The WEB

What sort of a title for a blog is this? Can a blogger really be going to suggest that people reading blogs are going to get confused or, even worse, misled? Well, without wishing to shoot myself in the foot or appear like a turkey voting for an early Christmas, that’s exactly what I’m suggesting. The blogosphere is fully of conflicting and confusing information. There – I’ve said it!

Let’s turn our attention away from mainframes for a moment. And there’s a reason for doing so – people reading this article probably already share many of the same assumptions as I do about mainframes. So I want to turn your attention to the gee-whiz gadget at the moment – the Apple iPad. Now before we go any further, let me be absolutely clear that I’m not going to name names – Google makes it very easy to find examples of what I’m talking about. So, here’s the question we may have all asked ourselves: “do I want an iPad?” To help make up my mind, I start searching the Internet for articles and blogs by people who attended the launch. The first thing you find is that opinions are divided. I never bothered to count because the number of pages was very large, so I can’t give you a percentage of “fors” and “againsts”, but, suffice it to say, numerous bloggers were totally sold on the gadget and can’t wait to get their hands on one, while other blogs listed the iPad’s faults – no multitasking, no camera, awkward keyboard, no flash, not HD, and locked into Apple apps, etc. So for someone who doesn’t really understand, how do they make a choice?

So, let’s go back to mainframes and see what people are blogging about mainframe futures. Well, we have people convinced that the IBM z11 processor is the route to Nirvana, and other people suggesting that unless we migrate all our applications on to Microsoft boxes our data centres will come crashing down around our ears. There are blogs extolling the virtues of cloud computing to finally make the end user computing experience like shopping or using utilities (like gas or electricity not like IEBPTPCH or IEHMOVE!). There are other blogs suggesting that using a mainframe has many of the characteristics of cloud computing already and we’ve been doing it for 40-odd years already – plus ça change!

I’m sure I could do exactly the same thing with car models – some writers would extol their virtues, while others would focus on the vices of the vehicle. Or I could use the Internet to make a choice about a washing machine, a fridge, a university course, anything!

The problem is simple. The more egalitarian the Internet has become, the more people are happy to share their opinions or repeat the opinions of others. As a consequence of more people giving an opinion, there are more opinions out there are to read – leading directly to more confusion amongst the browsing population!

So what’s the solution, I hear you ask? Well the answer is to rely on the opinions of people you trust. Now, that’s easier said than done. So, if I wanted to get a good inside into mainframe trends, I would look at the following blogs:

IBM’s Mainframe Blog, which is part of its zNextGen initiative, (http://mainframe.typepad.com). This has a number of short videos as well.

Another good blog is James Governor’s Monkchips site (http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor).

Definitely worth a look is Marc Wambeke’s Mainframe Watch Belgium at http://mainframe-watch-belgium.blogspot.com.

There’s a humorous blog by CA’s Reg Harbeck at http://community.ca.com/blogs/execio/default.aspx. I still like his entry, “How to Talk Like a Mainframer”.

Bob Thomas, who owns zJournal, is blogging at http://www.mainframezone.com/bobthomas/.

Willie Favero’s excellent DB2 for z/OS blog is at http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/db2zos.

There’s an interesting blog at The Raised Floor by Jeffrey M Birnbaum, Mike Desens, Tom Gross, Rich Lechner, Chris Mines, Jerry Murphy, John Patrick, Neil Rasmussen, Will Runyon, and Steve Sams, which is at http://theraisedfloor.typepad.com/.

There’s a group of techie/creative people working in and around IBM’s Hursley Park Lab in the UK. They produce an interesting blog is at http://eightbar.co.uk/

There are a number of very insightful blogs at IBM’s My developerWorks. You can click on the links from https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/?lang=en_us.

Always up-to-date is Mark Fontecchio’s blog at Mainframe Propeller Head. He’s been a reporter for TechTarget since 2006. The URL is http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/mainframe-blog/.

An occasional blogger is Steve Baugh, styling himself The CICS Guy. His blog is at http://thecicsguy.wordpress.com/.

And, of course, don’t miss the Mainframe Update blog at http://mainframeupdate.blogspot.com.

But when it comes to buying an iPad, or a car, etc, you’ll have to find your own experts in the blogosphere!

A hot new trend called Cloud computing is buzzing across the country. It’s widely believed that in the near future, all computing will take place over the Internet. Cloud computing is cost efficient and designed for quick delivery of computer resources in a basic manner. Therefore, all computers programs and applications we use will be services, like subscriptions, provided through the internet cloud.

For example, to open a business, all you will need to have is an internet connection. You won’t have to invest in lots of hardware or software; you can have 30 people sitting at their desks working over the internet cloud. Information will be quick and easy to find and evaluate. Productivity will increase and your business will grow.

Some of the internet vendors that provide this service are listed below:

• Yahoo
• Microsoft
• Amazon
• Google

It’s thought to be an efficient and unique style of Information Technology Communications, making network and computing services less complicated, more efficient and easily assessable by centralizing memory, storage and processing. By doing this, cloud computing gives companies a larger pool of talent to draw from. A number of companies have already implemented cloud computing capabilities, but it’s still in the early stages and there’s more experimentation needs to be done before its used world wide.

Cloud computing is broken down into three segments: applications, platforms, and infrastructure and there’s much hope that it has a positive impact on numerous industries and businesses. Internet-based companies, such as Microsoft and Amazon.com, could gain tremendously by this emerging wave of technology. Amazon already has a world wide business and has been expanding rapidly into new markets. But there’s a concern that not all businesses will benefit and companies must be prepared for considerable change if cloud computing moves through their industry.