Is the MainFrame Computer Obsolete?
There is no single machine that can push bits around like a mainframe computer. They also have decades of tools that make batch processing incredibly powerful and fast. For chunking lots of data, they rock.
Over the last decade different systems have begun to intrude into this once dominated workhorse territory using different techniques. AS/400 risk based machines currently put out as much power as older mainframes at a much lower cost.
But it is the groups of smaller machines that have made the biggest impact. A grid/cloud/fabric/group of simply commodity based machines are capable of outperforming a mainframe at a much reduced cost.
Remember the IBM Watson, the computer that won Jeopardy? That was a grid of 1,000 computers as I recall. It is for this reason that you are seeing tools such as Hadoop and patterns like Map/Reduce grow in popularity. These tools are capable of running in a fabric of federated machines out producing the power of a mainframe.
Are large companies that have a huge investment and history of applications on mainframes considering re-tooling to smaller, more economical systems?
What are the tools they use on mainframes that are still missing in a grid based world, and are they needed?
I can tell you now this is going to be a lively topic. Already I am receiving feedback just from announcing the title yesterday. Send your comments to btaylor@sswug.org to share with our readers.
Does Age Matter?
A reader asks the question after being downsized, "I think age had something to do with what happened at my organization. How much of a role does age play in the data industry? How can I mitigate negative aspects? How can I extenuate positive aspects?"
Editor:
My personal experience isn’t that vast. But I will provide my limited input, and invite others to share as well. I have seen this trend for years now, and have worked hard to address in my own career what I think is a difference in business today.
No longer is there loyalty between employer and employee. Employees go where they can get the best package. Employers hire the best talent they can get for the least cost. Supply and demand make up the rest of the negotiation.
As a result, when you have been doing software development as long as I have (28 years), you have to be twice as good as a person who has been developing code or managing systems for say 3-5 years. If a company can let you go and get more work out of two new people for the same cost, well, there it is…it is going to happen.
I am amazed at the number of senior programmers I interviewed for open positions having developed very little in the way of skills than those I could get from a recent college graduate. Even those with new Masters degrees had little value to me. They just seemed to know a lot more theory or impractical stuff. And, because they had a Masters degree they wanted a higher salary, even though it takes just as much (or sometimes more) of my precious resources to train them.
So, it isn’t really age that is the factor. It is your salary. If you have been working for 20 years, and had a reasonable raise most of those years, then you had better have something more to show for that additional salary than tenure. Only union employees get that kind of free ride.
That doesn’t mean union employees are lazy or don’t continue to learn; they simply have less incentive than someone who’s livelihood depends on it. I have two siblings working in the public or union sector who all work hard to keep on top of their game, and could go anywhere they wanted as a result.
In short, I don’t think there are any real negative aspects to age except health insurance coverage costs. The positive aspects are the fact that you should have been through it all, and have the war stories, and mitigation strategies to solve real world problems. You should also have superior skills for whatever expertise you developed.
Cheers,
Ben
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