The Open Mainframe

The financial services industry has been a long-time consumer of open source software, using it to power innovation and deliver seamless, delightful customer experiences on the front end. Behind the scenes, the mainframe has been the traditional workhorse, providing the processing power necessary to handle workloads for the world’s largest banks and Fortune 500 organizations. As financial institutions face new pressures from market entrants, regulations and dynamics, the industry will continue to evolve, both in front of the curtain and behind the scenes. Hosts Alan Shimel and John Mertic are joined by Rune Christensen (Bankdata), Tracy Ragan (DeployHub), Lee Santalucia (Vicom Infinity) and Gabriele Columbro (FINOS) for a discussion on all aspects of fintech, open source, COBOL and mainframe modernization.

During the pandemic, there was an increase in contributors and momentum across almost all open source communities. But with that, challenges also increased including risks and vulnerabilities with third-party software, tools and processes. These challenges have many people asking the same question - can open source be secure?Hosts Alan Shimel and John Mertic are joined by panelists Kate Stewart (Dependable Embedded Systems), Alan Clark (SUSE), Mark Ackert (Broadcom)to share their perspectives on security, which is top of mind for many companies around the world.

While you might think of the mainframe as a relic from an earlier computing era, these mega machines still play a role inside large institutions running intensive workloads. The Linux Foundation's Open Mainframe project currently has more than 20 projects and working groups, and over the last few years has successfully built many open source tools and technologies for Linux mainframes. The community has been an integral part of introducing a new generation of developers to mainframes and helping users overcome common development issues. Open Mainframe continues to be an innovative pipeline that enables companies to gain the most from their mainframe, to drive new mainframe innovations and make mainframe technology and use more accessible for everyone. In this episode, our panel of experts will discuss the milestones met by the project last year and what to expect in 2023, including increased security and hands-on training. You'll hear from leaders of a few of Open Mainframe’s most popular projects including the COBOL Programming Course, Mentorship Program and Zowe.

COBOL has a long and illustrious history; after all, not many other languages have been in use since 1959 and are still going strong! But far from being a relic, COBOL continues to evolve and is finally getting the credit it deserves. The Open Mainframe Project’s COBOL Working Group, which launched in 2020 as a response to increasing interest in COBOL (and misinformation about it), aims to promote and support the continued use of the COBOL language globally. One of its first missions: To identify the COBOL market, challenges, concerns and how companies are addressing these issues. 
As a first step, The COBOL Working Group is partnering with The Linux Foundation Research team and the Linux Foundation Training & Certification team on a new COBOL research study. The research will seek to explore how organizations’ usage of COBOL has evolved, what use cases, strategies and attitudes are prevalent now and what the future holds for the language.Hosts Alan Shimel and John Mertic are joined by Cameron Seay (E. Caroline Univ.), Misty Decker (Micro Focus) and Magie Hall (Vienna University) to provide more details about the milestones they’ve achieved , the new research study and more.

What do AlmaLinux, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Red Hat, Rocky Linux, SUSE and Ubuntu have in common? They are all Linux distributions, sure, but wait–there’s more! Now, thanks to Open Mainframe Project’s Linux Distributions Working Group, they all work closely together toward a common goal: To oversee the health and maintenance of the s390x port of various Linux distributions to ensure that the s390x remains a supported mainframe architecture for them all. The working group will collaborate on major concerns and achievements that the distributions share with respect to the s390x mainframe architecture and work together to support new contributors and make sure they have everything they need to continue building on, supporting and maintaining this important infrastructure.

Last month at Open Mainframe Summit, Open Mainframe Project announced the availability of a z15 Mainframe system dedicated for training next-generation talent and developing new open software technologies to further strengthen the integration of mainframe and cloud. Donated by Broadcom Mainframe Software Division, the z15 will be available for use by all Open Mainframe Projects and the open source community at large beginning in 2023. Broadcom’s donation provides a critical, new resource to foster greater collaboration and the development of new tool sets across the mainframe community.
Rick Perret (Broadcom), Yvette LaMar (IBM Z), and Reg Harbeck (IBM Z) join hosts Alan Shimel and John Mertic to discuss what this means to the Open Mainframe community, the education landscape, and the skills gap.

The term “modernization” is being used to mean different things causing confusion in the market. Some define “modernization” as moving away from mainframes and COBOL and others define “modernization” as updating existing systems in place. Modernization, especially application and process modernization, is absolutely essential to the future of the mainframe ecosystem. Open Mainframe Project wants to provide leadership in ensuring that addressing aging applications is done in a way with a broad view of the options, rather than following fashion or tradition. The first step is launching a new Mainframe Modernization Working Group. In today’s episode, hosts Alan Shimel and John Mertic will speak with key industry and Open Mainframe Project leaders who are stepping up to join this effort including: Misty Decker (Micro Focus), Len Santalucia (Vicom Infinity) and Peter McCaffrey.

Diversity in the workplace is essential – even more so in the technology sector – but Workforce Management estimates that 68% of business leaders still report a lack of diversity in their tech workforce.
An inclusive work environment offers opportunity for growth and achievement to a broader range of works. This is an important step towards creating more resilient communities and a more equitable world. In this panel discussion, hosts Alan Shimel and John Mertic are joined by three mainframe thought leaders: Jeanne Glass (VirtualZ Computing), Derek Britton (Micro Focus) and Sharra Owens-Schwartz (Rocket Software) who will share their experience, personal perspectives and how they are pushing diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.

On Sept. 21-22, Philadelphia will be overrun with mainframers from all walks of life – students, hobbyists, seasoned professionals, new engineers, developers and even educators.They’ll be meeting up at Convene (Commerce Square) for the first-ever in-person Open Mainframe Summit. This year, Open Mainframe Summit will highlight security as it relates to all aspects of mainframes and beyond. The event will also be streamed online for virtual attendees. Hosts Mitch Ashley and John Mertic are joined by Elizabeth K. Joseph (IBM), Jakub Balhar (Broadcom) and Stacey Miller (SUSE) to preview the upcoming event!

“Let’s talk Zowe LTS V2!” Despite the massive migration to the cloud, development on mainframe systems continues to power many of today’s mission-critical systems. Zowe offers modern interfaces through which developers can interact with IBM z/OS in a way that is similar to what they’d experience on cloud platforms–from securely managing, controlling, scripting and developing on the mainframe. LTS. Zowe LTS V2, release in May, contains a number of important updates for users and developers, released May 3, 2022, contains a number of important updates for users and developers. Alan Shimel and John Mertic are joined by Rose Sakach (Broadcom), Jakub Balhar (Broadcom) and Bruce Armstrong (IBM) to cover these updates, outline the changes and talk about the new features.