In this engaging episode of the I Am a Mainframer podcast, Steven Dickens hosts a captivating conversation with Louisa Seers from IBM. As the product manager for the CICS portfolio and the technical steering committee chair for Galasa, an integral part of the Open Mainframe Project, Louisa shares insights into her journey at IBM. Beginning as an apprentice and blending work with education, she offers a unique perspective on her growth within the organization. Louisa delves into her role as a product manager, shedding light on the challenges and responsibilities that come with it. She passionat ..read more

On April 7, 1964, the number one song on the UK and American music charts was Can’t Buy Me Love by the Beatles. A baby was born in Wellington, New Zealand – his family would eventually move to Australia, where he would launch a music career under the name Russ Le Roq before turning to acting under his birth name, Russell Crowe. And IBM unveiled the revolutionary System/360 – the first mainframe – which would prove to be the most significant computer ever produced. Sixty years later, the Beatles remain one of the most popular bands in the world, Russell Crowe is still a major Hollywood draw, an ..read more

Written by Donna Hudi, Chief Marketing Officer at Phoenix Software and Chair of the Open Mainframe Project Marketing Committee Women’s History Month is coming to a close.  I kicked it off by reflecting on my own journey and those that have come before me.  While it was great to reflect, as I said a month ago, history can be made every day and we do so not only through our actions and events, but also by telling the stories.  A month ago, I left you all with a challenge but I also decided to challenge myself.  My goal was to pay attention to all of the amazing women in t ..read more

Written by Keelia Estrada Moeller, Marketing Content Specialist at Broadcom Mainframe Software In 2017–my final year of undergrad at the University of Minnesota–I took an internship at a content marketing agency. At the time, I already had plans to pursue graduate school and further my goals in academia to eventually become a professor. But Ithought, why not see what else I can do with my writing and communication skills? Little did I know, that internship would become the unexpected gateway to my mainframe career. Within a few months, I was hired as a full-time employee specializing in techn ..read more

Written by Billie Jean Simmons, Software Developer at IBM and Zowe Explorer Squad Lead My journey begins in a small community college in a small town in northeastern North Carolina. I was studying for an Associates Degree in Arts to transfer – unsure of what I wanted to be when I grew up.  Then, I took an Intro to Programming class as an elective and everything changed. The class covered concepts and general intro topics, writing programs in sudo code on paper. We then had to try writing a program using Assembler language and have our programs actually run and do what we wanted, it felt p ..read more

Written by Dan Donnelly, Software Tester For anyone not familiar with Galasa, it’s an open-source test integration tool that allows you to create tests to run in automation on z/OS (https://galasa.dev/).  It contains a set of Managers that allows your tests to easily interact with features and systems on z/OS such as, HTTP, CICS, MQ etc. I’m part of a development group working with Kubernetes on z/OS.  We wanted to take advantage of Galasa to write and automate tests on z/OS, as the Galasa Managers make it much easier to write tests that interact with z/OS. Initially all our Galasa t ..read more

In this episode of the “I am a Mainframer” podcast, host Steven Dickens engages in an enlightening conversation with Cynthia Overby, the Director of Security and Customer Solutions Engineering at Rocket Software. Cynthia shares her remarkable journey – from her humble beginnings as an intern to becoming CEO and President of Key Resources. Throughout the interview, Cynthia candidly recounts the challenges she encountered as a woman navigating the often male-dominated tech industry. Yet, her resilience and determination shine through as she reflects on the progress made and the evolving landscap ..read more

Written by Lauren Valenti, Head of Mainframe Education and Customer Engagement at Broadcom and Member of the Open Mainframe Project Technical Advisory Council As you begin this exciting journey, I want to offer you some encouragement and guidance to help you navigate the opportunities and challenges ahead. First, your decision to explore mainframe technology is a wise one. Despite the perceptions and myths that mainframes are going away, they continue to play a critical role in enterprises all over the world, from banking and finance to healthcare and transportation, and many more.  Your ..read more

  Written by Caroline McNamara, Content developer at IBM and Galasa Contributor Find out how I got the pre-requisite software installed on my machine – the commands I used, the software versions I installed, and how I set up my environment variables so that I could start using the Galasa command line tool on my Mac. ## What software did I need to install? I wanted to start running the Galasa-provided tests locally on my Mac using the Galasa command line tool (galasactl). I planned to use Maven and Gradle for creating my Galasa projects, so I installed the following open-source software v ..read more

             Michael Bauer & Sudharsana Srinivasa Written by Michael Bauer, Co-chair of the COBOL Programming Course and Software Engineering Supervisor at Broadcom; and Sudharsana Srinivasan, Co-Chair of COBOL Programming Course and IBM Z Technical Enablement Manager       The Importance of COBOL (Credit: DALL-E) An Established Presence COBOL running on mainframes continues to be responsible for the often unseen operation of the world’s economy. Financial institutions, insurance companies, retailers, and government entities rely on the ..read more