Modern Mainframe: AI, DevOps and Enterprise Transformation | Agents Of Dev Ep. 9

Control. This is agent dev. I'm in position.

Copy that. Dev. Stand by for, go Standing by.

Hey, welcome everybody. You have joined us on the Agents of Dev podcast with my co-host, Brad Shiman. We, we are very happy to be here.

We've got some guests, Brads and people that kind of keep us honest. Make sure love it, know what we're talking about instead of you, you and me. Just job boning about whatever we wanna talk about.

Of course, as analysts, that's no problem, right? We have plenty. Well do, do you Honestly think that it'll be any different today?

Well, we'll see. Well you to see how, how well good these guys are. It help us stay on track.

No, we're, we're, I think you're fine. We can jaw bong with the best of them, so, yeah. I somehow, I believe that too.

So we're joined by some folks from BMC software, and we're gonna be talking about app modernization, mainframe modernization, a whole bunch of modernization topics, and kind of find out what they're up to at BMC. So, Tony, uh, Tony an entered is the, uh, DevOps evangelist kind of self-proclaimed. Glad to have you joining us today, Tony.

Yeah, that's right. You'll Have to prove it. Okay.

Well, you know, let, let's hope I get through the crucible, so, No worries. Hey, don't worry. All self-proclaimed.

You know, this is my title, but this is what I really do. Right. And then Eric Fold, who is joining us, and actually relatively new to BM BMC too.

Welcome Eric. Good to have you on board. Thanks.

Um, pro, uh, product manager for, uh, Amy Dev DevX. Uh, code Insights. DevX.

Code Insight. Awesome. DevX, another very popular topic and developer experience.

Well, let, let's kick things off. Um, Brad, if you don't mind, I'm gonna kind of kick things going here. Um, but let's talk about, so modernization's not a new topic.

It's, it's evolved a bit. I'd love to get your all's perspective from BMC of sort of what is the, the big impetus. A lot of times it was, you know, VMware moving off of that or just moving from on-premise to cloud, but there's a lot of more things going on in modernization.

Kinda give, give us your lay of the land. Tony, do you wanna kick us off? Yeah, yeah.

I, I think that that modernization is one of those words today that, you know, for those of us who've been in the industry a while, there's always a word every year that comes out, the word of the year, if you will. And there's about 12 different meanings if you talk to 10 different people. So, mm-hmm.

The, um, I, I think that, that from our perspective, modernization means bringing, you know, reducing your technical debt, bringing your current technology up to snuff with the rest of your organization. Um, I think that this is not anything new for BMC. This is something that we've been doing for a long time, especially on the mainframe, and we've been trying to bring the mainframe up.

I, I talk to a lot of customers, and I, I use this analogy a lot, you know, somewhere in the very late nineties, late nineties, mainframe developers just stopped. Doesn't mean they didn't work, doesn't mean they didn't add solutions, but they stopped, I'm gonna be blunt, innovating. They, they started just piling additional tech, additional, uh, capabilities on top of the old programs, just one on top of the other and top of the other.

Until now, we're sitting here and we have, we have monoliths, we have architectures that are from the eighties and nineties. We have, you know, a lot of technical debt. And you have people that are aging out of the workforce.

They're, you know, and, and they're the ones who understand what was done, who understand where all the, all the bodies are buried, for lack of a better term. And so now you're, you're at a, you're at a crossroads where you have to take these systems and make them modern. Now, what that means to different organizations is different for each organization, right?

And I think that what we do is we have a particular approach, it's called a, b, c, analyze, build, and convert. And we'll get into that I'm sure as we, as we go along, but it's a methodology that we use to modernize your mainframe applications. Eric Chimp in you need perspective.

You, you're the new guys, so you haven't quite drunk Kool-Aid yet. So Actually one of the, one of the bright spots is that with that aging out of the, of the, you know, that that expert class of, uh, of baby boomers do, we do have these new generations coming into the platform, um, and they bring with them, um, you know, uh, a, a background in, in structured code and the ability to marry the, the legacy technologies on the mainframe with, uh, the more modern technologies such as Python and Java, and our tooling can help them to get up to speed on the mainframe so that they become those powerful switch hitters who can really marry the great, um, business code that's running on the mainframe, those solid applications on the mainframe, and enable the, um, enterprise to move forward with what they want to accomplish in the modern marketplace. Really un unleash the main from those monoliths.

Go ahead, Tony, please. No, no, no. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

So, and I mean, that's, that's a great point that Eric brings up, right? Because you have new people coming into the platform who've cut their teeth on things like, you know, with structured code, with things like Python, they're using modern IDs, they're, they're with, their vast preference is vs code. They're, they're used to get and how GI works and, and, and, and sort of get native development, right?

And then they're coming onto a platform that where you see a, a, a massive preponderance of green screen, ISPS panels and, you know, uh, waterfall methodology and how they work and, and things are coming to a loggerhead, right? So having that modern development approach, having that modern development capability, that's what these guys want. That's what, That's What you're new in, in, uh, that's what you're new in industry people wanna see.

And it seems like actually they're, they're even jumping further ahead than even using modern languages like Java and Python to start embracing, uh, a gentech code generation and increasingly, you know, modernization and rationalization and trans code, you know, trans, oh my gosh, I can't think of anything of it now, uh, to, to move from one language to another. And, uh, it, you know, you guys are right in the heart of that. And so I'm, I'm curious, I would love to hear from both you, you know, Tony and Eric, you know, how you guys feel about, um, this, this shift that we're seeing right now, uh, and and towards ag gentech development.

And do you think that we're trading one skills gap and knowledge gap for perhaps another in the form of technical debt? Or do you think it's, it's going to be all, you know, wine and roses going forward? What's your, what's your take guys at like a high level?

I, I, I think that anytime in in tech, it's never gonna be all wine and roses. It's gonna be growing pains, uh, for sure. I mean, BMC, as, as it's, as its own shop.

We're working with the Gentech right now, and, you know, we're, we're bringing some nice things to market for sure, but I won't tell you, it's totally easy and like, you know, it, it take, it takes work and, you know, you have to fail fast and, and then, and find your way. Um, and we're doing that. Um, we're for example, um, we have now in my product, um, bringing, bringing to, bringing in bringing in AI to the product.

Um, and we'll be looking to use, use a MCP server, for example, to marry together areas of our products to get, uh, to get a better synergy, what we can do with it. Um, but, you know, also thinking about coming back to the mainframe for a second, I think, I think that as much as we can are excited about having, you know, the young, the, I don't see younger, the, the, those trained often mainframe coming onto the mainframe, there's plenty of folks that are transitioning at age 40 onto the mainframe, for example. Um, but there's also, there's also folks like me who are in their fifties who are, who are not leaving the platform yet, but are excited about, about the new technology opportunities and that ability to, like I said before, to switch hit and to marry the mainframe more closely with, with, with the cloud native technologies and with, with the coming of, uh, for example, um, AI processing with the Z 17, uh, and the tell them chip right, um, on the mainframe that now makes the possibility of this, all of these, for example, the agenda agendas that we have, they don't, they don't just have to be running off the mainframe and cloud.

Some of them can actually be running right there on the mainframe with us. Um, and so it just becomes another part of a larger ecosystem. Tony, maybe you have some sauce on that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, I've been doing this for a long time, if not at VMC and even before, and I'm still waiting on that wine and roses from anything. Wine and roses. Aren't we all, Tony, aren't we all I knowing wine and I, there's no roses, but I do.

So, so I fall somewhere squarely in the middle. I do think that ag agentic AI and AI in general has gotten a little bit over its key tips. I think that, um, everything today is infused with ai.

Everything is AI driven. Every, you know, somebody wants to slap the AI moniker on everything, right? I think it's like, it's like keto when the diet first came out, right?

You know, you, uh, after a while you could have a chocolate cake and somehow it was keto. Um, That said, I think that, I think that once you get past that point, what's left after that is going to be very, very, very solid. And I think that ag agentic ai and the way that it can handle workloads, the way that it can assist people is going to be very, very, very dynamic.

I think you haven't heard the last of vibe coding. I think that vibe coding is going to be the way of the future. Whether I like it or I dislike it, or I think it's good, think it's bad, think it's whatever.

I think it's what's coming. And I, I think that everybody needs to get sort of needs to get on board or get left behind. That being said, I think that we, um, I think that, that the vibe coding train is gonna move forward.

And I think that frankly, there's a lot of people who feel threatened by ag agentic ai by, by AI in general. But I think the reality of it is, it's just gonna be another tool in the toolbox. It's gonna be another way of doing your work.

Used to be, if you wanted to make a chair, you had to take hand tools and, you know, a giant log and start carving pieces out and, you know, chiseling, chiseling shapes and, you know, cutting things with the saw. Now I can go into my high school, you know, wood shop and make something like that in an hour if I want to. And I don't think anybody would go back to the hand tool just for nostalgia's sake.

I mean, maybe, maybe there are people, but anyway, they probably will. Yeah, most people know. And I think that's the way AI is gonna be.

I think this is going to be another tool, another way of helping you do your work and helping you do your thing without, um, uh, uh, without having to go through all the, all, all the rigmarole, uh, of, of hand carving. Yeah. I think AI is kind of the c and c machine of, of modern software, right?

You can make just about anything with it, sort of the era that we're in. Hey, B before four Printer, Mitch. What's that?

It's the 3D printer. 3D printer. Exactly.

Exactly. Hey, I wanted welcome Mark. Uh, she helm.

Welcome Mark. Good to have you on. We know you were battling with some, uh, with some, uh, microphone demons Oh yeah.

To get here. Glad you won the battle. Tell us about Yourself.

Can keep a good man, Dow. Yeah. Tell us what you do at BMC.

I'm a principal product manager, and I work in the area of, um, the code analysis and also SCM build and deploy. Excellent. Excellent.

Well, glad to have you. We, we've kind of kicked things off. I'd love to go back to something that you mentioned, Tony, around the A, BC methodology.

Now, a, B, C could imply, you know, you have a stepwise fashion, and that's, that's kind of what you talk about with this analyze build framework. So tell us what you've learned about how to, you know, apply that and help not only yourself internally using it, but how you're helping customers with it. So the A, b, C stands for analyze, build and convert.

And to your point, it's a, it's a stepwise approach. I, I don't know if I'd even call it a methodology, but we can, um, it's a stepwise approach into how do you modernize, right? Because I think today you have, I, and, and especially you have, uh, leaders, leadership, upper management.

They go and they read a, they read an article in Wired about ai, and they think, okay, I'm gonna take this 18 million lines of cobalt code, you know, dead code things that was written in the seventies and eighties, you know, probably some assemblers, some PL one, all kinds of stuff in there. And I'm just gonna feed it through clogged or llama or whatever. And then it's gonna spit out this beautiful pristine Java or Python or whatever on the backside.

And, and the reality of it is you feed garbage in and then you get garbage out. That's the oldest, that's the oldest thing in, in technology and computing, garbage in, garbage out. And so our A, b, C approach gives you a stepwise way of breaking things down and understanding them before you try to convert 'em.

'cause the A stands for analyze, right? That's where I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna understand my application, I'm gonna understand my source code, I'm gonna understand what I'm doing and, and, and what, what the application is doing, why it's doing it, and what are the rules around it. Your build is basically, then I'm going to break it down, I'm going to break it down, and I'm going to take my giant monolith.

I'm gonna make it smaller, I'm gonna re-architect it, I'm gonna make it into more logical pieces. I'm gonna get rid of some of that dead code things that really isn't necessary. So I'm, someone wrote a module in, you know, 1977, do I really need to have that still or enough, right?

Then the last part is the convert. Once I have it broken down, once I have it, understand it once, once I have it, understood, excuse me. And once I have it, um, um, in a state where it makes a lot more sense and I, and I have a feel for it, then at that point I'm converting it as needed.

We don't, we not necessarily, yeah, we don't necessarily feel that you have to convert everything if you want to, great. But if you don't want to, then what are those more strategic modules? More strategic pieces, more strategic things that make sense to convert into Java and keep on the platform, move into the cloud, whatever that may be in that, that's really up to you.

But that's our stepwise approach, and we feel that that is a safer and risk averse way of doing these conversions. 'cause you can just go out and do a, do a, I would say Google search, but since we're talking to ai, just ask copilot or whoever, um, about some recent conversion projects or migration projects or whatever. And there's a lot of disasters out there.

Tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases on the cutting room floor. So if you can do it in a risk averse way and still get from A to Z, then that's how we approach it. Mark or Eric, if you guys wanna kick in on any of that?

No, I, you know, you covered it very well, Tony. What I would add is that while it's incremental, and you can choose, you get immediate benefits as soon as you put in the analyze, because it, it stops that fear of change that developers have. So they can immediately start to work on things, and then once they get comfortable with the code, then they can move to the build in refactoring and get another level of benefit.

And once you've done that, then you can look at converting. So it gives immediate benefits so that developers feel comfortable in working with these mainframe applications. Our point, a good, a good, a good analysis can unleash those, those, those millennial and Gen Z folks who have come to the platform now, that they're very smart.

They're, they're very smart and they've got a lot of great skills with them. But if they can't understand the applications, they can't bring those to bear. Once you can unlock that mystery box of what is this application actually doing, and how is it put together and how does it, how do I test it and work with it?

Well, then you've unleashed these folks and then you can really get their talent working for you. And, um, going onto the build, And Mark mentioned something, this fear of change, and I think that, that needs to be addressed and talked about in this discussion as well, because number one, when we talk about changing these, these applications on this platform, these are the most important applications for the biggest companies in the world. These are the applications that make money.

These are the applications that count money, move money, bring in money, decide how much money is owed, how much money is paid, how much money everyone has. These are, these are the center of the universe for the biggest banks, the biggest insurance companies, the biggest hospital chains. This is what runs it all.

And people have lost control of the architectures and the, the, and the, and the, the capabilities that these applications have. And they're scared to touch 'em. They're, they're scared.

It's like a house of cards. They're scared if they pull the wrong card and that the whole thing's gonna come down. And I'm not making fun of that.

I'm not, I'm not poo-pooing that. I, I think that that's valid, but you can't live in fear. You can't live in fear of touching something.

And that's why, to Mark's point, the analyze phase is so important. It's so crucial to getting this right. And unfortunately for, for upper management or the people who wanna make this conversion yesterday, it's, it can't be rushed, right?

It's, it's bacon a cake. It, you have a time and temperature and there's no way around it. You can't just turn up the temperature and, you know, bake a cake in 15 minutes instead of an hour.

You have to, you have to let the process take its course. Go ahead, Brad. I think you were gonna jump in there too.

Yeah, yeah. Thanks Mitch. And, uh, I, I'm totally with you, Tony, and, and it is a fear issue.

And, and we all look at that meme with the infrastructure, you know, big monolithic thing with a tiny little balancing chip at the bottom that, that could fall out at any second and think, ah, no, why touch it? And you know, I, I, I get that. I really do.

But as, as you know, I think, mark, you had both you and Mark and Eric mentioned, um, when you're talking about the ABCs and you start with Preloading or Frontloading, that investment, it makes everything downstream easier. We've learned that with ag agentic development in particular, because as you see with ideas like spec driven development, the more time you spend upfront understanding what you actually need to do in whatever task you have, whether it's just adding a feature or refactoring a code base, you know, if, if you just walk into it and say, pretty, please, Claude, fix this, you're in for trouble. So I, I very much admire what BMCs doing with the ABCs and the a in particular here, because in, in looking through, you know, the docs that you guys have, I, I noticed for example, and this is your, your product mark, um, that you're actually able to dig, take this 8 80 20 rule, uh, and, you know, programmatically apply it to a code base you're scanning to understand, you know, like, uh, you mentioned with, you know, dead spots, you know, the code that never gets executed hasn't been executed for 10 years, but it's still being maintained, you know, do you need to work on that?

Probably not. I I like that a lot. Yeah.

Jump in, mark. I'd love to hear more about the analysis, um, because, uh, just in my own experience, and by the way, the only fear I have is you're gonna run, run into some banking code that I wrote in the eighties. So it it was a different Mitch Ashley, if you see any, if you see that name.

So Yeah, we'll code that in there just to ignore your code Exactly. To comment that stuff out. Trust me.

Um, you know, it, taking on a new application, it was always a learning the code base, don't touch that part yet. You're not ready to go there. Or maybe you were thrown in deep, you know, into the deep end.

Mm-hmm. But with code analysis, you, you, you're not alone. I mean, you've got resources to try to understand what's going on.

Tell us what people learn by doing this analysis. Well, you know, I'll start by saying that there's three versions of how an application works. There's how the end user believes it works, there's how the developer believes it works, and then there's how it actually works.

And so they might go and ask the develop, you know, how does this work? And I, what we have is something like the runtime visualizer where you actually execute the application, give it the data, and then it will tell you this is how it really works. And so many times I've seen developers be shocked by that.

Like, what? That's not how it works. Well, that's how it works.

So this, the part of the analyze is just understanding how the code really works, not just your perception or how end users do and get to the truth, because otherwise we're making decisions based on thoughts and feelings. Good analysis gives you facts. So we give the runtime analysis, and once you get that, you start going into the static analysis and it will go through and chart it all out and show dependencies.

And then we now have AI where you can have an explain where it can go in and you could have a couple hundred lines and it'll go, no, here's what's really happening. Things like that to really help you understand how the code really works, not just opinions. Awesome.

You know, e Eric, I'd love to hear, um, your thoughts around the developer experience, because it's not the mainframe of old, you know, sitting in the dark corner with, with the green bar, reading the code on your green terminal. Um, it's a much different world today. You know, we're talking about bringing in not not just new talent, but new technologies that Tony mentioned too.

What, what are some of your goals or thoughts around the kind of developer experience you're trying to create with BMC? Yeah. So we're, we're really trying to, especially I say with the, the new to application or the new to platform developer community, we're really trying, like I was saying before, to un to unleash them, to let them be able to fly, um, and to make them comfortable on the platform.

Because really the main thing is a great platform and it's, no, it's no worse than any other, and it's just a matter of having a weight in that folks can feel comfortable with and they can get up to speed and work quickly. Um, in my prior role before I was at BMC, I used to work for the US government. And I, in the last few years, actually started training new to mainframe, uh, developers that were coming into our teams.

And one of the things that I was really excited about was when BMC launched, uh, their VS code, uh, interface, uh, going back a few years. And I knew that my new trainees were gonna be coming out of college, having that vs code experience. And I thought, great, this is something gonna get my hands on.

And I was really excited 'cause we were a longtime BMC customer at that agency and I didn't even have to like worry, we were already licensed for it. I was like, cool, you know, this is awesome. And I just had to get it, you know, stood up.

And, um, and my trainees really appreciated it. It made them, it made them really feel like they could get in there and start working more quickly and easily and, and, uh, and made it feel more comfortable and familiar to them. Um, 'cause a lot of it is just the interface difference.

So, yeah. Um, and as far as where we're, as far as where we're going, we definitely, we're looking to, like I said before, un unleash these folks and enable them to part in particular in my product, uh, you know, uh, code insights to, to give them, um, that sense of mentorship that the human mentor is no longer there, but our product can sort of stand in for that mentor. And, um, particularly what Mark was mentioning about the, about the ai, having that the AI be able to generate a background information, an overview of what is his application actually doing makes such a difference.

Trying to read code that you don't know what it's, what the general milieu is actually about is a lot harder than once you've been kind of given that this is the business process, this is what's actually happening. Once you start reading the code, it's like, well, now I know what the neighborhood is, so now I can start learning the streets, but if I don't have any, even a concept of the neighborhood, how am I supposed to learn the streets? So it's kind of like that.

Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that's cool about our approach, which I think is different than, than others, is a lot of people are starting from top down. Meaning they're scanning the entire code base, the entire application, the entire, you know, they're trying to do the whole enchilada from the very top all the way down to the bottom. Our approach is to put the AI at the developer's fingertips.

You talk about developer experience, ours is from the lowest level up. We're, you know, it's not that we're not looking at the entire application, it's, but it's the, it's, it's the where you start and the focus, we would rather start at the developer's workspace and work outward, then start at the top and work downward. And we think that provides the developer a lot more functionality at their fingertips than they had before.

Right. Especially for those, uh, I've heard the word freshers, especially for those, those new in new in industry people that are coming in. 'cause you talk about this, right?

So Eric's done mainframe stuff. He's trained new people on mainframe mark's, been in the business for a long time. I've been in it for a long time, but I am not a mainframe guy.

I did not start on mainframe. I started on distributed systems at e-commerce and, you know, uh, sort of fell backward into the wonderful world of mainframe and, uh, haven't looked back since. But I, I've probably only been on the mainframe for maybe six, seven years.

I come to it from a DevOps automation, DevOps engineering point of view and bringing that onto the mainframe. And I think AI is just another piece of that. Yeah.

I've noticed that you guys, um, actually are, I think are, are quite forward-looking in terms of how you're thinking about the democratization of automation, you know, within, within the enterprise. And I think it was, I think it was recently the AI workflow creator that, that BMC rolled out that, uh, speaks to me, you know, uh, as, as a, you know, uh, un unapologetic vibe coder, uh, fellow. Uh, but, uh, it, it, what it says to me is that is we've been talking about in the assessment and the planning and main, you know, trying to retain the knowledge that has silver surfed away within the organization, being able to take a business, the, the people who understand the business, who understand what the code ought to do in that, you know, try Graham, we were just talking about with, you know, dev business and it, um, and being able to say, okay, this is what this should be doing, and empower them to actually take action and take the load off of it and dev a little bit.

I love that. That's a great way to go. Can I, can I ask from your guys' perspective, you know, how has that been with your customer base?

How well received do they, do they, how do they think about that democratization? Do they welcome it or are they a little scared of that? I think that they're, everyone is a little scared of AI and mm-hmm.

So they, and, and rightly so, you know, they're, there's some trepidation. So they, they like what it can do and they're just putting in the necessary safeguards to it and doing it. So we're probably moving slower than many people would like, and certainly slower than AI is progressing.

Um, so I think there is an interest in doing what you're talking about. It's just a matter of most places just being very cautious about it. And so it will probably move frustratingly slow because of that.

And once people get more comfort and more comfort, it will move faster Hmm. Into those fully I Think that opinions based on the role too, role. I think if you talk to upper management who read that wired article, then they want AI tomorrow.

Like they, they wanted ai yes. Mm-hmm. And they think, they think it'll, it'll feed the hungry and cure the sick.

And, you know, people with leprosy will go up to it and walk away cured and, you know, they think it's, it's everything. I think if you talk to your cis progs and your lower level engineers and the guys who are doing it, they have trepidation. And I, I think somewhere in the middle of those two opinions is probably the reality.

And, and the progression of, this reminds me a little bit about when DevOps first came, because before DevOps, you had people doing, you know, people doing tasks. You had a, you had to give your, you had to give your change to a person. That person would manually deploy it onto a set of boxes, a set of VMs, you know, wherever you were, you were gonna run your software.

And then over time you started automating that process, but you automated it to the point where that same guy or girl who was pushing the change now pushes the button to enable the change. And after a while it's like that, it's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer had to push the safety button and then eventually he got the bird to come in and do it because all he was doing was pushing a button. At some point somebody thought, why did, yeah, why that's there, there's a, there's a, there's an archaic reference for you, Brett.

Um, the, after a while people were like, why do we have this button in place? So like at this point it's just a button push. So we automate that process and I see AI much faster, but it's going through that same progression.

You're putting it in place, but you're putting safeguards. Eventually you'll figure out which of those safeguards make sense and which don't, right. Which can be automated and which can, where do we unleash it?

Where do we not? And I think you're gonna see that ramp up and I think it's gonna go a lot quicker than anyone could ever possibly anticipate. Yeah.

Well said. Well, I think it's, you know, one of the things, I just kind of close this out here is, you know, the eighties and, excuse me, the nineties and two thousands kind of did us a disservice of all the belief of mainframes are going away. Well, guess what?

No technology ever goes away. And given what the workhorse the mainframe is and how much of our businesses run on it, we finally come, come around full circle and say, no, this is actually our future. This is what we're building on.

Whether we modernize on it or go to move parts to oth otherwhere, other else in the architecture distributor, whatever it might be, it's part of an ecosystem of technology. So if you still think the mainframe's dead, I think you need to get on the, get on the mainframe's awesome. And move forward train.

And we appreciate the work that you guys are doing. Well, the only thing I'm upset about is we, we don't have enough time to, because I'd like to go about an hour or two more with you. I hope you'll come back, Brad and I would love to talk with you some more.

Anytime. Anytime. Yeah.

I mean, you gotta think about this modernization journey. It's, it, there's gonna be irritation, right? There's gonna be fits and starts.

You have to think about like handing a grain of sand grain to an oyster, right? You put that grain of sand in there with the oyster and the oyster works. It, it works and it works it and eventually produces a pur.

And we need to be the pearls in this industry right now with the mainframe. Well, we need to be the oysters producing the pearls. Lemme say that a different way.

So I think that, you know, I would love to come back and explore that whole oyster thing with you guys, Mitch and Brad. Um, uh, this has been a great time. Love, love my time here.

I'll say that. Well, Excellent. Just to close this out here, you know, we like to give awards on this show.

So Mark gets the tenacity, the Demon Fighter Award, uh, battling a Yankee microphones. Tony gets the analogy and cultural reference award, and Eric, Eric gets the carrying the torch for the Developer Experience Award. All worthy, worthy and viable.

And we appreciate what you guys are doing over there. The MCC award. There you go.

Thank You. So Brad, close your thought. Do you wanna close this out here?

Yeah. Thanks for joining us guys. And, uh, as Mitch said, the mainframe isn't our past.

It is our present and future as with all important technologies. And having a company like BMC that cares about that and cares about the people who build and work with that technology is vital for us right now because everything's moving so quickly that we need people that, that know that maybe you shouldn't run with scissors. Uh, maybe you, you should run with something a little different, a little softer.

Uh, so thanks guys and, uh, everyone, thanks for tuning in for our show this week. We appreciate you coming on and, uh, look forward to next time. Love it.

Brad. Mitch, thank you very much. You bet.

Thank you. It's to close on agents of depth. We'll see you all in the next episode.

Until then, take care Control. This is agent dev. I'm in position copy.