New Mainframe Modernization Working Group – Who Wants in? – The Open Mainframe Show EP 14

Hey everyone. I'm Alan shiml CEO of techstar group and welcome to another episode of the open Mainframe for those who don't know. The open Mainframe is a video program that runs monthly here on texture on TV and it's produced jointly between texture on group and our friends at the open Mainframe project.

open me a part of the Linux foundation and we co-produce the show every month and we talk about topics of interest to the Mainframe open source Community particular emphasis maybe on devops and development application security. but we talked about a ton of topics whether it's you know cobal and how important that language is or education and you know continuing Mainframe training throughout the world today. We have a really interesting topic.

There's a new working grouping form and we're gonna get more into that really discuss it today, but I want to introduce you to our panel first. I want to do a little backwards than we normally do. I'm gonna start off with my co-host John murdick John welcome and why don't you give yourself give a little audience a little of your background?

Absolutely. I mean, it's John mertick. I'm director here at the open Mainframe project part of the Linux foundation and I get to work with really some amazing people within this community along with a lot of other Industries as well.

But with here I get to work with, you know, finding people like Misty and Peter and Len and really just kind of help lead sets and direction and you know helped really support open source on the Mainframe platform. Great. Next up.

I want to introduce you to Misty Decker Misty's been a Contributor in the past on our show, and she she is gonna be a catalyst for today's event Missy welcome if you want to introduce yourself. Great. Thank you so much.

Alan Catalyst. I'll take it as much better than instigator. Yeah, okay.

So yes, I I'm director of product marketing at microfocus and a Mainframe modernization evangelist. I been in the Mainframe space for over 30 years most of that at IBM and I'm a die-hard fan. I believe that this technology is very modern very current but there is definitely work to be done to move organizations forward and that's the purpose of this new working group.

Actually, we're gonna hear more about that in a second. Let me introduce the rest of our panel next up. Is Peter McCaffrey Peter?

This is your first time on the open Mainframe showed so welcome and thanks for being on. Why don't you give out you a little bit of your background to our audience? Sure.

Thanks Alan. It's pleasure to be here. I am Pete McCaffrey.

I'm with IBM. I'm part of our Mainframe software business unit. I've been in different units across IBM, but but have spent a lot of time with the Mainframe with specific responsibility for Mainframe application go to market.

So this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Absolutely. Thanks for joining us today Peter and then our third panel member.

through the problems of scheduling is a little late joining but he will be in with us with his pictures up here though. And it's none other than Len Santa Lucia Len. I'll if he does I'll try to do him just this he's been on our show a number of times Len has almost 50 years five zero.

Years in the Mainframe World a long time IBM or he's he recently left IBM. Oh, I don't know how recently but he's left IBM and he's now. Uh within a IBM seller reseller, John you probably remember the name of the company better than me.

You're unmute. Yeah, I I'll tell you then. Let's go Misty.

I know land for for decades now and then Santa Lucia is the CTO of vicom infinity a Premiere IBM business partner. That's why I called you the Catalyst. Oh, there you go.

There you go. We can hear you now John. Oh, sorry.

I had myself on Hardware mute. Now we're back. Okay, so and then I'll be joining in as we get going here.

And in addition to that this thing which background though, when is also on the to me on the isn't attack or the chairperson of the governing board for the open Mainframe project? He's on that way since this is actually and I believe he's a third generation IBM or as well so distinction. Yeah.

You're you're talking to someone who's been around IBM a long time. They'll tell you he touched as a kid. He touched the first mainframes coming off the line, you know back in the 60 the 50s and 60s.

So it well he's not here to defend himself just yet so fair enough good for him. Yeah, so You know, we we've alluded to it. But let's let's hit this right on on the head Misty.

A new working group was recently. Empowered I think by a unanimous vote of the tech you had mentioned, right? Yes.

Whatever tell us about it. so in in my role in microfocus and and engaging with the market around Mainframe modernization and the things that organizations can do. To bring their current it stack to meet the modern needs of the business.

I have met many many different definitions of this word modernization to somebody who's a Mainframe fan modernization means moving to devops hybrid Cloud doing things in a newer way on the Mainframe using newer programming languages on the Mainframe. To somebody who's in the cloud side of the house Mainframe modernization means moving off of your Mainframe and getting rid of it all together and moving to the cloud and there's actually lots and lots of options in between there and the word itself because everyone assumes that they know what it means is causing confusion in the marketplace and the fact that each of the individual vendors are per um, and and microfocus included are pushing the the options that we support right the options that we sell the customers are being hit on all sides by different views of modernization and isolated pieces of information and the goal of this working group is to get the entire industry together. into create a common definition of modernization that is vendor-neutral and to create a repository of educational materials that are not about specific products that are really about understanding that range of options the full range of options and helping customers understand a little bit about Why would they choose one or over the other what are those considerations and things they need to take into account when deciding what to do with their own applications?

development processes and infrastructure Peter I have some views on this but I want I want you're the guest here I wanted to give you the opportunity to go next and then I'll chime in now. That's great. And I want to pick up on the the term range and I think that's extremely important because in my travels I have enough a lot of opportunity to talk with clients and I do run into quite a bit particularly when you get outside of what I'll call the Mainframe shop this view that somehow modernization equals migration.

And and if if there's this mindset that that's the only path forward. It can be very challenging because we all know there's very want very few one size fits-all approaches in our industry. And so I love the idea of really opening up the aperture to better Define for businesses the range of Alternatives and patterns that are available to them when they take on a Mainframe application project and I think with that range what they'll find is a they'll increase the likelihood of success.

And B, they'll do it faster at a lower cost and less risk to their business. So I'm very supportive of really defining all of the paths and tools available to them. So look, I'm none of us here are spring chickens where we just came into this industry.

We've all been around John's probably the baby. Part of me. When I hear this Misty is I'm reminded of Microsoft circuit 19 late 1980s early 90s right where they would Embrace and extend all of these kind of Frameworks and standards to put their distinct.

You know loaded Windows ain't done to Lotus won't run right grew up in those days. I am poor extremism and I so I I really pay no attention to the people that says. You know, but penny for Penny the Mainframe is irreplaceable and we must keep everything on the Mainframe and it must be written in Cobalt.

There are things that have been written in Kobo and should stay written in Cobol. They're a new things but there are other languages. There are other languages Java being one of them, but this this is many languages as there are leaves on those trees behind you.

On the other hand there. There are people who say ah the Mainframe. Modernization of the Mainframe what an oxymoron right?

You can't modernize the Mainframe and we've got to move off of that. I'll pour those people as well. Right.

I I pour both of those positions. I realize the middle is a big middle. It's kind of like politics in our country today.

Unfortunately, it's a big Middle with a lot of you know different places on it, but Part of me says Misty. Are you setting yourself up for an impossible job here? I got to be honest.

I am sorry, but I'm not it's it's totally fair. It's this is definitely a huge challenge to get this full range of perspectives to agree on a common definition, but I'm encouraged because to a person every single person that I have talked to about this on both sides and everywhere in the middle agrees with me on two main facts and one is that modernization is not about the technology you're using it's about meeting the goals of the business meeting the modern needs of the business. So if we Define modernization in terms of the outcomes will be able to have a definition that we can all get underneath And the second thing that they all agree on is that there are indeed cases when things should live on the Mainframe.

I've had Cloud providers tell me there are some applications that probably should stay on the Mainframe and I have ibmmers tell me there are applications that probably should move off the main. Frame and those are the two opposites. There's lots of gray space in the middle.

Where everybody agrees and everybody supports right? So so those are the encouraging factors. The hard part is gonna be finding those agreeing on those considerations, right?

So the definition I think is possible. The range of options is going to be super easy because everybody's going to shove all of their ideas underneath that umbrella. And then it's that next layer the the pros and cons of each option.

When would you use one over the other that's where the debates are going to be really hard. and the only thing I can think that we can do is present in this repository of educational materials both sides of the debate on those pros and cons and just present it fairly unbiased and let the customers decide which They believe right which makes sense to them and their situation. So yeah, it's a challenge.

I think that when you look at it that way it's very easy to get everybody on board. The biggest issue I've had so far is the first five minutes of any conversation. Once I can get them to thinking logically and get beyond the religion get beyond the emotion.

You'd be amazed at how much we all have in common? And and I also sort of Wonder part of this is there's a lot of scope to this. I mean Ellen, you know, the the metaphor you use there of just you know, this wide in the middle.

There's a lot of scope to what this means. There's tons of vendors in this space. So naturally I could imagine you've also corded awesome areas of like we're not touching this how have how are you thinking about?

These are the areas we're not doing this is sort of our non-goals the spaces we're staying. Yeah, that's interesting. What makes the are there sacred characters here.

There are um, we are not going to let anyone put marketing materials or product specific materials into this repository. It's thought leadership. It's educational materials that we all agree on.

We're gonna create a framework for how things get nominated reviewed and approved to go into that repository so that there is a agreement across the industry of what is considered thought leadership fair and valid and what is off the table because it's marketing its product specific. Um, right there's no disparaging each other that this is exactly why the open Mainframe project is the perfect place to do this effort. You know, I couldn't launch this on my own because it would seem like it's coming from microfocus and it's going to be biased with microfocuses view.

This has to come from an open source Community with the voting with the with the infrastructure that John in the Linux Foundation provide us that give us that space where we can all collaborate together just like any other open source projects only this is I don't know open source thought leadership. I don't know if that's ever been done before but I think that's what we're doing. It might be newer but it's it's the same idea and it's the same thing of bringing competitors together.

Which Alan you've only seen enough of projects like that. You know how that turns out. Right.

Well, you know, it's it's always interesting when you bring you know, you said competitors together, but but it's often people that just approach things from different viewpoints different Vantage points because it's what they know, you know my experiences and we've done you know, the IBM Mainframe group has done work with AWS to Define joint patterns in in as we went through that Discovery process. You often heard. Whoa, I didn't know you could do that.

Oh, I never knew you could do that. And so, you know, I think one of those sites right and exactly I'm both sides. And so I think one of the win-wins here is is Is we're going to discover a lot of things that we didn't know we could do and now that we do know that we can do.

I think the one thing we all share in common is we want to do what's right for our clients and when you have that mindset and you know more than you're in a better position to do what's right for your clients and if that's you know, if if that's you know taking somebody who's at Macy's and recommended they go to gimbals for something, you know, okay, you really date myself? Yeah, but you know, you used to be a department store that competed with Macy's but just a little background for people. But you know what?

There's an interesting fact pattern here that I think is unique to the Mainframe Market. And it's something I realized. com about eight or nine years ago, and I was at CA world.

in Las Vegas, right Computer Associates with CA at the time actually, excuse me. I was at an IBM think whatever think was before it was called thing. And CA one partner of the year.

For their Mainframe software, right? What's unique about the Mainframe world is that I think I lost a year thing. Can you still hear me outside?

Yeah. Yeah. What's unique about the Mainframe?

Industry is really the world has. Solidified coalesced around the IBM Mainframe. Is he infrastructure?

That is the main thing. 99% probably a market right and yet IBM has been a fairly decent Steward considering they have almost I don't want to use the m word, but they're the loan provider of Hardware, but you have CA is now of course broadcom and BMC and and microfocus and rock it and you know plethora of other. software providers Who?

Who have built very profitable businesses? selling software on this IBM platform other companies I'm not mentioning names but other companies in Tech might not have been as Open if you will but this. You know, this sounds a little, you know, IBM and AWS, you mentioned Peter great example of of that as well.

Misty is that is that your spirit you're looking to capture it a very much so, you know, the Mainframe is unique in the the Mainframe Community is very very tight-knit on and I know Peter right? I I know I know all of these people we know each other. I'm in a different company now, we're still friends and and we all care about the platform and as Peter said we care about the customer success and we care about the customer results.

If you were to give an analogy of what I'm trying to accomplish here probably the closest analogy I can find is a standard setting body. Right? So this isn't like a tech standards.

This is more of like a common definition, but when you have those standard setting organizations, you have different technology vendors coming together and each Then want that standard to go a different way based on what's best for them and you have to negotiate those balances and look at what's best for the technology and we're going to be doing that. In what's best? For the market and the end customers, right?

So there is going to be some level of tension but there's also a lot of partnership just because we're Mainframe communities. So we're friends already and because it's an open source project and and we have that infrastructure of negotiating between different organizations to accomplish a single goal. Yeah, I I just feel necessary to interject.

We've just heard that land sent to Lucia. Unfortunately won't be able to join us. He had a customer issue pop-up.

So unfortunately, we won't hear from him. We've spoken a len on this issue though, and you know, one of the things that I thought he said in our off camera discussion. Was you know that really?

It's about doing what's right for the customer that there is no hard and fast rules that we should always do this. Like Cobalt and Java being a great example. You don't have to.

You don't have to pour it everything from cobal to Java. But some things could should and could be ported from cobal to Java. Some things should remain on Cobo for a damn good reason at the end of the day.

You know you all talk about being friends in the Mainframe community at the end of the day. It's your job to make the customer happy and give the customer what they need. Right as I was saying it's it's about focusing on helping them get their it their entire it stack process application infrastructure.

To a point where it can meet the modern needs of the business. I think that's where we'll end up with this definition. Right?

But, you know, your example of of cobalt to Java is a great example because my role as chair of this working group is to make sure that it's fair and balanced across the views and as microfocus, we're not big fans of translating cobal into Java. It's it's not part of our mission. I will agree that there are certain Edge conditions where that's probably not a bad idea.

Um, but the vendors that sell those products would say, well it's more like 90% of the space and the edge conditions are when it doesn't work. I've already invited them into this work into this working group. I am bringing the voices that my company isn't all excited about to join this working group because I mean 100% what I'm saying that this is the full range of options all of them.

It's an open source community. So anyone can join and contribute. I've completely come back to you on that Misty, but I want to reach out to John.

So John as you sit here, right? I mean, you're the open Mainframe group. You're the Linux Foundation your Ed there.

What what is this working group mean to you and and to the open Mainframe project? I mean there's a lot of ways I could think about this one. It's it's sort of the outcomes.

We like to see, you know, a true belief we have is when you bring diverse opinions diverse backgrounds diverse thought processes, you know groups together you get greater outcomes and and I joked about saying the competitors early but I mean, that's that's a very true fact. I mean we we want to bring those people together and when they come together the you get amazing things that start to come from it, you know, you get the opportunity for definitions like this that I mean, you know go off into other spaces like, you know, kubernetes a technology from Google Now is the cloud ubiquitous. Um, you know, you can go the list on Linux kernel is is the poster child for that.

So I think there's one aspect of it that we just look for the next Foundation like this is exactly what we preach. I mean, this is exactly what we're here to provide is is this and then if I think about it from sort of a Mainframe perspective You know so much for years. There's been the conversation of Mainframe or and it's always been binarily thought of that and we've been trying really hard with a lot of the technologies that have been coming through like Zoe.

To change that to a Mainframe and because you know the Forward Thinking Enterprises of today, they have heterogeneous environments. They have all these Computing infrastructures. They've got mainframes.

They've got Cloud they've got distributed. They've got this whole let me have Edge Computing going on out here too. Um, they have SAS Services.

They've got everything and they it's not the cost of doing business. It's it's a competitive Advantage for them. So, you know for us seeing sort of the Mainframe Community, I think you know, there's always going to be people that are gonna look at it.

Oh geez, you know, this is someone not Mainframe coming here. Okay, there's it is what it is. Right?

But what I even when I started talking with people when Missy's not been around about this, they generally you're all thinking. Yes, like it's great that we're having this conversation. It's great.

We're not in our own little Corners making this up in our own bickering thinking about this. We're coming to the table to do this. Jointly because we realize we're all stronger together, um versus doing it separately and and I think I I think that's sort of the other wall of all I look at this say just this is this is exactly what an effort like, this is for.

This is exactly what of the Thousand some projects we hear of the Linux Foundation. This is exactly what it's about is bringing these people together in the open to have a greater outcome than either any of them could individually achieve on their own. You know, I think I think I love the the Mainframe and I think that's right.

This this Better Together notion, but when when your mindset changes to that then you start to think differently you start to think okay, if it's an and then how do I interoperate? How do I share data? How do I you know optimize or determine the best place for work to go?

And so just by introducing the word and it it helps create that range or that need for range and I think that's a you know, an important aspect of what the group's trying to accomplish because if the word was or dislike people pick up choice right up front. Yeah, right, right, and then that's not necessarily what's best for the business. And so I think he hit on the right word and just that word will drive some of the range that we're looking for.

I I want to point out that the range is the Mainframe and which is the middle. Um, but we're also gonna include in this umbrella both ends. Right?

So the people that want to live in modernize on that Mainframe and stay on that Mainframe as well as the people that want to move off of that Mainframe and move completely to the cloud. We've invited the cloud providers all of them are invited to join and and they're gonna be talking about this side of that equation, right all of the Mainframe and Cloud as well as the moving off the Mainframe to cloud and we have invited the Mainframe community and they'll be talking about this end and there'll be a lot of happy space here in the overlap and they'll be the stress here on the edges. But you might also see that start to come together.

You might see the people that come here and over here. They just kind of oh this isn't so bad over here and they start to look over there and vice versa. Yeah, I So look, I'm not here to paint the cloud people with a broad brush.

I don't know if necessarily there in the Mainframe or Right. No, they're not but they don't really. they definitely have all of them working with microfocus have practices that move people off of the Mainframe.

They have my Mainframe migration services that is definitely a portion of their business, but it's not their entire business, right? So that's what I meant by they have this Edge, but they also have the stuff in the middle as well. And that's where where Peter was saying earlier that you know, IBM has this collaboration with AWS.

You know, we're we're not enemies across this industry, right? Um, you know, there's there's certain things that they may not like about what AWS is doing right you I think there's an IBM error that sheds a tear every time a Mainframe is turned off, you know. Okay, you know but there's there's lots of larger Mission around holders that do.

Yeah. Well, you know fortunately there's not too many mainframes that get turned off right? That's exactly right.

Yeah, but you know what my not fear But Misty again why I think you've got a tough road. I don't want it an analogize it to politics, but you hear a lot of people today. Right the vaccine deniers.

Right and they'll look at all of the science behind why vaccines work and say well I don't care. Yeah, right because my opinion is vaccines are bad. And that's your opinion and your opinion goes to the edge of your nose as soon as it comes to the edge of my nose and it affects me.

I really don't give a hoot about your opinion. I care about the truth. Right, and and the problem is when you have this whole gamut this whole spectrum of people.

putting in there truth It gets it gets hard for the end user to say. Who do I believe here? What is because there's sometimes there's more than one truth.

Sometimes. It's only one truth. Truth is truth is truth.

There's opinions. And then that's true. How many supposed to You know what really what you're describing is the current state that yeah, that's what customers and organizations are getting today.

They get one truth from one side. They get another truth from Another Side. They get another truth from Another Side.

What we're hoping to do is to try to bring those players together and get them to agree on at least this set we kind of agree on this set. And these are the things we don't agree on and we'll document that we don't agree on those things and we'll just make it a little bit less money. Would you see that?

I'm not I'm not expecting to get everybody to agree on everything. There's no way right. And I would like some of that vendor neutrality angles also going to help, you know, it's not microfocusing.

This is not IBM. It's not broadcom. It's not this it's this group of everybody.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's okay to focus on the things you can agree on, you know, that's that's a far better place than where we are at the moment. So, you know if you get that subset and then you just keep working it you keep working it over time is that trust gets built up a little bit.

I I think you know now that I'm thinking about that analogy of the standards making body. So I think I need to do a little research into the history of some of those organizations and and the challenge is that they've had because I think I'm gonna have similar problems. But but let's let's take a second to look at this from the customer perspective, right?

You're an organization. You know that your it stack is not meeting your current needs of your business. The market is changing too fast, and you can't turn around changes quickly enough, whatever, right?

What do you do you go and you ask six different vendors and you get six different answers. What we're trying to do is to give them the one place where they can start get a little bit of education and then they go to the six different vendors with some knowledge. That's really what our goal is here is to try to help them get that starting set of knowledge the list of questions.

They should be asking. And then they'll come to the vendors. agreed guys, we're running low on time.

Mr. Meant to put you on the spark, but can you give us maybe a little timeline of what's going on here? Yes.

Um, so the first meeting I'm gonna try to schedule in October sometime. I'm I'm waiting to see the people signing up. So please if you're interested sign up, there'll be a blog post, um that the open Mainframe project is is publishing that we'll tell you how to get involved and when I see the critical mass and I think we have enough people I'll schedule that first meeting for October.

It might be November. We'll have to see at that first meeting. The first question we have to answer is are we a Mainframe modernization working group or are we a modernization working group?

And the reason for that is my original concept was Mainframe modernization a couple of people have brought it up to me that these modernization Concepts that we're talking about are pretty much the same no matter what technology you're talking about. Right. So a lot of what we're going to be doing isn't Mainframe specific and it includes Technologies across the stack.

So we'll put that up for a vote of what we want to focus on. Um, and then the second thing we're going to do is just make sure everybody's clear on the do's and don'ts and our goals. What are we trying to accomplish together a little bit if they've watched this webinar then they're good.

I won't have to say it all over again. And then we need to start building out our plan of how we're going to go about this over the next couple of years because this is not going to be a quick thing job one is agree on a definition right? Give us that definition that has that broad umbrella.

Job, two is to agree on a a framework and a process for which people can nominate educational at content and it can be reviewed and approved by the group and that's how we're going to make sure we're not getting marketing materials or vendor-specific stuff or biased things into the repository. So we need to agree on that process. And then we can start building out that repository towards the end of the project after of the working group after we feel like we have critical mass of the of the content we want to do an assessment of the current state of modernization across all of those verticals all cross all of those options and identify if there are gaps that the open Mainframe project and open source code can fill so we'll be giving John a wish list of future projects.

It's okay. That's okay. We have a strong Community that's excited to take those on.

All right. Hey guys. We're about out of time Misty.

I'm gonna make you promise to come back on here and keep us current on progress on this group and what's happening. I I will I will never turn down a chance to talk about mainframes and modernization so you got me. All righty, Peter, we'd love.

I know this was your first time on but we'd love to have you back on we we often miss a the IBM folk on here to tell you the truth, and we'd like to see more of you. I would I would love to come back and looking forward to it. All right and Allen if I can just throw out a little thank you to Pete because thank you so much IBM for contributing and and It engaging with this with this new working group, right?

It's you're going to be a key player in it. So, I'm really happy to see you joining us on this first webinar. So thank you very much later.

Thank you. Got to be in it to win it man. That's absolutely absolutely right John.

Thanks to you the Linux foundation and the open Mainframe project. There's always for your partnership and cooperation on this. Most of all thanks to you folks who have been watching.

I hope you found it interesting. Yes modernization and mainframes go together. Stay tuned.

We're going to be telling you more about it in the weeks and months to come but until next month. This is Alan Shimmel for the open Mainframe. We'll see you soon.

Bye. you know, I was almost gonna put