for many different product lines. About 1 ½ years ago, after working with newer distributed technologies for 12 years, I made a somewhat impulsive decision to return to our Mainframe Solutions business unit. Here are the things I was wrong about when I made that decision: I was worried that I would be a little bored. Coming out of a fast-paced … [Read more...]
Load Tests are great. They tell you whether your application can handle the simulated load by staying within the acceptable response times for the tested transactions. When just looking at the average response time as measured on the web servers it will be hard to tell Do we have a performance problem at all? How can we improve the performance? The following shows a typical graph you get from a load testing tool or by analyzing your web … [Read more...]
