My race time today was so much better than yesterday. I was in a whole different gear.

In this edition

Growing your skills: IBM Champions ?? Growing your skills: Mainframe Skills Council ?? Growing your skills: Mainframe Society Podcasts ?? Mental Health Awareness Week ?? In the news: Rocket Software & OpenText ?? Get inside a z16 ?? GenAI - follow-up ?? IBM watsonx Assistant for Z ?? Top 10 Programming languages ?? Potpourri - various stories (including are VPN's still safe & much more) ??

Intro

The Mainframerz meetup events & newsletters are designed to share the latest news and training to help you grow your skills.

To get the most from our community we invite you to jump in with questions, ideas, or helping with one of our events.

Grow you skills & networking: IBM Champions

If you are looking to grow your skills or networking opportunities or would like to know a little more about the IBM Champions. Rituraj Mahato has written a very helpful article.

Rituraj has offered his personal top 6 tips in terms of what it means to him to be an IBM Champion:-

1. Know the Technology Inside Out:

2. Passion is the Fuel:

3. Tailor Your Advocacy Style:

4. Be a Storyteller, Not a Salesperson:

5. Embrace Authenticity:

6. The Power of Community:

To find out more about these tips or to reach out to Rituraj with any questions you can find out all the details via his post which is available ?? here: ??

Grow your skills & networking: Mainframe Skills Council

Georges Kopp is a well respected IBM Champion and often shares valuable insights and updates in terms of activity taking place on the Mainframe. A recent post by Georges caught my eye which was on the topic of the IBM Mainframe Skills Council.

In Georges words:-

?????? ?????????????????? ???????????? ??????????????

IBM introduced the ?????????????????? ???????????? ?????????????? to provide a forum where global organizations can foster a skilled, diverse, sustainable workforce for the mainframe platform. In addition to IBM, the council includes organizations spanning IBM clients, IBM partners, academia, user groups, non-profits, and open communities that are collaborating to implement mainframe skills development solutions.

? Showcase a vibrant mainframe talent pool

? Align on common industry competency frameworks

? Share ideas and practices to enhance talent development

? Share education, training tools, and related resources to optimize overall mainframe career experience for professionals and leaders

? Increase mainframe employer adoption of proven skill initiatives and practices

The council encourages insights, collaboration, and solutions to inspire, connect, train, and grow talent.

Read the post from the IBM Mainframe Skills Council ?? here: ??

Grow your skills & networking: Mainframe Society

A big thank you to Alzares Stephens who has reminded me that the Mainframe Society first podcast has gone live featuring Cameron Seay

You can listen to the podcast ?? here: ??

"if you would like to suggest another podcast that might interest mainframers, please leave it in the comments or message me".

In the UK, Mental Health Awareness week: 13th May - 19th May

It’s been moving this time

Mental health awareness week took place in the UK, the focus has switched from others to ourselves. The campaign asked people to consider if they are getting enough exercise and to consider the benefits this can offer.

Read the post with link to a report ?? here: ??

Regular physical activity is known to improve mental health, quality of life, and wellbeing. It also helps prevent and treat heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and breast and colon cancer, and more. Despite these benefits being well established, over a third of UK adults do not meet the recommended amount of activity.

Previous campaigns have focused on helping others with the idea being ?“if you're struggling with your mental health, help is available… you just need to ask for it”.

Heads Up in the UK used footballers to encourage men to discuss mental health

Calm encouraged men to check in on friends

Many other campaigns have suggested checking in on others, partly as people were leaving the house less frequently post-covid.

What can impact on someones mental health and how can you help

Many factors can affect someones mental health:-

? Has a persons health changed, a serious health condition is not always easy to spot; worry of how illness can impact those around them can be more harmful than the health condition a quick chat can help.

? Respect space and personal time & working hours, it sounds obvious but a major contribution can be unnecessary demands on employees to work at short notice, calling to give updates outside of the working day, respect your colleagues is that call really necessary.

? Stresses of work and what is expected, just checking in on staff before piling more work on will help, be sensible people are human not robots.

? Health of family can be as damaging looking after others can be very draining just ask are people OK.

So many issues here could have be flagged: gambling, debt, relationships there is no one problem, but there is one answer “ask how people are doing and check in”.

Did you know (Another Andy fact): Some say I have found more nuggets than Todd Hoffman, to go along with all the advice above my own personal nugget is that Bird song is meant to very helpful for mental health, it has just been reported in a recent study, if you can get outside in the morning just listen to nature.

In the news: Rocket Software & OpenText

I managed to miss in the last edition the announcement by Rocket Software who had purchased a suite of products from OpenText including some former Micro Focus products.

Below is the official announcement.

'Rocket Software’s acquisition of the Application Modernization and Connectivity (AMC) business of OpenText, including several former Micro Focus products, has officially closed.

We want to express a warm welcome to our new partners and underscore our commitment to our existing partners as we embark on this next chapter together.

With the acquisition of the AMC portfolio, you will have access to a comprehensive portfolio of enterprise modernization solutions. This will scale your ability to offer solutions wherever customers are in their modernization journey, spanning the mainframe to the cloud.'

Why Do Mainframes Still Exist? What's Inside One? 40TB, 200+ Cores, AI, and more!

Would you like a video that tells you all about the new z16 mainframe in terms of hardware, testing and more?

"If you would like to post a question and seek the help of the community of IBM Champions & Mainframerz community, please try to make your question as structured as possible".

Remember GIGO, if you put garbage in you get garbage out, a bit like using a web browser search: the better the question asked the better the answer.

Follow up on a Request for help: GenAI

In the last edition I posted a request for help which came via Amit K P:-

"have you ever been involved in mainframe modernization I wanted to learn like how to use mainframe with GEN AI the modern tech; is there any demo or use case available where we can try and test".

It is a very interesting question from Amit and Malgorzata Trzebinska shared a very interesting quote from Kyndryl :-

According to IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Cloud 2024 Predictions European Implications, "By 2026, AI is projected to power half of all cloud applications, with 65% of European organizations facing challenges in finding sufficient skilled AI professionals to manage and update them effectively."

I selected a few free courses around AI to help Amit, a quick google search shows many courses and resources are available on social media and training platforms.

Newsletter: Future of AI

Ido Vapner has an excellent newsletter which offers insights and ideas around AI which is available ?? here: ??

IBM Generative AI Fundamentals is available by QR code or clicking ?? here: ??

Building AI Powered Chatbots Without Programming is available ?? here: ??

{added to the building a mainframe chatbot article}

AI Foundations for Everyone Specialization is available ?? here: ??

Databricks and many other companies offer skills training for free to help the course from Databricks is available ?? here: ??

7 free AI classes you can take online from top tech firms, universities available to read from Fortune.com ?? here: ??

A fellow IBM Champion then took up the baton and has done a great job in summing up and answering the question: A big thank you to Scott Fagen

I see that there's not been a lot of take-up on this, I'll venture a few points:

• The question is not very well formed.? It seems akin to "I hear there's a cool new energy called electricity.? Are there any use cases I can try it out on?"
• There are lots of "free" implementations of Generative AI out there right now, e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, DALL-E, that can answer questions, respond to requests, etc.
• A specific mainframe use case is "IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Z" which assists a developer in understanding and refactoring COBOL and, where desired, helps re-implement refactored COBOL in Java.? This is not generative AI "on the mainframe," it is generative AI "for the mainframe."
• If you are interested in potential use cases for generative AI, I'd suggest an interwebz search for "use cases for generative ai."? There are many articles, blogs, etc. on the subject.
• In terms of doing generative AI "on the mainframe," my personal opinion is that, without a compelling reason to run it on a mainframe, it's better run on commodity (read that as "cheap") hardware.? That doesn't mean that I wouldn't run other forms of AI on a mainframe, where speed and latency matter, just that generative AI tends to have a voracious appetite for data and CPU (and GPU) when it's in use.? I'm of the opinion that "in-transaction" use cases (like classification - is this transaction likely to be fraudulent?) are going to win the day for a while "on the mainframe."

Rob van der Heij (fellow IBM Champion) raised a very good point about the Security & Privacy aspects of working with Generative AI:-

"Suppose the bank is using Generative AI to craft you a nice explanation about why your loan is not approved. It would probably have to use information about your account, your credit history, etc.

A secure architecture would be much simpler to implement when it doesn't involve external services that need to access your confidential information.?It would then send the composed letter through approved secure channels to print or publish to the client".

Myself and Scott Fagen both feel the topic of GenAI is very diverse and the best advice is to investigate the subject and to return with more specific questions after you have narrowed down your area of interest. In addition you should also consider the security and privacy of using Generative AI and is it appropriate to do so.

"Whilst we haven't answered the question directly, I hope it does give an understanding of the diversity of the topic and helps narrow down an area of interest for you to start looking into."

IBM watsonx Assistant for Z

As Scott has suggest IBM watsonx Assistant for z, I wanted to give you some ideas as to what this offers:-

IBM watsonx Assistant for Z includes the following capabilities:

• AI assistant capabilities: Generate answers grounded in IBM Z-specific content to respond to IBM Z users’ questions. Recommend relevant automated skills that can be acted upon during the conversation.
• Builder capabilities: Import existing automation into a skill catalog and create custom automation flows. Build an assistant, tailor it with specific actions and settings, and then share it with users to help them learn and take action.
• The seamless integration of generative AI and digital automation is designed to enable clients to: Expedite the onboarding process of early tenure professionals with a side-by-side AI assistant, accelerating their journey to productivity with confidence. Improve productivity, autonomy, and confidence across all skill levels, by offering a central place to find answers and executing automation to perform common and complex tasks.

Planned for release 19th June 2024

You can read more ?? here: ??

Top 10 Programming Languages May 2024 - FORTRAN...

TIOBE Index for May 2024 - May Headline: Fortran in the top 10, what is going on?

I thought a few people may enjoy the following post which was shared by Michael Moss which lists the top 10 programming languages.

I think the summary from Michael is a far better summary than I could write, so in Michael's words:-

For all us legacy Mainframe "boomer" folks, the language where we might have cut our teeth, FORTRAN; the first high-level computer language. It's certainly the language I used for my first Mainframe program, punched cards, to pass an exam. AI is seemingly driving the increased use of FORTRAN! COBOL still makes the list, position 20...

You can read the full post from TIOBE Software by visiting Michaels post which is available ?? here: ??

"Do you have an idea or topic you would like to present at one of our Mainframerz events, do you have a topic you would likes us to discuss at the Mainframerz event.....

....or would you like to suggest an article, topic or discussion for the newsletter...

...if so I want to hear from you as well as my regular contributors!".

? ?? Potpourri {mainframe & non-mainframe stories} ?

Are VPNs still considered safe?

As I have just been working on a project with AutomateNow and setting up my own virtual box environment an article by Oliver Maicher caught my eye which I found interesting.

Thank you to Oliver Maicher for sharing a post by the US Department of Homeland Security about VPN bypassing.

I will share a couple of key points from Oliver's post and a link at the end to the full article:-

?? A recent study reveals a critical vulnerability in VPNs, where attackers can reroute data traffic bypassing VPN encryption - without users or providers noticing.

??? Key Points

- TLS encryption is unaffected. Though meta data might be leaking!

- 22-year-old DHCP Option: Attackers exploit a DHCP feature to redirect traffic.

- Stealthy Technique: The attack remains undetected as the VPN connection appears stable.

- Android's Immunity: Only Android devices are naturally resistant to this exploit.

You can read the full post from Oliver ?? here: ??

Google Cloud deletes $135 Billion worth of Data

I have one more story to share, many mainframe security articles recently aimed around DORA or general security often advise moving storage from on premise to the cloud. I have shared this advice and the reason behind this in a previous edition.

I wanted to share one headline that made me stop and think "wow" thats quite a big issue that happened, what if this had been banking data. Please allow me to share another post from Oliver J. Maicher about Google Cloud.

Google Cloud accidentally deleted UniSuper's $135 billion account and data, affecting 647,000 members across 37 Australian universities. Here's what happened:

?? Outage Duration: Data was inaccessible for two weeks (May 2-15, 2024)

?? Cause: A misconfiguration led to the deletion of UniSuper’s Private Cloud services

?? Restoration: Google Cloud and UniSuper worked together to restore all data and accounts

?? Measures: Google Cloud has taken steps to prevent future incidentsThis incident highlights the importance of robust backup systems and cautious cloud management.

In many cases the post itself whilst interesting and highlighting a major problem also generates some keen dialogue in the comments, if you would like to have your say or see what others are saying, please don't comment in the comments on this post but instead visit the post by Oliver to read the comments and your thoughts.

You can read the comments & post your own thoughts ?? here: ??

Chester Gordon Bell dies at 89

"Every big computing disaster comes from taking too many ideas and putting them in one place."

C. Gordon Bell was referred to by Datamation as "the Frank Lloyd Wright of computers", to anyone outside of the US and especially New York Frank Lloyd Wright was a leading architect and you can still see his influence on the skyline of New York today.

A little background in 1991 he was a winner of the National Medal of Technology considered by many to recognise only the best of breed in Technology the highest recognition to be awarded.

Taken from the NY Times-Breaking News the following is a great summary:-

"The PDP-8, a 12-bit computer introduced in 1965 with an $18,000 price tag, was considered the first successful minicomputer on the market. More important, Digital Equipment Corporation’s minicomputers were sold to scientists, engineers and other users, who interacted directly with the machines in an era when corporate computers were off limits to such users, housed in glass-walled data centers under the watchful eye of specialists".

C. Gordon Bell spent 23 years at DEC [Digital Equipment Corporation] as vice president of R&D he was also professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon and is considered the father of the mini-computer.

BSOD - Blue Screens

Just to add some context to this next story - the project above has not inspired my sharing of this video. I just found it quite interesting as a video.

All about the infamous Blue Screen "of Death", would you like to know all about why we have a "Blue Screen" and more?

Readers in the US - No excuses

It may not been Mental Health Awareness week in America but it is National Bike Month in May, so you have no excuses not to get outside.

Thank you Alfredo Iglesias for the posts and the health benefits that cycling can offer, read his posts ?? here: ??

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