Category: Mainframes

Published on August 8, 2013

Modern mainframes have less in common with their legacy ancestors than iPhones have with the rotary phones that preceded them. So why does the perception still exist that mainframes are outdated? There are several generational differences between modern mainframes and the mainframes introduced in the…

Published on July 22, 2013

Why not testing for date and time issues could cost you a bundle. You don't have a crystal ball. Seeing the future is impossible, yet your job requires you to plan for the future and to know how things will pan out today, tomorrow, and…

Published on July 15, 2013

The short answer? Maybe. Here's some things you shouldn't sneeze at when pondering mainframes and viruses. Despite the mainframe's reputation for security and its seemingly impenetrable nature, companies should not naively pass on protecting their systems from viruses. There have been no high-profile reports of…

Published on July 8, 2013

Mainframes are big complex systems. Housing and managing the data stored and processed on these systems involves many access points and lots of risks. Because of these numerous risks, it is important to periodically assess the security measures your company has in place to make…

Published on July 1, 2013

Secure passwords are a great first step to protecting the data on your mainframe, but you must ask yourself: who has access to them? Even the most creative passwords and secure authentication methods are useless if the wrong people are granted access or have profiles…

Published on June 10, 2013

With the vast amounts of storage space available on mainframes and their associated direct access storage drives (DASD), there's no need to worry about drive defragmentation or space allocation, right? Right? Wrong. The huge volume of data stored on many businesses' DASD systems make it…

Published on June 5, 2013

Although we all think our mainframes are super, mainframes and supercomputers are different on some fundamental levels. Here's why. Both mainframes and supercomputers push the limits of what can be accomplished through computing. They are both large and powerful machines, but they are not the…

Published on May 23, 2013

In the early years of mainframe security, keeping unauthorized people from sitting down at a terminal was enough to protect the data on the mainframe. As time went on, mainframe security matured to the degree that the data was considered safe as long as its…

Published on May 8, 2013

Mainframes have reliably served the heavy computing and security needs of large and medium-sized enterprises for decades. More recently, cloud computing has emerged promising scale, availability, simplicity, and lowered costs. But will it deliver? Similarities and differences exist between mainframe and cloud computing, as well…

Published on May 1, 2013

Thinking beyond simply saving space Frequent flyers know how much space they can gain just by squeezing the air out of their luggage. They can pack for a week-long vacation in the same bag others will over-stuff with clothes for a simple overnight trip. Atoms,…