Fintech, Open Source & Mainframe Modernization – The Open Mainframe EP 20

Hey everyone, welcome back to the open Mainframe show. The open name frame is a monthly show brought to you in conjunction with tech strong group and I'm Alan schemel CEO of techstar group and the open Mainframe project a daughter or a project underneath the umbrella of the Linux foundation. And my co-host is the Ed of the open Mainframe project John murdick John.

Welcome great to see you likewise great to be back on here. And we have a really fun panel here today and talking about financial services at open source, which one might consider an oxymoron, but it's it's some of the hottest open source work that's happening right now. You know, I have some thoughts on that.

But before I jump into it, let's let's introduce our amazing our amazing panel. I want to introduce your first to you. He's kind of the dean almost I guess of the open Mainframe project communities and so forth Len sent to loose Santa Lucia.

the correct line You get it. Well, this is the fourth time you're on the show. If I can't get it by now, you know, when why don't you introduce yourself though to the audience?

Hi everybody, and thank you Helen. I'm Len santoluccia. I am the chair of the open Mainframe project governing board.

I work a lot with John and may that are here today along with us. And I am also the chief technology officer of a company called by commonfinity. We are a converge company.

We're part of the converge family of companies and prior to that. I was with IBM for over 30 years when I retired I came to work here and I was a short retirement. I retired on a Friday and started on a Monday.

So it was just something that I like to continue to do and this year. I'll be celebrating my 50th year in this business in September You know what that that's quite an accomplishment in and of itself. Congratulations landed.

Thanks for joining us today. Joining when John and I today a couple of folks who have not been on our show before I want to first introduce you to is a gabrielli, Gabrielle, Colombo. Is that how you pronounce it?

Or I know gab right? Tell us God help me. Yes.

Yeah. Nice to meet you guys. I'm Gabriela colombros close enough, bro.

Okay good enough get it Gap to make it easier. I'm the executed that I thought of Finance the fintech open source foundation and more recently. I also took another role as part of the limits Foundation umbrella.

I lead linets Foundation Europe, which is our regional entity devoted to collaborating in Europe and I'm really excited to be here. We've been working for six years now in bringing open source and financial services as part of our foundation as John said, you know a few years ago. There was a bit of an oxymoron.

It was a let's say that when I went to this largest financial institutions and tell them to open source the intellectual propert. Is six or seven years ago, you know, the reaction was lukewarm at Best But as John is saying six years later. We're seeing, you know very much like any other industry undergoing digital transformation open source becoming truly a strategic pillar of collaboration across these organizations.

So super excited to be here and love to to be here on the planet. Thank you. Thank you.

Next I want to introduce. Well, this woman needs no introduction. She's a regular are many of our text junk TV.

Panels and interviews as well as the host of tech strong women or co-host of tech strong women, it's Tracy Reagan. Hey, Tracy, thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me.

You know, it's fun to be on a Mainframe panel. I cut my teeth in New York as a Cobalt programmer working on Wall Street. And that's actually how I got into open systems at the time.

They wasn't had nothing to do with open source. It was just open systems. I'm so I see the Mainframe from an open perspective.

And I think that's why I open Mainframe is a great term because the Mainframe should be more than just what we've always believed it to be something that runs and some dinosaur environment. So today's a good topic and just as a side note. I learned devops on the Mainframe.

I was never in change management administrator. And for those of you who don't know Endeavor stands for environment for developers and operations as the first devops tool ever. They hit the market that was named that it was named devops.

So I'm sure this will be an interesting topic. And and Endeavor was a predecessor was was part of what came into Zoe a few years ago. So a lot of the early work of endeavor has rolled into the really, all right.

Yeah first product open make was based on processors for the open for open systems for the you know, Unix and windows environments. So that's basically how open makes software started was building processors for the open environment. Yeah.

Fantastic, it's a six degrees of separation. Let me introduce you to our last panel member though, and this is his name is Rune Christianson root welcome and if you wouldn't mind sharing with the audience a little bit about your background. Thank you.

I'm ruin austenson. I I am a lead software developer in a financial institution in Denmark called Bank data. And I work in a team where we are focusing on developer experience for mainframers.

And we are pushing towards devops. And also currently the administrator of a open Mainframe project the Copa check that enables Cobalt and programmers to do real unit testing. That's fantastic great stuff.

So guys, thank you all and lady. Thank you all for being here with us today Tracy. Let me let me frame the discussion, right?

As a journalist an observer of the industry. Um to me the financial the fintech world, the financial industry is an enigma wrapped in a riddle, right? You would think oh my God, it's heavily regulated.

It's ultra-conservative. They are never going to be at the Forefront. Of innovation of experimentation of new technology because they can't afford to be too much of what they have as Mission critical there's billions and trillions of dollars at stake.

That's why they got to stick to those mainframes that were out there when Lance started 50 years ago now. but the reality is 180 degrees different the financial industry the financial industry it world has sort of LED as Tracy made mention of has led the way in devops in many ways. Has really taking a leader taking a leadership position and open source.

Right because someone the secret got out that open source. was a great way to kind of equalize to get out there to to adopt the latest stuff and that by setting it free like that. It came back kind of in Spades to you.

Right? We've seen so many different Financial organizations. You know follow that path.

and but at the same time they haven't thrown their mainframes out the door or out the window. You can't do it's got to be a pretty big window. They haven't thrown their mainframes out either.

Right. They've led the way in pulling those mainframes right along into 2023 and Beyond whether whether we're talking about using COBOL in ways, we haven't seen before or using modern languages Java and everything since then. In developing applications in working as it's part of this modernization.

Tread, you know in partnership with newer platforms like cloud. Right in hybrid so that we have systems of record systems of engagements working together talking to each other interacting almost seamlessly if you will. Now that's a very Rosy picture.

I don't know. Is that reality or is it our ideal of where we want to be when you're the chairman of the of the Project here. Am I am I so I have my rose colored glasses on or are we going there?

Well Alan we are going there and okay. We are going there at a very very fast pace. I am like Tracy cut my teeth on Wall Street.

That's where I grew up and I was an Essie. And a lot of the guys that are now cios. are grew up through the ranks along with myself and I still stay in touch with them very very much and they are bringing.

Open source types of applications to the platform. On a constant basis and it's helping them adapt to the things that they need to in regards to Security in regards to this concept of modernizing. And digital types of marketing and digital kinds of applications and if they didn't adapt it, they would fall behind other Industries quite drastically this the financial industry is very good at leveraging technology.

And they really they're really more of a technology than they are with Financial Service, you know that they really are technology companies. I mean, they got it all. and the Mainframe has actually become the hub for their hybrid Computing environments.

And it's they finally figured out that you know, their billions of cobalt code that they have are is not going anywhere fast. They've tried to change it to other languages and it's just too too time-consuming and too costly. They just can't even with all the money that they have in the world.

It's just too much for them. But being able to modernize and take advantage of things, especially one of the things I've noticed as many of them are really grasping on to Zoe, which is the number one project within the open Mainframe project in general because it allows them to work with graphical user interface or command line interface to anything that they have running. Around their Mainframe and it helps them Connect into other environments very seamlessly.

Whatever Cloud whether it's on Prem or Up in the public Cloud that they desire to do. So the answer is Alan. I'm happy to report that this environment is strong and stronger than ever.

There's never been a better time to be on the Mainframe in the history of the Mainframe and it will be 60 years old next year. There's no perfect. There's no there's no platform.

that has survived this and I've Mentioned the 50 years of my career for one reason I've lived through all of it. So there aren't so many people who can say. How many times has it's been tried to be replaced or or by something?

None of them having succeed not for 50 years. There isn't one. There's a one platform out there.

That can say this not one. You know, yeah, and we've learned all of our lessons from it too. I mean gab I remember Jim zebling would tell me stories of his grandfather would take him to share and you know later on, you know in his life gym.

When we started Olympics Foundation, he would be talking with his grandpa telling like oh look at this coming into the Linux kernel. This is a new development happening here and his grandfather would roll His Eyes Adam and say, you know Jim we did that two decades ago in Mainframe. This is nothing new, but I digress the modernization term.

I want to double click on that one a lot because There is a cultural thing about that at least when you couple it with Mainframe that it's often some sort of code word for yank your Mainframe out and replace it with something else and I think the reality that we have seen out there. That's not the case, you know, the conversation is never There's probably some time it's mainly more but it's rarely a Mainframe or it's a Mainframe and because the the big Enterprises out there see this sort of whole conglomerate of different, you know, tooling and Enterprise systems. They have whether the remain frame Cloud Edge distributed would have you as is sort of an advantage and I think this is kind of something I want to kind of click a little bit into Gavin Tracy a little bit because I think both of you are seeing a lot of that from a more macro level and you know, kind of give some insight like on these financial services companies like Were they thinking about it?

Like am I is is my you know, thesis right here just as Allen was saying that his Rosy colored glasses or my rosy colored glasses right that they're looking at it as you know, this this whole and conversation and not pick one platform to rule them all. They say they're not going to go first. Well, I just have one word data.

As their securest place to store massive amounts of data. So why would anybody ever throw it out? We have an accomplished that and on a Linux or to be quite honest a Windows environment.

It is the it's the best place to store massive amounts of data and it's the easiest way to retrieve massive amounts of data. So no matter what the front end engine looking like with be written in you know, what platform it's being written for we tend to go back to the Mainframe to store our data and this is why you know main Mainframe modernization isn't any different from everybody's modernizing right now kubernetes is causing us all to think in different way of how to write software the Mainframe. We're going to see reusable COBOL Services.

If I'm assuming a lot of companies are already writing them and many of them will have to do with retrieving data. So as long as we have big data, we're going to have a Mainframe. right I'm sorry who wanted to say something Gap?

No, I was gonna sort of take it a bit more broad here and I started violently agree with the with the other planets in the sense that you know, it's true that few years ago. Leading with open source collaboration in financial services was a very complicated very complicated very proposition. This is a very conservative industry.

This is a very, you know, highly regulated industry. Sometimes people sort of hide behind. The regulation has a reason not to collaborate but I would say that again kind of taking a brother perspective of the context.

They were moving in over the last four or five years. We've seen an acceleration really driven. I think but grounds well in the industry the pandemic has given a major acceleration to these level of collaboration, you know, if they realize that it was okay to work from home then well, you know, it's probably okay to collaborate on software distribute the way let's say the open source communities were very very well positioned to provide an answer to sort of this two years of everyone being loved at home.

But even prior that I think that sort of John touched on that. I guess the common trait here from my perspective is they realizing that they would be left behind compared to for example, big Tech or other industries that are more mature and understanding that not everything that that you know, a company does in terms of software is differentiating and so, you know, I would as much as I can support this Vision that open source is accelerating. We're seeing it in Venus.

We're seeing it across multiple areas granted. We don't particularly work so much in the Mainframe, which maybe is a sign that again opened them or Mainframe is here to stay we despite collaborating on so many areas in our foundation. We haven't seen any major push to sort of replace and I think the reality is that this firms lead with business value with the why and to this date I haven't seen a compelling reason to just go read the replace.

It's about really incrementally adding open source and integrating open source in existing sort of ecology landscape agreed a great room. If you don't mind, we haven't heard from you and I'd like to have you lead off the next kind of discussion it, you know Christian Excuse Me Gap touched on it. You know, they it's a little counterintuitive wide open source and financial Industries, you know, it's like peanut butter and chocolate and taste so well together here.

As it developer what what you know, what's your view of that? I I got to assume it helps you it speeds up. your development having open source and open source libraries and components to help build.

applications and so forth but You know, what do you think? It does and we are. Of course, we have a lot of source code at bank data that we can ever open source because it has to do with the regulations and transferring transferring money and all that sort of stuff.

But when it comes to development, there are a lot of Open Source Products that we can use. And that's the journey we're walking. We evaluated our pipelines our value streams for our developers.

and just was able to identify where we had holes and where we could pick one of the components that we were working with at the moment and actually just How can we put something open source into this instead of having to develop it ourselves or buying it? from somewhere else and that's a one of the reasons we invested a lot of time and effort into the into cobal check because we identified that we had a very big issue with early testing not component testing, but we wanted developers to test even earlier and we are Yeah, making our developers are making so many unit tests in cobal right now, and we've integrated it in our into our build pipelines. So a A unit test that fails will will break the build and and all those things that you see everywhere else.

Excellent, you know Alan Lee Rune is like I was gonna say I'll Rune is like the poster child for what modern Cobalt development. I mean, I don't I mean I let's not underscore it like and and you sort of touch on it run. It'd be great to even double click even even more into that like, you know, so, you know, go back 10 years of how kobal how your cobal applications developed and what it looks like now and what like the projects and the work.

I know I'd write a Reese. I saw recent interview you you were talking about cobal check and the programming course and so we have just sort of changed the whole way that you go to business you go to market with all of that like double click on that like tell us like how what what has really been that impact and like, how is your developers reacted to it? There are some developers that really want to get be a part of it and there are some developers that are like, oh no.

No, I know how to work without old. Id and well we can't we can't bring the mule we can bring water to The Mule but we can't do we can pause the meal to go to the water. But we have a lot of teams right now that are moving their Cobalt Source into our pitbug and repositories and big bucket servants.

So enabling them to go. To not even touch the Mainframe while the developing. And we're moving.

We're currently moving a lot of other stuff towards having them on another source code repository instead of our own in-house and that it enables our developers to use the tools that they want to use. They're not forced into the tools that we've built for them over the last 20 25 years. and and if they want to use Notepad or IntelliJ or whatever they want to use.

They can just do that. We are not enforcing anything on them with regards to that. We're making some recommendations.

We are we are building a suite of usable functions in for vs code and we chose vs code because that was where Zoe was first available and IBM's Oh, yeah. I can't remember the word said Explorer. Where we got the cobolinder and so on.

Yep. sure, I here's an interesting thing and maybe Tracy or or gab you you can help with this, right? I think people can easily understand look if I'm building code and I have some open source.

Components or libraries or tools that I could use to help me. Speed it along. I should use right.

I'll use them. But why should I contribute my work back to the community? Right?

And that's kind of a fundamental? fundamental truth or a fundamental point across the entire Linux Foundation right You know, we had the term parasite no one wants to just be a user. Oh, maybe I think well, I'd like to think that but yet where is the tangible?

A benefit of contributing back of contributing code back of donating of a whole project to an open Mainframe project or something like that Tracy you've been involved in several different Linux Foundation boards, right? Like this well, go ahead Trace right you from you know, deploy Hub contributed or tilius to the continuous delivery Foundation 80% of our code base. We contributed and we we thought about it for a very very long time before we went through with that and the primary reason why we did it is because you don't know what you don't know.

And bringing on a broader Community to build out a platform that you believe in. Is should be the goal of any software company now certainly we could have gone out and gotten a ton of funding potentially to do it and they probably wouldn't have wanted to contribute it to open source. And the project has heart, right?

And Community is fun and you build an amazing product when you engage community. And you find out things you don't know now the other way to do that is slowly through getting customers and having customers contribute and ask, you know, ask for feature it enhancements or you bring the community in and you get a ton of feature enhancements really really quick. So it is a symbiotic relationship between the community the contributors the the adopters and the company who contributed we're we're getting as much back as we gave.

Yeah, that's that's so well said I will bring it one level further and say that I think the motivators for contributing to open source are. Quite different when you're talking about sort of individual developers versus, you know, senior Executives and decision makers but there is a way to sort of bring those motivators together. I mean, I by experience with you know, the largest financial institutions in the world has been that You know, we had the heart and minds of developers from the get-go, you know, there was an element to open source that was liberating to some of this, you know, Financial Services developers highly regulated Industries oftentimes working on sort of quite cumbersome development processes.

And I feel absolutely lucky having grown up in open source that you know, I've always been able to build myself that on my machine. I'm on a plane I can keep developing, you know, without sort of any any restrictions so granted. It's been 20 years since I worked in a pure provided corporate project, but I thought You know this sort of desire for open source developers, especially as sorry desire for internal Financial Services developers to want to collaborate across the five World want to you know, sold bigger problems that even a large financial institution with massive development resources can do so that wasn't a really hard sell as Runa said, you know that it's valid concern and developers understand that contributing back, you know, really gets that sort of flywheel of the community going in terms of future in terms of what you get in terms of collaborating with other smart people that may not necessarily work for the same company.

When you then go to the executives then the motivators are very different. It is about not And then got behind big Tech sort of eating our lunch. It is about growing talent.

And I think you know, the Mainframe world is one where I think open source plays a really important role in expanding the talent pool that can work on Mainframe COBOL and so on and so forth. I know the open main thing project, you know. Has a lot of focus instead of growing the sort of time.

Talent pipeline if that makes sense last but not least I think ultimately If you're a vendor if you're a syntax. There is an actual commercial benefit of leveraging Open Source as a strategic pillar of your, you know, go to market or your business model, you know, it's pretty controversial. Some people say open source is not a business model and I tend to agree with that.

But it's functional to many new ways of running a business, especially in the world of SAS. I see a match made in heaven, you know an open source project with them gets delivered then sold as a service opens up a whole new level of opportunities. And so I think you know, the motivators are quite different depending on the sort of persona.

They are talking about it. That makes sense. And you know people do say that about open source companies that is open source is not a business model and I always say well ask ask the folks at Rancher about that or ask Red Hat about that exactly.

There's some pretty or GitHub for that matter. There's some pretty amazing open source projects that turned into big companies and they had to be open source though, or they would never have gotten there. So it's really important.

The last thing I want to say about open source projects and the Linux Foundation is there's always a bad side. Right and the danger becomes having to I call them the Giants and I've been on many many of the boards. I've been on the open SS board.

I'm on the TOC of the CDF. I've been on the board of the CDF. I was on the board of the eclipse foundation and it's always the same kind of problem that I perceive and that as we have too many Giants at the table and we need to be understand how to bring more people to the table and not just the Giants because the Giants don't have all the answers and oftentimes the folks are on those boards that come from the Giants have a corporate mentality and not a startup mentality.

So every open source Community is a startup every single one of them and how do we Foster them? How do we grow them? How do we encourage more participation in open source really should be our focus and how to make it more secure.

The security question is big and I think the open ssf is doing a really good job of starting to address it and building off what you said Tracy you're exactly right even every open source Foundation is effectively a startup Gavin I can say that very specifically from trying to fund these things but we the conversation I always have with people coming into it. This is you know, you participating is is an investment in this and by having an investment you you partially own this like that's sort of a unique thing. Even the Linux kernel works this way you make a contribution to the colonel.

You don't give away your code. You have an ownership steak now in it, you don't sign over copyrights. You don't sign over IPS.

You don't give them licenses you own it. And so you are you are part of that state of owning where that goes forward. It's sort of a it's it's one of the things with open source projects that tend to be very corporate dominated is there is that glass ceiling that you can't sort of permutate past?

But when they get out into a broader context or gender-neutral and you have big vendors and Tracy, you're exactly right the small vendors the the individual contributors to all those to the table. It's a duocracy you show up to do the work. You you get to make the decisions and yes, it's an amazingly.

I do a lot of work for the lyrics and you have for years and years and years and it's been amazing contributions and all these projects. John I think one way I would put it I'm starting to put it this has evolved is that really open sources are participating in open source communities, especially openly governed, uh, communities and insurance of the Level Playing Field. Our role is a foundation is to make sure that open source effectively is a multi dryer for in terms of value for each of the different type of constituences that could benefit from that open source project.

Of course, it's hard when you're balancing individuals large companies smaller companies different types of companies of service vendor versus the technology and that's just, you know, South Side by Side Regulators themselves, but ultimately the notion of a multiplier is that if you're putting in zero, you're gonna get zero. Oh, okay. So our job is to make sure that that, you know as much as possible that that con Of multiplication gets bigger and bigger.

That's that what I see the the role the foundation and to be honest, I think financial institutions are understanding that right now while six years ago, People were like, oh, yeah, we'll join Finos and and the community is gonna develop this for us. We'll do there's no such thing as the community for the community here not putting some sweat egg with into it. I think you're gonna put the mean Community.

Yeah, right. So but you know God you bring up an interesting point and that is specifically the financial institution the financial industry. This is a goes back to how I open the show the financial industry.

Today is under A tremendous amount of pressure their customers are demanding more better faster on their phone. You don't see a lot of banks having a big, you know cabinet capex expenditure building new branches from bricks. Right, everything's being poured into I want it now.

I wanted to deposit my checks now. I want to wire my money now. I want to charge it.

Now. I want to do all of these things now over my phone or whatever my You know preferred appliances. And and the only way I I think the the light bulb over the six years ago that you're talking about is the realization that the only way to accomplish.

That is software. And the only way to accomplish it on time securely. Via software is via open source open source.

Right because that Rising tide lifts all boats. and I think that fundamentally applies more to the financial industry than almost any other industry today and is responsible for the Profound changes we're seeing and how this is done. And again, I'll come back to Ruiner because he hasn't spoken as much as the rest of you and I I want to get him more involved here as it developer as it developer.

He he's living this right and I think you're living it. We're not but why don't you comment well that I have a lot of comments here. So I'm banked at a years ago recognized the potential of building and help building and using open source.

So we actually built or made an open source policy that enables all our developers to use company time. to contribute to open source projects and and that's one of the reasons we are also we are investing in open source, and we are pulling from open source, because we know there's a great community. and we know that we are able to fix the fix the issues if we see some that are that we want fixed.

And we are well you you mentioned you want to be able to register on our post your checks online. Well, yeah, we killed our checking system. Yeah, how about no checks?

No checks. We don't have to fix it Warren banking Denmark at all. Really everything I have every all my banking stuff is on the phone.

We are doing rest services on the Mainframe we are. taking our old banking applications used by the back end users in the banks and exposing them through rest to Consumers so that the consumers can do those small business transactions or small issues that they they can fix themselves instead of having to Interact with the bank and that's what our customers want. But they also want the brick and mortar.

They also want to be able to visit the bank when they have to buy a house. but we are also seeing some of our banks wanting to enable their customers to build the the loan for their house themselves so all of those functions that we have on the Mainframe that are working. They will keep on working.

We're just exposing them in a different way. I just Guys, I hate to do this, but I got to pull the plug. Where we're overtime.

I've got people in the waiting room for my next. Video series and it's kind of not fair to them. What a fantastic conversation though.

This is a conversation. I'd like to see continued. I'd like to see it in a perfect world in person.

Go ahead one quick closing remark. remember When the mainframes first came out. They ran open source software.

Yeah. And they have ever since. What I was saying though, I'd love to have this conversation in person John.

I know you guys are in the late planning stages already for the next open Mainframe in person conference. I think it's gonna be in New York. Can you give us a little info?

We're partnering with sinos here as a part of their open source in finance Forum, which is on November 1st in New York. We're gonna be doing a whole track there, which is gonna be really a deep dive for the financial services industry into you know, what's going on an open source in the Mainframe from Zoe the work on cobal and all the other sort of speculative and other things there. So it's a great event.

Like I've been to it for the fast several years gab in the game do a knock-up job you get everybody up and down Wall Street. So if you're in New York, I mean block off that day and come in and if you want to visit New York, that's the day to do it, especially if you're at all interested in fintech. It's the place to be what let's get this panel in person there.

Yeah. I'll be there. All right, then.

I knew you'd be there. Yep. and can I get Can I do good go no, go ahead.

Go ahead you finish that. I it's on your shoulders it is. Okay good happen.

I'm more now. I'm taking notes just adding right the list. God Westward from you man.

So um, this is a great panel. I really really enjoyed it. I have one personal plug I want to do here.

I've been working for the last year on a book and open source with pack publishing if at guy Martin's been doing my tech reviewing it's coming up probably about a week or so after this airs, um, you know, the title, you know, the title of the book is open source projects Beyond code and it gets into all of this back-end stuff that makes open source projects work from governance to how to work through communities licensing marketing the whole nine yards. So if this is a topic of Open Source projects that you're into go check it out and so available for pre-order and Amazon right now. John you and I should do an interview on that one on one.

I just bring that out to our thing. We've already out of mind up out of this. It's great.

Fantastic. Both rude gab Tracy LED. Thank you so so much for being on our panel today.

I thought this was a one of our best conversations today. Audience. Thank you for watching this.

We hope you've enjoyed it. We invite you back to next month's open Mainframe discussion, which will be in about a month from today when you watch well, if you watch this one in first dares and you can watch all of the past episodes we've been doing this almost was about two years now John, right? Yeah two years.

It's it's been very you said we're we're hitting all sorts of topics orthogonal. Yeah, the places been amazing good stuff. You can watch all two years worth of shows.

You can catch them on text drunk TV. Just look up under series open rainframe, and all the episodes are up there. So it's pretty good good place to watch it.

Thank you all so much. Again. This is Alan Shimmel for Tech strong group and John murdick from the open Mainframe project at Lennox Foundation.

We'll be back next month with another great show. Thank you.