My brief gig as a Vegas booth babe
The saying goes that you can only grow by stepping outside of your comfort zone, and so it was with growth in mind that I recently assented to attend the 2013 ACORD | LOMA Forum in Las Vegas and help...
View ArticleWhy walk when you can ride an electromagnetic rail?
In the real world of information management, efficiency, represents the difference between doing nothing and achieving business breakthroughs. There are many complex analytics-reporting projects...
View ArticleWhen does 00100011 change from data to #bigdata?
Traditional data processing technologies—querying a DBMS with SQL, for example—are considered to have limitations in the volume, velocity and variety of data that they can efficiently process. And they...
View ArticleHow many words beginning with V does it take to change a light bulb?
For organizations that use the mainframe today, the data that is most relevant and beneficial to answering the most burning questions may reside primarily on the mainframe. When this is the case,...
View ArticleI’ve seen the future, and it runs in a software-defined environment – Part 1
The tension between twenty-first-century workloads and twentieth-century IT is almost palpable, and the answer, according to some, will be something called the software-defined environment (SDE). Paul...
View ArticleI’ve seen the future, and it runs in a software-defined environment – Part 2
The goal of SDE is to make IT infrastructure dynamic and responsive. SDE addresses the needs of IT organizations, allowing them to manage their compute, storage and network assets programmatically to...
View ArticleAre you certified or certifiable? I may be (partially) to blame.
In information technology there are many types of professional certifications offered by industry groups and product vendors. IBM alone manages just under 500 certifications. Paul DiMarzio looks at...
View ArticleMy IODiary: Analytics, big data, infrastructure and more
The theme of this year’s IBM Information On Demand conference was “Think BIG. Deliver BIG. Win BIG.” Although the reference was likely an allusion to big data, it could have been homage to the size of...
View ArticleWhy infrastructure matters for business-critical analytics—Part 1
Even though the world is awash in unstructured data, it’s the transactional data that decision makers are focused on right now. And since the mainframe holds the vast majority of that data, it has a...
View ArticleWhy infrastructure matters for business-critical analytics—Part 2
Business analytics has moved from the back office to the front office, requiring speed and accuracy. To respond to the challenge, we’ve turned System z into a hybrid transaction and analytics...
View Article50 years of mainframes, 30 years of memories
On April 7, 2014, IBM will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the mainframe. On June 16, 2014, Paul DiMarzio will celebrate his 30th service anniversary with IBM—all of it working with the mainframe....
View ArticleCabbage Patch Kids, waterbeds and the mainframe: The early 1980s
If you were conscious in the early 1980s and lived in the US, you knew about Cabbage Patch kids—it didn’t matter if you had children or not. Mainframes existed in the early ’80s too. In fact, they had...
View ArticlePac-Man, Ferris Bueller and the mainframe: The late 1980s
While time spent in front of a Pac-Man game might not necessarily have made Paul DiMarzio a better programmer, it does define the timeframe in which his career was starting to take off. The...
View ArticlePogs, Forrest Gump and the mainframe: The early 1990s
In the early 1990s just about every child in America knew how to play pogs, but by mid-decade, the rage had all but flamed out. Fads come and go, but quality—like the mainframe—endures. Continue reading
View ArticleTamagotchis, Agent Smith and the mainframe: The late 1990s
Remember Tamagotchis—those little electronic gadgets that required so much maintenance? Unlike Tamogotchis, mainframes require very little maintenance at all—one of the reasons that likely explains...
View ArticleThe elephant on the mainframe
Just about anyone who has an interest in big data is likely familiar with the cute little yellow elephant logo of the Apache Hadoop project. Last month, while attending the System z Information...
View ArticleSurvivor, Harry Potter and the mainframe: The 2000s
The hit TV show Survivor was a great metaphor for the IT industry of the 2000s; no matter how hard the pack maneuvered to get the mainframe kicked off “the island,” it weathered all attacks and didn’t...
View ArticleThe Beatles and the mainframe: The 2010s (so far)
Happy 50th, mainframe! In the final installment of his anniversary series, Paul DiMarzio celebrates the mainframe--and his career--so far. What lies ahead for him and the mainframe? Continue reading
View ArticleThink parking in the city is expensive? Try maintaining a data center!
The costs of space and power—the two essential elements of any data center—can break a company’s desire to locate anywhere close to a big city if its business model relies on plentiful, affordable...
View ArticleThe elephant on the mainframe is getting bigger!
Thanks to some new announcements around Hadoop and the mainframe that were made at IBM Enterprise2014, you now have a complete, enterprise-class solution from IBM for using Hadoop to analyze mainframe...
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