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I worked for a large retail company that had mainframes, our own DCs, and a large cloud presence. There was and still is an ongoing project to retire the mainfr

I worked for a large retail company that had mainframes, our own DCs, and a large cloud presence. There was and still is an ongoing project to retire the mainframes. From what I heard, the mainframes don't always solve the problems we have today, such as realtime information about all the stores and inventory. They are also harder and harder to get people that know and understand them to fix issue or work on integrating them into newer systems. Finally, there was a serious power outage at a DC after I left and the backup generators did not kick in properly. And the mainframes and other older hardware was not booting properly. That is a major risk that you don't have with the cloud, or even more modern application design with your own hardware. As long as you have the data, you can just provision new hardware and go. It would be expensive and time consuming, but this is a Fortune 50 company and they can pay the cost if it happens.

goatinaboat 6y ago
They are also harder and harder to get people that know and understand them Bootcamps saturating the market with webdevs armed with skills that barely last a year, when they could be training people with skills that would see them employed for a whole career.
- wnevets 6y ago
  Could you even have bootcamps for mainframes?
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    There is a yearly Master The Mainframe competition for students (but anyone can participate, get an account and do the exercises and go through the materials). It's fun. z/OS is completely alien for someone who grew up in a Windows/Unix ecosystem.
    - JuanTono 6y ago
      Also IBM is launching a new program for students called "IBM Z ambassadors" trying to reach students and evangelize about mainframes... I know it because Im currently an IBM Z ambassador. https://zambassador.com/ https://zambassador.com/
  - sedachv 6y ago
    There were bootcamps for AS/400 in the 1990s.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      The AS/400 is a thing of beauty. It was ahead of its time and, in many aspects, it's still ahead of ours.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  The pay for people who know and understand mainframes is insufficient to incentivize people to become knowledgeable and familiar with mainframes. It has nothing to do with bootcamps. If the mainframe knowledge was in sufficient demand, then they would be selling mainframe training too since people would be wanting to buy it.
  - tablespoon 6y ago
    > It has nothing to do with bootcamps. If the mainframe knowledge was in sufficient demand, then they would be selling mainframe training too since people would be wanting to buy it. A large part of that is probably due to American management practices, where the preference is to skimp on maintenance until they find themselves in a crisis. They don't want to pay for what they need, they want to pay for whatever is cheap.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    The pay for people who know and understand mainframes is insufficient to incentivize people to become knowledgeable and familiar with mainframes Maybe, but it may also be true that people simply aren't aware that mainframes exist or these jobs exist.
neverartful 6y ago
"harder and harder to get people that known and understand them" This is not surprising. IBM could fix this overnight if it wanted to. How? By providing no-cost educational licenses for its mainframe software for use on Hercules. Why don't they do this? I believe that there are 2 reasons why: (1) they're terrified of people running their production mainframe workloads on a non-mainframe, and (2) I believe that some of IBM's existing mainframe customers keep pressure on IBM to prevent them from opening up the 'mainframe secrets to the world'. The second point is the belief in security through obscurity. I don't have any evidence to back up this belief, it's just my theory. The other thing that IBM could do is provide low-cost (or even no-cost) options to real mainframe environment over the internet. I know that they have some of this, but it's too restrictive. I'm talking about opening it up like AWS did with free for 1 year. But that's expensive? It wasn't free for AWS to do it, and it wouldn't be free for IBM to do it. However, it would eliminate the biggest barrier to entry for new talent. Getting back to my theory of security through obscurity, I believe that this is also in play with AIX and iSeries (AS/400). A number of years back, I bought a used RS/6000 workstation on eBay for the purpose of learning and I contacted IBM to get a licensed copy of AIX 4.3. It was as if I were speaking in tongues trying to get through to them. IBM: "Sir, what's your IBM customer number?" Me: "Umm, I don't have one. I'm just an individual who bought a used RS/6000 on eBay." IBM: "We can't sell you an AIX license without a customer number." Me: "Ok, well give me one." IBM: "What's the name of the company?" Me: "There is no company. It's just me as an individual who wants to learn about the technology." IBM: "We have to have a company name." Me: "Put my name as the company name." ... ... ... Eventually, get assigned an IBM customer number and did finally get AIX CD-ROMs from IBM. I can only imagine that it would be 10x worse to do something similar with their iSeries (AS/400). When you see this over and over, I'm left with the conclusion that IBM doesn't want individuals getting their hands on their hardware or their software.
- pickle-wizard 6y ago
  IBM does have the zPDT for running an emulated mainframe on Intel hardware for development, and education purposes. However it is not free. IIRC it is about $1K/year. Not a bad cost for a business, but too expensive for someone to go learn on their own. You are absolutely right about how hard it is to do business with IBM. I worked for IBM for nearly 7 years, running a small datacenter. It was such a pain in the ass every time I needed to order something. IBM sales and support process is very high touch, and is designed for the large enterprise that has a team of IBM sales people supporting them. If you are that customer it is not a big deal because you have someone to navigate the process for you. If you are a smaller customer, they want you to go through a VAR. Which is still a pain in the ass. Windows NT and the AS/400 are about the same age. This pain in the ass sales process is a big part of why Windows NT won. The IBM sales people didn't want to sell it because you didn't need to buy services with it and it was too hard to buy on your own. Where as if you wanted Windows NT, you just bought a copy of Windows NT and installed it on an easily available PC. We won't even talk about the time I tried to use IBM Smart Cloud Enterprise.

goatinaboat 6y ago

They are also harder and harder to get people that know and understand them Bootcamps saturating the market with webdevs armed with skills that barely last a year, when they could be training people with skills that would see them employed for a whole career.

wnevets 6y ago
Could you even have bootcamps for mainframes?
- rbanffy 6y ago
  There is a yearly Master The Mainframe competition for students (but anyone can participate, get an account and do the exercises and go through the materials). It's fun. z/OS is completely alien for someone who grew up in a Windows/Unix ecosystem.
  - JuanTono 6y ago
    Also IBM is launching a new program for students called "IBM Z ambassadors" trying to reach students and evangelize about mainframes... I know it because Im currently an IBM Z ambassador. https://zambassador.com/ https://zambassador.com/
- sedachv 6y ago
  There were bootcamps for AS/400 in the 1990s.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    The AS/400 is a thing of beauty. It was ahead of its time and, in many aspects, it's still ahead of ours.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
The pay for people who know and understand mainframes is insufficient to incentivize people to become knowledgeable and familiar with mainframes. It has nothing to do with bootcamps. If the mainframe knowledge was in sufficient demand, then they would be selling mainframe training too since people would be wanting to buy it.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > It has nothing to do with bootcamps. If the mainframe knowledge was in sufficient demand, then they would be selling mainframe training too since people would be wanting to buy it. A large part of that is probably due to American management practices, where the preference is to skimp on maintenance until they find themselves in a crisis. They don't want to pay for what they need, they want to pay for whatever is cheap.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  The pay for people who know and understand mainframes is insufficient to incentivize people to become knowledgeable and familiar with mainframes Maybe, but it may also be true that people simply aren't aware that mainframes exist or these jobs exist.

neverartful 6y ago

"harder and harder to get people that known and understand them" This is not surprising. IBM could fix this overnight if it wanted to. How? By providing no-cost educational licenses for its mainframe software for use on Hercules. Why don't they do this? I believe that there are 2 reasons why: (1) they're terrified of people running their production mainframe workloads on a non-mainframe, and (2) I believe that some of IBM's existing mainframe customers keep pressure on IBM to prevent them from opening up the 'mainframe secrets to the world'. The second point is the belief in security through obscurity. I don't have any evidence to back up this belief, it's just my theory. The other thing that IBM could do is provide low-cost (or even no-cost) options to real mainframe environment over the internet. I know that they have some of this, but it's too restrictive. I'm talking about opening it up like AWS did with free for 1 year. But that's expensive? It wasn't free for AWS to do it, and it wouldn't be free for IBM to do it. However, it would eliminate the biggest barrier to entry for new talent. Getting back to my theory of security through obscurity, I believe that this is also in play with AIX and iSeries (AS/400). A number of years back, I bought a used RS/6000 workstation on eBay for the purpose of learning and I contacted IBM to get a licensed copy of AIX 4.3. It was as if I were speaking in tongues trying to get through to them. IBM: "Sir, what's your IBM customer number?" Me: "Umm, I don't have one. I'm just an individual who bought a used RS/6000 on eBay." IBM: "We can't sell you an AIX license without a customer number." Me: "Ok, well give me one." IBM: "What's the name of the company?" Me: "There is no company. It's just me as an individual who wants to learn about the technology." IBM: "We have to have a company name." Me: "Put my name as the company name." ... ... ... Eventually, get assigned an IBM customer number and did finally get AIX CD-ROMs from IBM. I can only imagine that it would be 10x worse to do something similar with their iSeries (AS/400). When you see this over and over, I'm left with the conclusion that IBM doesn't want individuals getting their hands on their hardware or their software.

pickle-wizard 6y ago
IBM does have the zPDT for running an emulated mainframe on Intel hardware for development, and education purposes. However it is not free. IIRC it is about $1K/year. Not a bad cost for a business, but too expensive for someone to go learn on their own. You are absolutely right about how hard it is to do business with IBM. I worked for IBM for nearly 7 years, running a small datacenter. It was such a pain in the ass every time I needed to order something. IBM sales and support process is very high touch, and is designed for the large enterprise that has a team of IBM sales people supporting them. If you are that customer it is not a big deal because you have someone to navigate the process for you. If you are a smaller customer, they want you to go through a VAR. Which is still a pain in the ass. Windows NT and the AS/400 are about the same age. This pain in the ass sales process is a big part of why Windows NT won. The IBM sales people didn't want to sell it because you didn't need to buy services with it and it was too hard to buy on your own. Where as if you wanted Windows NT, you just bought a copy of Windows NT and installed it on an easily available PC. We won't even talk about the time I tried to use IBM Smart Cloud Enterprise.