On Diversity In The Technology Field

by Brenda J. Christie

Another great article, Diversity isn't a Google Problem, holds as its premise the scarcity of minorities in the technology field, being due to laziness and comfort with familiarity.  Written by Shane Paul Neil, and appearing in Technorati, the article holds that such scarcity is indeed, industry-wide and not limited to Google.

I find this trend both interesting and dismaying but maintain that it is more the outcome of the commoditization of Information Technology, wherein much like Investment Banking, too many people want in because of the potential payoff.

This contrasts quite starkly to prior periods, including the decades where I worked as a developer and project manager.  In prior decades it was more for the love of technology and its capabilities than money. Not that the salaries were anything to dismiss.  However, salaries were no where near the compensation levels Google is known to pay its employees.

Notwithstanding compensation, prior periods were altogether different.  I worked along side many diverse groups, both from an ethnic and religious perspective.  I do believe that in spite of these differences, love of technology was the glue that held us all together.

It is sad that money has once again separated us.  It is probably an unfortunate byproduct of the commoditization of Information Technology.  

Brenda J. Christie

Continuance of the Mainframe Evolution

by Brenda J. Christie

Read some interesting articles recently depicting how the mainframe, and its supporting tools, continues to proliferate, indeed, to far corners of the world.  All articles referenced appeared in Enterprise Systems Media.

One article, IBM CICS Tools , blew my mind with discussion of a CICS Cloud, and capturing data (presumably to sell to marketing companies) all while lowering TCO, total cost of ownership thru reduction of batch cycles, cross-site workload balancing and support for dynamic mobile workload configuration.

These all may just be staid and true concepts marketed under current terminology, but I was impressed.  Although I did not see much of what went on behind the CICS Systems Programmer's curtain while in the mainframe world, my recollections of discussions I did have do not include tools as those discussed in this article.

Another article which brought back memories, is the one on Attachmate's extension of its terminal emulation product to work on smartphones and tablets.  It was a huge jump to move away from the Wylbur environment to terminal emulation.  This move to be able to access the mainframe from a smartphone or tablet is equally monumental, although I do have concerns about security and introducing vulnerabilities inherent in smartphones/tablets due to their relative youth, into the mainframe.  Quite naturally, Attachmate wants to reassure prospective customers that its security is up to par.  Being hard to kill, the IBM mainframe will most likely be proactive and defend itself, nonetheless.

Finally, there was also a piece, China Needs a Mainframe, which discusses China's love affair with the IBM mainframe, and how it let IBM into China to conduct business.  Predictably, the recent Snowden and other revelations have dampened that honeymoon with the Chinese now advocating to buy local mainframes

All great articles, and definitely worth the read.

Brenda J. Christie