Welcome to B & M Bulletin, produced specifically for users of IT technical services. In this issue:
• Sourcing skills to support the mainframe
• Tech View: Reducing your enterprise footprint
• 10 ways to attract the best people
• B & M ProLegacy
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Sourcing Skills to Support the Mainframe
Jerry Smart, MD of B & M Europe, examines a recent report that shows that mainframes are thriving and the skills necessary to support them are in high demand
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"The trick is knowing where to look"
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Last month, CA published a report in association with the IT research company Vanson Bourne entitled The Mainframe: Surviving and Thriving in a Turbulent World. The report found that 83 per cent of UK CIOs expect to have problems with sourcing mainframe skills over the coming year and that 66% believe that mainframe users will soon start to suffer from the relevant skills not being readily available.
The report suggests that, despite exaggerated reports of its death, the mainframe is still alive and well and being widely used to deliver business-critical processing. Enterprises whose mainframes are networked appear to be more reliant on them than those whose machines are not fully connected, with only 20% of the former group looking to reduce the importance of the role the mainframe plays, compared with 68% for those which are not fully connected.
But why is there such a dearth of skilled specialists in this field? According to Computerworld contributor Martin Veitch this is for three reasons:
- IT on the whole is declining in popularity as a degree subject
- The mainframe is not seen as attractive or modern - Veitch says, "It was at its peak when the Beatles, Rolling Stones and then prog-rockers and heavy rock acts vied for chart-topping status, and ever since has been waning through the years of open systems and Unix, through Windows and on to the internet computing model of today"
- There is not a great deal of money being offered to IT people to manage mainframes.
Despite these challenges, there are still highly skilled specialists out there who are able to support z/OS, UNIX and Linux enterprise systems, including third-party systems software, open systems and networking connectivity. The trick is knowing where to look for them.
Find them by contacting sales@bmeurope.com.
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Small is beautiful: Reducing your enterprise footprint
B & M Technical Manager, Paul Smith, explains how flexible servers can help when it comes to managing your data and energy consumption
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'Occam's razor' is the principle that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily - and seems to be very pertinent to today's IT infrastructures. However, as systems continue to grow inexorably, the quest for simpler data structures delivered by smaller, less power-hungry machines seems to have been rather left behind, driven by the need for more thorough, accessible backup, support for software, good practice and improvements in security to name but a few. However, these needs can be in competition with the quest to reduce or control running costs, energy consumption and the space needed for IT equipment.
The most obvious way to reduce the amount of hardware in your machine room is to virtualise, using a combination of hardware and software. The trick is to try to get the best value for money from the combination that you choose.
IBM's z10 (introduced in February 2008) is probably one of the more flexible solutions, with the top end offering 77 Processing Units (PU), and up to 1520GB of RAM. You can have up to 64 IFL partitions which allow you to run Linux on the 'bare metal' - directly on a piece of hardware rather than in a virtualised environment - and make it possible to pack a lot of 'servers' into one physical box. SUSE, Redhat and now Sun all have zSeries Linux offerings. However at an estimated $100,000 to $30,000,000 the cost justification has to be clear.
The ever-popular Blade format servers from HP, IBM, Dell and others deliver a massive amount of processing power in a small, power-efficient system. Blade servers cost in the thousands - rather than tens of thousands, although they do deliver less processing power per cubic metre than the IBM z Series.
Reducing the physical number of boxes offers:
- Reduced network infrastructure
- Lower power requirement and cost
- Less heat output
- Less air-conditioning (also reducing power need)
Virtualisation software also gives you more options: for example both Microsoft and VMware have free Hypervisor products. For an enterprise seeking consolidation, IBM's drawback has always been an inability to support x86 (Windows et al) software directly on the zSeries. Even this can be overcome with a little thought using for example VMware's offerings (and Linux), or Mantissa's new z/VOS product. It is possible to move all your PC-based (and Mac OS/X if using VMware) images onto your IBM z10. Maybe even the shy thin client will make triumphant return!
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10 ways to attract the best people
Skilled IT professionals are hard to find. Jerry Smart has identified some of the key factors that you may want to consider to attract the best people - permanent or contract:
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- Recognition for a job well done
- A healthy working environment
- Worthwhile and meaningful work
- An environment that offers appropriate levels of responsibility
- To be accountable for their work
- Compensation commensurate with performance
- Learning opportunities
- The chance to do great work
- Clear understanding of the goals
- The opportunity to work with interesting, motivated and responsible people.
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B & M ProLegacy
Enduring support for legacy systems
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B & M ProLegacy is an enduring legacy support service which ensures that critical business applications and platforms continue to work effectively. The service enables organisations to improve the efficiency and productivity of their IT function by outsourcing the support and maintenance of systems software environments whilst reducing organisational complexity, headcount, cost and risk. B & M ProLegacy is designed to provide support for any stabilised production system where further development is not anticipated.
B & M will manage the customer's software infrastructure to ensure that legacy systems offer optimum levels of availability. The service allows organisations to outsource the maintenance of their legacy systems, freeing up in-house IT staff to focus on development of future IT infrastructure. For information about how ProLegacy could benefit your organisation, contact sales@bmeurope.com.
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