Goodbye 2024

As we close down the year 2024, here is a quick recap of what it was like for me:

2024 was an excellent year for me. I got promoted to head the product management org for DevOps on Z within IBM. This was a considerable milestone in my professional life. I want to thank many of my management for their confidence in me, my mentors for all the guidance, many of my colleagues who helped me along the way (& still helping me), and my friends and family (for putting up with my ever-changing schedules).

The MainframerIndia Slack group I founded - now has more than 1000+ members. I am very proud of that achievement of starting a grass-roots organization, and growing it by word of mouth was not easy. It needed a lot of hard work and help from other volunteers in the group.

I also crossed 5000+ followers on Linkedin. Thanks a lot to everyone who is following. Hopefully, my posts are informative enough not to click that unfollow button. :)

2024 was also an excellent year for my org - DevOps for IBM.

Major milestones:

1. We launched the Test Accelerator for Z - TAZ. A product that will change the nature of mainframe testing practices over the next couple of years. We already see positive feedback from our internal users, business partners, and, most importantly, from our customers. Watch out for more exciting announcements and GAs in this space. We are only getting started.

2. Many of our customers rolled out git-based pipelines for Mainframe applications with DBB as the build tool and Wazi Deploy/UCD as the deployment tools. Seeing the rollouts and hearing the customers discuss the benefits was fulfilling. As a software vendor, you always envision where the products could help customers. But as customers roll out, they talk about many additional areas where they benefited, which is always heartening. It makes all those extended nights worth it. :)

3. To add to the third point, we launched DBB 3.0, a YAML-based build framework, in addition to the groovy-based build framework we already had. This was GA-ed very late in the year, but many business partners and a handful of customers have already used it and provided positive feedback.

And many other GAs and many other happy customers. (And many other constructive feedback on our products that we are working diligently to implement).

Thanks again for everything. Happy Holidays. And a happy new year to all of us. May all your dreams come true in 2025.