“Cost, I think, is primarily at the heart of the mainframe dilemma:  hardware, software and people.   Skills, or the concern of those disappearing over time, is secondary.  Hardware and software costs, and the perception that these are so much higher than a compatible server based operation, helps fuel the urge to displace this platform.  I still cannot be convinced that the TCO is significantly higher than that of running thousands of servers when you add license costs, all the replaceable components and ongoing support (manpower) for upgrades, maintenance, asset management, etc.  Even so the movement continues.

The related costs for the skill sets needed to run a mainframe operation is the other fly in the ointment.    Older mainframe programmers/analysts get a bad rap from a cost standpoint even though their long tenure at many organizations has made them successful (the business and themselves) while their long, loyal labor yielded advancement and increased salaries.  That isn’t a good mix in today’s marketplace where low costs rule.  I wonder what happens when the same scenario plays out 20 years from now when the current younger, lower cost workers are not so young or low cost anymore.

I’m not sure if there are any real replacement plans from a talent standpoint.  That would mean acquiring “young” labor while keeping “older” labor which means increasing costs even more.  In today’s world cost reductions don’t have the luxury of time on their side — immediacy rules — so while there might be a concern about keeping talent the reality, I think, largely depends upon a balance sheet.   Even for those who could stay (to mentor) many mainframers have already been in the business 30-40 years.   It is going to take a lot of activity to get the twentysomethings thinking that zOS is cool.  By the time that happens (if ever) there won’t be many mentors left — whether by choice or not.”

But while one going down leads to a nationwide financial crisis, the other going down might lead to a companywide standing ovation. Cutting mainframe MIPS means money that went toward exorbitant software licensing costs can now go into company coffers.

Next month, BMC Software will release the results of a MIPS reduction study it performed with mainframe users. Though an admittedly small sample consisting of 20 members of BMC’s user advisory board, the software vendor hopes the results could be a blueprint for how users out there can actually reduce mainframe MIPS.

“We go into their shop and try to cut peak MIPS load,” said Mike Moser, product management director for BMC mainframe service management, at the Share mainframe user group conference in Austin last week. “We’re trying to put a quantification on how much capacity we can give you back on various things.”

Moser cited SQL tuning and capacity management as two of the areas where BMC can help users save money. As an example, he said capacity management is crucial to keeping costs under control.

“You don’t want to overbuy, because that’s wasted capacity,” he said. “But you don’t want to underbuy either, because then you run into emergency situations where you don’t have room to negotiate, and that could be costly. People can get fired over stuff like that.”

The study will obviously (read: hopefully) have to balance the cost savings in MIPS reduction with the cost of bringing a BMC rep in to find the savings in the first place. Once the study comes out, we’ll report on it here with more details.

Over the past year, CA has taken steps to alleviate that problem with its so-called Mainframe 2.0 initiative. Forget the fact that putting 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever.0 on a product name or trend is passe and really doesn’t mean much anymore (another example: Cisco’s Data Center 3.0). what is it? Basically, it is CA’s attempt to clear up all the CA software clutter in so many mainframe shops.

Scott Fagen, CA’s vice president of enterprise systems management, said that in May, CA will come out with a “CA mainframe software stack,” a group of 45 CA software products grouped together for easier purchase, installation, patches, maintenance, etc.

“You’ll be able to log on and have a view of all the products you have from CA,” Fagen said at the Share mainframe user group conference in Austin, Tex. last week. “It will remind people that the products are there and they are there to be used.”

Fagen added that CA will continue to offer its Mainframe Value Program, which is a free service for CA customers where a CA rep will come in and tell you about all the CA software you have, what you use and what you don’t, and produce a report on how to improve performance.

Some users might say that CA talking up Mainframe 2.0 is akin to scientists at Jurassic Park bragging about finally getting rid of the velociraptors. In other words, is CA fixing a problem that it created? But at least there is now an option out there for those users I talk to who are looking to make more sense of their CA software portfolio.

At the Share mainframe user group conference last week in Austin, I got a chance to meet with Karl Freund, IBM senior VP of strategy for System z. Freund gave the System z keynote at the show on dynamic infrastructure, laying out some future trends and directions for the platform. I missed the keynote but was able to talk to Freund later, where he outlined the vision that he spoke about in his presentation.

“It will be like being able to treat those blade servers as if they were System z, from a systems management perspective,” he said. “Extending the z role to a heterogeneous environment.”

A user last week asked me if IBM would ever come out with a mainframe in a 19″ rack. This looks like the company’s answer.

According to Freund, it would be like running a blade server as if it were another logical partition (LPAR) on your mainframe. Though there is little comparison between the hardware of a mainframe and an Intel blade, Freund said management will be easier, being able to handle one systems management console, and having failover going to the same sysplex, rather than using different backup platforms.

Presumably this would make it easier for your front-end apps on your blade servers to communicate and get along with back-end database and ERP applications on the mainframe.

When the technology is coming out Freund wouldn’t divulge, but he did claim it would come in bits and pieces. Customers interested in it can contact IBM and might be able to get more details under a non-disclosure agreement. And he said IBM is unveiling this future trend so that data centers out there can start planning for it.

And how to plan for it? Freund gave an example: Suppose a company is building out its SAP platform, the data for which is on System z. Let’s say they decide to use blade servers on the front-end, and initially was leaning toward blades from Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sun or some other blade provider.

“Now they might decide to put it on BladeCenter because it will be supported,” he said. “They also may decide to put it on Linux because it will be supported on Linux and AIX first.”

Oh. So IBM is divulging this future mainframe technology so it can sell more BladeCenters?

There were only 636 full-week paid attendees at the show this spring, which was below their expectations (crowds did seem light in the sessions and on the floor compared to previous shows). Some of the 900 or so sessions had zero attendees, the board reported.

For the next show in Denver, the group will cut down on the number of sessions and rooms, and there will be no concurrently running sessions during either the general session keynote or any of the themed keynotes. They’re also considering blocking out a dedicated time, perhaps Tuesday afternoon, just for the trade show, to boost attendance there.

This year it goes to a session taking place Thursday morning:”Being Bi-JESual: Understanding the other JES.” Here’s the full description, which is not nearly as sexy as the title implies:

Do you run both JES2 and JES3 in your shop and want to become more comfortable using the ‘other’ JES? Perhaps you just want to get a better understanding of the other JES regardless of which JES you are most familiar. The first speaker will cover operator commands, JCL, exits, and some processing differences. The second speaker will discuss the practical application of running both JESes in her company’s environment.

No word on whether Anne Heche will make an appearance.

The company consolidated 250 distributed servers onto two IBM System z servers running Linux on z/VM, the mainframe’s virtualization operating system. The move helped the company delay having to build out more data center floorspace, and as a result saved millions of dollars.

Blue Cross Blue Shield also had various application server middleware, and so it took the server consolidation as an opportunity to standardize on WebSphere Application Server on zLinux.

In addition to its consolidation project, last year the company also created the Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management, designed to help local high school and college students get access to enterprise systems like System z.

Previous winners of the Share award include The University of Georgia, Nationwide Insurance, and Caterpillar.

Wednesday:

• Share Fitness Session (if I wake up early enough): This time, I’ll be running it, not filming it, with other jogging mainframers.
• z/VM and Linux Disaster Recovery – A Customer Experience
• Linux on System z at Wells Fargo: Penguins Board the Stagecoach
• What Does a Capacity & Performance Specialist Do Anyway? A Dual Experience Perspective
• z/OS 1.10: User Experience
• zIIPs and zAAPs: Everything New and Old

Thursday:

• Compliance – It’s Not Over When You Think It’s Over
• zNextGen’s A SHARE’d History of the Mainframe: The Chronicles, Artifacts and Stories
• The Status of SHARE: Update and Discussion
• OpenSolaris on System z
• SOA Case Study – The Ins and the Outs of Actual User Experiences

Kristine Neely, who heads zNextGen, seems to think that the bad economy opens up opportunities for big iron. For those who don’t yet know, zNextGen is a subgroup within Share for young and new mainframers. It has grown by leaps and bounds since germinating at Share in Boston a few years ago, and now zNextGen will host  a bunch of sessions in Austin this year. I’m planning on attending a few of them.

In any event, the argument behind mainframes being good for a bad economy is the argument for mainframes at any time: It’s a platform where you can get the most bang for your buck. This is an argument that all server platforms make, but the mainframe has some distinctions, according to Neely:

From a general mainframe standpoint, I think this economy will push companies to explore mainframes and technology to the nth degree.  Mainframes are considered a safe and reliable machine – a very good thing today.  Companies are very cost aware today and while crunching the numbers, mainframes will make sense.

Shameless plug: Check out our coverage of Share 2009 in Austin. The landing page is bare-bones right now, but we’ll be building it out a lot more once I get down there.

zNextGen is a sub-group within SHARE that caters toward young and new mainframers. Started a few years ago during SHARE’s conference in Boston, the group has expanded to the point of now leading and participating in sessions.

Kristin Neely (previously Kristine Harper) is the leader of the group, and gave us an idea of what sessions zNextGen will be involved in.

One is called “What does a DBA do anyway? A dual perspective,” and will have an experienced database administrator sitting alongside a new DBA and zNextGen member. The zNextGen member will be Eddie Prather Jr., a newly hired database administrator at Bank of America. Prather just graduated from college in December and has already landed the full-time gig at the bank.

Prather will be talking about what it’s like going from getting an education in database administration to working in the field. That will be countered by a more veteran DBA, who will tell Prather (and others) what they can expect to be doing as a DBA in 10 years.

“That’s something we’re doing, to try to incorporate zNextGen members into speaking,” Neely said. “You learn something better once you teach it.”

SHARE Austin will take place March 1-6.