Cloud computing and Mainframe

utkarshtewari · New User Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 9 Location: UK

Hello everyone,
As a mainframe professional should I be afraid of cloud computing? The market is buzzing with this 'C' word and i'm sure many of us would be eagerly waiting to hear something from IBM which could confirm 'Aaah! ...We are still in the game'.

What do you old timer Big Blue fans think about it?
How will cloud computing impact a developer working on old good Cobol, Db2, Jcl....and what should one aim to learn and train on to enhance opportunities when C-computing strikes.

Cheers,
Utkarsh

dick scherrer · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 11:07 pm

Hello,

"Something" is always the new next thing to cause the mainframe/cobol/db2 go away. Been this way since the 80's.

I suspect (dare i say predict) that someday in 2016 or so the new "thing" will be touted. It too will promise/threaten all sorts of magic. To be considered is that real managers supporting real organizations need to provide real solutions. May once again slow the demise of our current environment.

mtaylor · Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 6:28 am

IMO the 'cloud' meme has become all marketing hype, very little substance. There is not a publicly traded company in existence that will allow it's data to be hosted outside of its firewall and/or data centers. It's just too much risk given SOX and other regulatory requirements. Where 'cloud' really matters is internet scale applications like search, social networking, video hosting etc... not customer account information (account numbers, balances, etc...).

dick scherrer · Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2011 7:47 am

Hello,

Going along with this. . . In the 70's everything was going to be virtual.

Then database became the "next big thing" and if your database product did not sell itself as "relational", all of a suggen, you weren't selling/leasing as many copies.

4GL were also given a shot - they would surely end this COBOL proliferation.

Websphere was in line to be the center of things (i missed most of that).

In there was another burst of GO UNIX, but that has slowed to a standstill (there is some fine stuff, but i see no overall mainframe/cobol replacement.

Apologies to the technologies i've not included

d

Pete Wilson · Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2011 7:48 pm

IBM seem to be moving toward more specialist engines being integrated into the z Enterprise servers and support for more operating systems. This reduces footprint and environmental costs as well as providing a much more reliable platform. I can't see it under any significant threat at all for the foreseeable future.

For the 'cloud', it may become useful for intra-company purposes just like virtualisation has. Having a cloud spanning national borders will be limited by legislative and security issues.

Anuj Dhawan · Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 9:02 pm

www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/in/en/cloud_computing/ideas/index.html
www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/