8 ms·

Does anyone know what kinds of companies or applications make use of z/OS mainframes?

PaulHoule 11y ago
The State of New York uses them. Once a law was passed that the state needs to turn paperwork around in less than 48 hours they found the printing system was a bottleneck so they hired a greybeard friend of mine to build a new printer interface and device drivers for it. Cornell University also used to run HR and accounting on a 370 mainframe and people were happy, but then they switched to peoplesoft and now (i) they are not happy, and (ii) looking for a new accounting system.
Spooky23 11y ago
All US states, 90%+ of the big banks, retailers, airlines, brokerages, etc use mainframes. There are still places using non-IBM mainframes as well. Several state welfare systems use Unisys mainframes.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Unisys, Fujitsu, and Group Bull that I recall. Too bad Unisys bought Convergent's CTOS. Was the only thing close to Plan 9 that had big take-up in business. I'm not counting Inferno because we're talking mainframes and big business.
ja27 11y ago
Almost every Fortune 500 and most branches of the federal government. There are a few exceptions obviously. Microsoft, Apple, HP, etc. are unlikely to use IBM technologies internally. Facebook, Amazon, etc. are young enough to not have mainframes. You can go search for z/OS job openings and see everyone from Walmart to Lockheed Martin to Citibank.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Microsoft did get called out for using a mini-mainframe, the AS/400, back when they were pushing Windows Server. Reportedly they ran their entire business on one AS/400. Embarrassed, they got off the AS/400. Took about 20-23 Windows servers to match its performance and reliability. Told me what I needed to know. ;) But, yeah, they don't use it any more. Most mainframe users are legacy users. However, there's occasional conversions especially for consolidation. IBM's competitor, Group Bull, posted some case studies on that such as consolidating hundreds of desktops and servers onto 2 easily-managed mainframes with cost savings.
  - jussij 11y ago
    I do remember this event, when Microsoft was forced to admit they did not use any of their their own technology other than the desktop and it resulted in a big hit to the credibility of any the Microsoft server technologies. But the result actually meant Microsoft had to then eat their own dog food and in a strange way it forced Microsoft to greatly improve their server platforms to where they are today. So in a funny way it probably backfired on those early Microsoft detractors.
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      Never thought of it like that. Damn. Why did we have to run our mouths lol...
kjs3 11y ago
In my experience: Insurance, banking, credit card processing, airline reservations, payroll processing.
mod 11y ago
I worked for a company that does z/OS software and got to see their client list--it was pretty much a who's who of industry leaders in every industry, plus a bunch of colleges.
mfisher87 11y ago
Financial services are a good example. Lots of highly regulated legacy systems. For many big name banks and credit cards, it's pretty safe to assume that a Z/OS mainframe is doing some work with the data you've generated with every swipe.
- zmonkeyz 11y ago
  Nationwide did a big linux on z consolidation a couple of years back.
AnonNo15 11y ago
Royal Bank of Canada for sure. Other banks from Big 5, probably too.
surge 11y ago
Every large financial institution, airline, or large company that does millions of transactions an hour that isn't competing with IBM or young enough to implement a different platform that can scale to that level. There is a z/OS security talk I saw that partially dispels the myths and prejudices against mainframes as legacy. In some cases z/OS is more modern than what you might find on your desktop and OSs like Linux are implementing features in its kernel that have been in zOS for years.
- ghuntley 11y ago
  That would be Soldier of Fortran - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfl4spvM5DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfl4spvM5DI
  - surge 11y ago
    Right I love his stuff. I was thinking of his talk at BSides LV 2014 which he gave the same talk but he also had talks this year also at BSides and DefCon. I also wanted to mention that where I've worked and many other places there is a crisis of brain drain at companies as the mainframe experts who are highly paid retire out and there are programs to recruit young people who are more attracted to other platforms. There is a lot of pay and job security in the field. I know of one situation where a guy past retirement is paid full salary to work 1/3 of full-time from his vacation home because the company could not afford to lose his knowledge and struggled to find someone competent enough to learn under him that was interested in mainframe. In other words, someone young with these skills would be highly paid and in higher demand at many companies.
    - DigitalJack 11y ago
      Is there any way to learn this sort of thing outside of being at a company with a z/architecture mainframe? I know about the Hercules project, but as far as I can tell, you can only run predecessors to Z/OS (due to licensing as I understand it), and zLinux.
      - 11y ago
coleca 11y ago
Many retail (brick and mortar chains) use them extensively. Way back in the day, that was what you did when you wanted to process "big data" in the 80's and 90's. Those systems became so ingrained into the business processes of the retailers that they are hard to remove. I've seen some retailers in the North East try and "get off the mainframe" by moving to a modern ERP from Oracle or SAP only to have the projects fail after spending $250m-$500m and to this day they are still running 20-40 year old backend software for things like financials, pricing, payroll and merchandising. I've seen production COBOL code running that was authored in the late 70's.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  I was on the outskirts of a conversation where someone wanted to get away from the "inflexibility of the mainframe", so they were moving to SAP. I missed the rest of the conversation, because I was choking on my beer.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Lmao. I would've been to. Like with person you replied to, retail companies in my area still use mainframes, AS/400, and even IBM's DOS variant. Few people even understand fully how it works and they're not young people wanting a ton of change to happen. Improvements are incremental and stay within the terminal. However, they do use newer technologies on GUI's etc that integrate with their mainframe solutions. People often have to keep working with two, inconsistent systems at once, though.

The State of New York uses them. Once a law was passed that the state needs to turn paperwork around in less than 48 hours they found the printing system was a bottleneck so they hired a greybeard friend of mine to build a new printer interface and device drivers for it. Cornell University also used to run HR and accounting on a 370 mainframe and people were happy, but then they switched to peoplesoft and now (i) they are not happy, and (ii) looking for a new accounting system.

Spooky23 11y ago

All US states, 90%+ of the big banks, retailers, airlines, brokerages, etc use mainframes. There are still places using non-IBM mainframes as well. Several state welfare systems use Unisys mainframes.

nickpsecurity 11y ago
Unisys, Fujitsu, and Group Bull that I recall. Too bad Unisys bought Convergent's CTOS. Was the only thing close to Plan 9 that had big take-up in business. I'm not counting Inferno because we're talking mainframes and big business.

ja27 11y ago

Almost every Fortune 500 and most branches of the federal government. There are a few exceptions obviously. Microsoft, Apple, HP, etc. are unlikely to use IBM technologies internally. Facebook, Amazon, etc. are young enough to not have mainframes. You can go search for z/OS job openings and see everyone from Walmart to Lockheed Martin to Citibank.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
nickpsecurity 11y ago
Microsoft did get called out for using a mini-mainframe, the AS/400, back when they were pushing Windows Server. Reportedly they ran their entire business on one AS/400. Embarrassed, they got off the AS/400. Took about 20-23 Windows servers to match its performance and reliability. Told me what I needed to know. ;) But, yeah, they don't use it any more. Most mainframe users are legacy users. However, there's occasional conversions especially for consolidation. IBM's competitor, Group Bull, posted some case studies on that such as consolidating hundreds of desktops and servers onto 2 easily-managed mainframes with cost savings.
- jussij 11y ago
  I do remember this event, when Microsoft was forced to admit they did not use any of their their own technology other than the desktop and it resulted in a big hit to the credibility of any the Microsoft server technologies. But the result actually meant Microsoft had to then eat their own dog food and in a strange way it forced Microsoft to greatly improve their server platforms to where they are today. So in a funny way it probably backfired on those early Microsoft detractors.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    Never thought of it like that. Damn. Why did we have to run our mouths lol...

kjs3 11y ago

In my experience: Insurance, banking, credit card processing, airline reservations, payroll processing.

mod 11y ago

I worked for a company that does z/OS software and got to see their client list--it was pretty much a who's who of industry leaders in every industry, plus a bunch of colleges.

mfisher87 11y ago

Financial services are a good example. Lots of highly regulated legacy systems. For many big name banks and credit cards, it's pretty safe to assume that a Z/OS mainframe is doing some work with the data you've generated with every swipe.

zmonkeyz 11y ago
Nationwide did a big linux on z consolidation a couple of years back.

AnonNo15 11y ago

Royal Bank of Canada for sure. Other banks from Big 5, probably too.

surge 11y ago

Every large financial institution, airline, or large company that does millions of transactions an hour that isn't competing with IBM or young enough to implement a different platform that can scale to that level. There is a z/OS security talk I saw that partially dispels the myths and prejudices against mainframes as legacy. In some cases z/OS is more modern than what you might find on your desktop and OSs like Linux are implementing features in its kernel that have been in zOS for years.

ghuntley 11y ago
That would be Soldier of Fortran - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfl4spvM5DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfl4spvM5DI
- surge 11y ago
  Right I love his stuff. I was thinking of his talk at BSides LV 2014 which he gave the same talk but he also had talks this year also at BSides and DefCon. I also wanted to mention that where I've worked and many other places there is a crisis of brain drain at companies as the mainframe experts who are highly paid retire out and there are programs to recruit young people who are more attracted to other platforms. There is a lot of pay and job security in the field. I know of one situation where a guy past retirement is paid full salary to work 1/3 of full-time from his vacation home because the company could not afford to lose his knowledge and struggled to find someone competent enough to learn under him that was interested in mainframe. In other words, someone young with these skills would be highly paid and in higher demand at many companies.
  - DigitalJack 11y ago
    Is there any way to learn this sort of thing outside of being at a company with a z/architecture mainframe? I know about the Hercules project, but as far as I can tell, you can only run predecessors to Z/OS (due to licensing as I understand it), and zLinux.
    - 11y ago

coleca 11y ago

Many retail (brick and mortar chains) use them extensively. Way back in the day, that was what you did when you wanted to process "big data" in the 80's and 90's. Those systems became so ingrained into the business processes of the retailers that they are hard to remove. I've seen some retailers in the North East try and "get off the mainframe" by moving to a modern ERP from Oracle or SAP only to have the projects fail after spending $250m-$500m and to this day they are still running 20-40 year old backend software for things like financials, pricing, payroll and merchandising. I've seen production COBOL code running that was authored in the late 70's.

Spooky23 11y ago
I was on the outskirts of a conversation where someone wanted to get away from the "inflexibility of the mainframe", so they were moving to SAP. I missed the rest of the conversation, because I was choking on my beer.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  Lmao. I would've been to. Like with person you replied to, retail companies in my area still use mainframes, AS/400, and even IBM's DOS variant. Few people even understand fully how it works and they're not young people wanting a ton of change to happen. Improvements are incremental and stay within the terminal. However, they do use newer technologies on GUI's etc that integrate with their mainframe solutions. People often have to keep working with two, inconsistent systems at once, though.