Main Frame Geek

A collection of opinions from engineers, developers, programmers, users and influencers who share a passion for the past and future of mainframe computing. Thoughts On CICs and MQ following Impact 2008 Is CICS just a cashcow? That's the question I found myself asking at Impact 2008 last week. Is it really enough to service enable a CICS system, or will a renaissance require the kind of skills drive that IBM is putting into other areas of the mainframe business? My concern is that some of the noises from IBM sounded like the bad old days of the 1990s when IBM often seemed content to see the mainframe profitably walk off into the sunrise. I used to argue with Linda Sanford at the time that IBM needed to look beyond MIPS growth and try to find net new customers for the box. Leverage existing workloads? I am most interested in net new workloads on Z - and I don't just mean Linux-based. SOA helps customers to extend existing investments and IBM is investing in all the surrounding tooling to make this easier. My problem with this argument as it relates to CICS is largely down to the fact that without skills growth a platform can only ever be a cash cow. is a major problem for service enablement. As Joel says: í¢Â€ÂœThe law of leaky abstractions means that whenever somebody comes up with a wizzy new code-generation tool that is supposed to make us all ever-so-efficient, you hear a lot of people saying í¢Â€Âœlearn how to do it manual...