I have 6 years of IT experience in Mainframe technology. The kind of work I do my organization is supporting MF application.
Please let me know your views on the future of MF, has this technology had enough which existed forpast several decades for critical businsses, is it coming to an end with just supporting the existing applications with no major developments or enhancements. And lot of applications in Mainframe migrating to other open source OS using simulators like clerity and micro focus.Is it the same everywhere ?
Also provide your suggestions if this right tone to look for other emerging technologies like cloud, big data, BI etc. Or just let me know advanced features or skills available in Mainframe which keeps us competent to current latest technologies.
Joined: 23 Nov 2006 Posts: 19243 Location: Inside the Matrix
Hello,
"Mainframe" is not coming to an end any time soon . . .
For more than 30 years, almost every new-hire states that they want to work on new development rather than maintenance. What they don't realize is that only a small % of the applications in an organization are actually somethihng new. Existing systems however will be maintained "forever".
One of the difficulties with having new do maintenance is that often a much more talented person is needd for maintenance. Some maintenance is trivial (change a field name in a header) other is not. I've believed there should be at least 2 levels of maintenance developers and the pay should be different accordingly.
By all means, learn whatever new technology you can. If you invest time in learning new technology, you then need to use it. If you do not use it for long enough to become fluent, it will fade rather quickly.
When I started with mainframes all I wanted to learn was the "technical" side; COBOL, OS JCL, VSAM, and CICS. Along the way you learn Panvelet, Librarian, File Aid, Easytrieve, Endevor, Xpediter, and utilities, such as, IDCAMS, IEBGENER, etc. Then I moved on to IMS DB/DC, Macro4, DB2, XML, DB2, MQSeries, etc. There is always something to learn.
I guess what I'm seeing is plenty of MF work/applications from the "large" companies. Some platforms get converted (i.e. VSAM, IMS DB to DB2) but it's still all mainframe. Some presentations get converted (CICS, IMS DC to GUI) but it's still mainframe behind the scenes.
I think there are more opportunities now - mainframers, PC types (web, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DOM, AJAX, ASP.Net-C#, web services, etc), specialized testers, business analysts, project leaders, etc.
