The St. Paul, Minnesota-based startup is promoting a private cloud for mainframe shops, as well as an externally hosted Software-as-a-Service model for COBOL and z/OS compilers.

Check out the Cloud Compiling presentation from the recent SHARE conference:

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Charles Mills, the Chief Development Officer at Cloud Compiling, LLC, explained that his company’s technology saves companies money on their mainframe software licenses by moving compiles from individually licensed LPARs to a single cloud mainframe, either in a pre-existing private cloud or in the company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) public cloud. Cloud computing-wise, the program reduces the number of platforms needed to maintain compilers, and improves standards enforcement. In addition to the cloud computing benefits, Mills noted the cost savings is a key selling point of the product.

“Customers pay a license fee for every version of every compiler in their environment, on every mainframe in their environment. This is how IBM licenses compilers,” said Mills. “So, if the customer has multiple versions of COBOL compilers in their environment, they are paying a fee for each one on each of their mainframes, based on MSU rating. With Cloud Compiling, the customer keeps the native compiler or compilers on one designated mainframe, installs Cloud Compiling on the other mainframes, and from there, the technology virtually leverages the native compiler across the enterprise. Programmers compile just like they do today, using the same compilers. We then split the monthly cost savings with the customer – they save 50% and pay us 50% of their total monthly savings.”

For customers with just one mainframe, notes Mills, the SaaS or public cloud model is utilized to similar effect in regard to savings – they split the 50% saved on their mainframe license fees with Cloud Compiling, LLC. The only difference here is that the cloud is created using Cloud Computing’s mainframe – they maintain the native compiler on their mainframe, the customer installs Cloud Compiling on theirs, and then virtually compiles as a service model – in the vein of salesforce.com. Mills also notes that there is no up-front investment in Cloud Computing, so ROI is essentially immediate.

I also talked with Mills about any security issues related to the product. Public and private cloud-wise, Mills noted that security options offered include SFTP, or FTP with TLS; VPNs; and PassTickets – IBM’s technology that safeguards passwords. In addition, for mainframes, Cloud Compiling operates on the customer’s in-place security subsystem – either RACF or others. The Cloud Computing technology excludes the use of security credentials for interactive access.

So saving money on mainframe costs sounds good, right? But lots of folks with good ideas have ended up on the wrong side of Big Blue’s legal team lately. I asked Mills if IBM might react negatively to Cloud Compiling and he did not think it would be an issue.

“We are helping IBM customers to optimize their licensing and maximize their use of Z technologies,” said Mills. ”Unlike many other companies, we are advocating the continued use of both IBM Hardware and IBM software. Our Cloud Compilers ensure you get the greatest amount of value and flexibility from the platform in general. Any technology that improves the customer’s environment has the side effect of possibly diminishing IBM’s revenues. For example, performance monitors postpone the need for CPU upgrades. For our public cloud customers, our IBM licenses allow us to offer compiling as a service –- we are really no different from any other service bureau.”

For more on Cloud Computing, here’s a video:

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Are older mainframe programmers actually paying attention to the “new” technologies like cloud computing and virtualization? Are IT admins “cloudy” or weary on cloud computing in general and how their mainframes factor into the equation?

End users may not even know they are using a mainframe.  Programmers on the mainframe are typically using Java or other web-focused languages to deliver applications as web services. So to them, there may not be a difference between programming for the mainframe and programming for a different server platform.  We have lots of sessions at Share in Boston about these topics, and many of them will also be webcast on the Share Online from Boston site.  We also have a complete series of sessions, our Architecture Summit, which will be webcast live on Share Online from Boston.  Cloud can be a confusing topic.  Technology-wise, you will hear people saying that we have had that technology since 1980 (or before).  The cloud paradigm is not really about technology – it’s about a new service delivery paradigm. It’s about delivering virtualized servers on demand, as needed, for example.  There will be over 20 sessions on the cloud at Share in Boston.

Can you talk a little bit about the survey to Share members, and what some of the major findings were?

It was administered by Share for its members who also tend to be IBM customers.  Of the 20 choices offered, the top five concerns were:

1. Cost management: Reduction and/or avoidance

2. Virtualization: Of those ranking virtualization as a top issue, the server is their primary focus in this area, followed by storage and networks

3. Improving value of IT to the business and/or deriving competitive advantage from IT

4. Enterprise security

5. Aging/demographics of current IT staff

Share identifies “managing and deriving a competitive advantage from social media” as one of the issues mentioned on the survey – from a marketing standpoint this makes sense, but why should IT admins/professionals be interested in Twitter or Facebook?

Actually, that key topic did not score highly.  It came in 18^th out of 20 choices.  So maybe they don’t care – yet.

Is the mainframe fading away based on the results? Do you see IBM’s new mainframe adding a boost to the market?

I do not think the mainframe is fading away.  That was supposed to happen in the early 1990s, but still hasn’t.

What will be the emerging trend coming out of the Boston Share conference that mainframe programmers should be looking at?

As you can see from the survey results, the heat is on for managing IT cost and for making sure that IT is relevant to our home business.  IT/the bottom line is one of the two main themes of Share in Boston.  The other is enterprise virtualization/cloud computing.  The point of IT/the bottom line is that IT is not about technology.  It’s about delivering services that are relevant to the business strategy of your employer.  If you fail to do that, you are merely an overhead expense to your employer.  This isn’t just a mainframe issue – it really applies to all IT service providers, or employees.

Governor is not saying that the mainframe is necessarily a great cloud computing machine. In fact, he thinks that cloud computing is “definitely not a hardware story, except in as much as it fundamentally changes the way we consume system resources.” He brings this up to explain his disappointment at a recent EMC analyst event, where they were pushing the integration with CIsco and VMware as some boon to cloud computing, the foundations of which are so-called Vblocks.

But it wasn’t clear how enterprise compute purchasing is actually simplified with Vblocks. Frankly an enterprise could buy an IBM System z mainframe and it would be just like a Vblock- a fully-virtualised, pre-tested, pretested solution based on IBM software and gear. IBM doesn’t have a TotalStorage, System p and WebSphere coalition.