The Future of Business Using Enterprise Server

Market Review

Paper by Bloor by Paper June 2021 David Norfolk The Future of Business The Future of …using 3.0 Services Server Enterprise Publish date date Publish Market Review Market Author A company has to stay“ in business while modernising its systems and any modernisation must have a clearly documented business case and properly managed risk. What this means is that migrating a working system to a new platform may not be a good use of resources, especially as alternative modernisation options (such as the provision of cloud APIs or Application Programming Interfaces) are available. ” Executive summary

he Future of Business will Well, the nub of the business issue we be largely built on the past, spotlight here is that migration to Cloud T for existing companies. is often recommended simplistically as Modernisation of what you have already, a platform for future business, almost as presumably “fit for current purpose” (or you a fashion option, with implied promises wouldn’t be in business) avoids waste and of ultimate agility, elastic capabilities mitigates certain classes of risk (although, without limits and low cost; but the if not done properly, it can add new risks). actuality is often different – and never Modernisation, of course, implies fit for quite being able to complete a migration evolution and change – once modernised, off Enterprise Server 3.0, because the you will be making further changes to business realities won’t let you, is accommodate new business. probably the most expensive scenario Modernisation of what For big enterprises, the world still runs of all. Cloud provides a wide choice of you have already,“ on very large, very resilient, servers – often platforms, some with innovative and presumably “fit for current referred to as “mainframes”, although attractive characteristics, but three truths Bloor prefers the term Enterprise Server remain important: purpose” (or you wouldn’t be in business) avoids 3.0. In 2021/2, the University of Surrey is • Workloads must run on the most offering a Mainframe Computing Module appropriate platform for satisfying the waste and mitigates (COM3015). Promoting this module, it says business need, with a business case certain classes of risk. that “80% of the world’s corporate data justification. resides or originates on IBM mainframes. IBM mainframes (“System z”) are used by • The choice of appropriate platform 95% of US Fortune 500 companies, 71% must be a fact-based, not a fashion- of global Fortune 500 companies, all of based, decision. the top 25 worldwide banks, 23 of the • If you change platform for existing ” top 25 US retailers and 9 out of 10 of the workloads, regardless of the world's largest insurance companies. The economics of the destination platform, mainframe operating system z/OS supports the economics of the journey matter. large-scale databases through DB2, IBM's flagship mainframe database software, A properly managed enterprise server and IBM's mainframe transaction serving has capabilities in the areas of security, software CICS handles more than 30 billion resilience, performance and reliability that transactions per day”. are hard to match with clusters of 8086 And not just IBM mainframes – servers, running commodity operating vendors such as Unisys still sell very large systems. Moreover, even if an apparently resilient Intel 8086 servers (that is, servers more modern platform might be your using the chip designs used in ordinary preferred choice if starting from scratch PCs) that fit the definition ofEnterprise today (although remember that a modern Server 3.0: a server that can “add or hot Enterprise Server 3.0 actually implements swap system capacity without disruption… state of the art technology), migrating an handle very high volume input and output existing system with proven regulatory (I/O) and emphasize throughput computing... compliance and value delivery to a new replace dozens or even hundreds of smaller platform will be both expensive and risky; servers”. See more about Enterprise Server in large part because of the logistics 3.0 on Bloor’s website, here. and cost of proving that its business Bloor believes that the Future of behaviours haven’t changed over the Business (FoB) is mutable. That is, future migration. More to the point, there may businesses will be in a constant state well be no obvious and holistic business of evolutionary change, in response to benefit from the migration. rapidly evolving business environments The bottom line is that a company (often, in the shorter term, responding has to stay in business while modernising to the consequences of the COVID 19 its systems and any modernisation must pandemic). So, what is the place of have a clearly documented business case Enterprise Server 3.0 in the FoB? and properly managed risk. What this

3 A Bloor Market Review Paper means is that migrating a working system Similarly, we regard ES-3 security to a new platform may not be a good (with tools such as RACF, Top Secret and use of resources, especially as alternative ACF2) as out of scope here. Fran Howarth modernisation options (such as the covers ES-3 security for Bloor. provision of cloud APIs or Application This report is intended for C-level Programming Interfaces) are available. management, Enterprise Architects This paper examines the options for and business managers who wish to modernising existing business systems understand the modernisation options running on Enterprise Server 3.0 in more available to them. detail, and examines the sources of assistance that are available. We don’t see This paper examines a world of discrete technology platforms “the options for with more or less cumbersome interfaces modernising existing any more than we see the Atlantic Ocean as physically separate from the Pacific business systems and the other 4 oceans – there is one running on Enterprise global ocean. We see all the traditional Server 3.0 in more technology platforms, in a well managed detail, and examines organisation, as an integrated whole, with the sources of currents of data flowing between the different areas, each with different local assistance that are characteristics, of the technology ocean. available. The Enterprise Server 3 platform has extremely powerful database services, capable of processing huge volumes of data and servicing tens of thousands (even, in special cases, over a million) ” transactions per second, according to Precisely. And were are not just talking about DB2 relational database but the IMS hierarchical database; Adabas inverted list database and the Natural 4GL; IDMS network database; and others. This is a huge subject, however, deserving a paper in its own right, and we will not look at these further here (Philip and Daniel Howard are looking at ES-3 database tools for Bloor). We will just point out that it is important to compare like with like when assessing ES-3 databases – they may not look very cost effective for small datasets but at the very largest scale, competitors may simply not bother to compete.

Future of Business – modernising ES-3 is still in use, in fact, usage is Enterprise Server 3.0 applications increasing if anything. In its brochure for its Bloor believes that the Future of 2021/2 Mainframe Computing module, the Business lies with “mutable businesses” University of Surrey is offering a Mainframe in a constant state of evolutionary Computing Module claims that. “80% of the change, in responding to rapidly evolving world’s corporate data resides or originates business environments (in the short term, on IBM mainframes. IBM mainframes this has been speeded up due to the (“System z”) are used by 95% of US Fortune consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic, 500 companies, 71% of global Fortune 500 but it has been a trend since before that). companies, all of the top 25 worldwide banks, Nevertheless, some things don’t change 23 of the top 25 US retailers and 9 out of 10 so much, or so quickly (especially in highly of the world’s largest insurance companies. Definition of Enterprise regulated industries such as banking) The mainframe operating system z/OS Server 3.0: a server“ that and it is important that you don’t go supports large-scale databases through DB2, can “add or hot swap out of business while navigating your IBM’s flagship mainframe database software, journey through the changes involved and IBM’s mainframe transaction serving system capacity without in becoming a “mutable business”. What software CICS handles more than 30 billion disruption… handle this means is that the business-critical transactions per day”. very high volume input systems of record in a large enterprise, And it is not just IBM mainframes – and output (I/O) and usually running on a big powerful vendors such as Unisys still sell very large emphasize throughput mainframe and often written in languages resilient Intel 8086 servers (that is, servers like COBOL, have to be modernised using the chip designs used in ordinary computing... replace or replaced, in order to support a 21st PCs) that fit thedefinition of Enterprise dozens or even hundreds century Mutable Business, and the Server 3.0: a server that can “add or hot swap of smaller servers”. strategy chosen for this modernisation/ system capacity without disruption… handle replacement process will have profound very high volume input and output (I/O) and implications for the business. emphasize throughput computing... replace To start with, let us just review this dozens or even hundreds of smaller servers”. “mainframe” concept. Forget about the We also need to define the term ” 1980s room-sized monolith with its Modernisation. Following Rocket Software green-screen command-line interfaces. and others, we see it as “investing to Today’s mainframe (IBM Z for example), innovate”, so that ES-3 systems not only although based on the same well- support the status quo efficiently and designed architecture, is smaller, more cost-effectively but also support new powerful, faster, capable of running use cases as just another automation Linux on built-in UNIX “blades” and service. Modernisation may sometimes with a variety of graphical interfaces involve re-platforming, but the goal is available to it. The term “mainframe” to always be running workloads on the comes with baggage that is no longer most appropriate platform and in many relevant, as we shall see, so (in order to cases, this will still be ES-3. In fact, after avoid confusion) Bloor prefers to talk investigating modernisation of IBM Z about Enterprise Server v3.0 (ES-3). ES-1 or i systems in 440 businesses worldwide, was the old 1980s Mainframe; ES-2 is IDC found that: the 1990s commodity processor cluster (although this never finally replaced ES-1 “businesses that remain on what are in many organisations) and ES-3 is “just sometimes referred to as “legacy” another server” although a server with platforms and that take advantage of abilities (throughput, parallel processing, the plethora of hardware and software performance, scalability, potential innovations that have been made security and resilience – you can replace available for those platforms have an processors without bringing down the overall better outcome, quantitatively business service – that the commodity and qualitatively, than those that move competition finds it hard to match. off them”.

5 A Bloor Market Review Paper What this means is that there must based and take a lifetime perspective. always be a business case, based on What is a cost effective decision with balancing Value and Cost, for making the a six month horizon may cripple the choice between reusing, modernising, organisation’s productivity over the next re-platforming and replacing legacy decade. ES-3 applications. Just because “everyone It is important, as DXC explained to knows” that “the mainframe is expensive us, to balance value and cost arguments. and cumbersome”, you can’t skip the Value is hard to quantify in advance, costs holistic lifetime business case and shift are easy to pin down in monetary terms. everything onto distributed clusters, This often leads to the prioritisation of cost because what “everyone knows” is often over value – the danger is that by cutting There must always be wrong or, at best, out of date. investment to the bone you start to impact “a business case, based Dropping down a level, as IBM has productivity and leave no spare capacity on balancing Value always said about its Z ES-03 platform, for innovation and experimentation. It is the issue when implementing a business hard to be a mutable business if there is and Cost, for making case, is understanding the workload or no slack anywhere the choice between workloads involved and running them on Part of DXC’s value proposition is reusing, modernising, the most suitable platform, considering skills transfer for optimising an ES-3 re-platforming and the holistic needs of all stakeholders. This platform’s service costs and productivity, replacing legacy ES-3 is primarily a business discussion – if the using the management expertise, business case is for modernising a legacy processes and tools it has built up over applications. application, the important thing is not the years. For instance, a public sector to go out of business on the migration business needed a more agile operational journey. In some cases, this might platform than it had on-premises. mean that a “good enough” destination Platform-as-a-service delivered improved is preferable overall to an “optimal” performance (transaction volumes ” destination. You can waste a lot of rime improved ten times and response times and resources deciding what “optimal” improved by 97%) and reduced the risk of means; a really good, testing, definition of outages and service disruptions resulting “good enough” may be easier to achieve. from capacity increases. The issues that you may meet during Another use case is from an modernisation include the identification automotive manufacturer with a business of all stakeholders, and weighting them need for an infrastructure outsourcing by their importance; and making an contract and lower costs. It saved up to unbiased business case, without undue 30% on total cost of ownership with a influence from individual self-interest, well-chosen multi-year infrastructure politics, or a religious belief in a particular outsourcing contract offering less risk than technology. And, as Bloor Analyst Martin other competitors. Fast provisioning by Banks has said, “The issue here is that itself resulted in savings of $1.3 million. focusing on technology changes misses An insurance business needed to the point that the business processes don’t scale the business from a regional to get changed. If they do, they are changed national provider; with 3rd party help, because of the technology change, which is it achieved a robust, flexible technology entirely the wrong way round.” Ideally, you environment that supported the need a reasonably mature organisation; company’s growth goals with stable one that makes fact-based decisions, one applications, ES-3 operations, and flexible that adopts some form of “do – measure resources, whilst still reducing the cost – evaluate – improve” approach; and one of IT by 50% in five years. The goal that definitely avoids the seduction of is for organisations to accommodate “blame culture”. Sometimes, modernisation organisational and market changes involves moving platforms, sometimes it without incurring significant capital doesn’t, but the decision should be fact investment.

© 2021 Bloor 6 Nevertheless, there are real issues • Workload optimisation: ES-3 works to address with many legacy ES-3 best when highly utilised and often installations, which you wouldn’t expect offers cheap (or free) processing to encounter if you had the luxury of a power on “speciality engines” for net-new implementation. In part, these Linux, cryptography etc., which you are because of the importance of these need to take advantage of. This means legacy systems to the business. They are that you may want to move workloads often regulated “systems of record” and onto ES-3 if it is available. often have to be kept for many years. If • The rise of low-cost hosting solutions someone queries a transaction from five and “as a service” delivery as an years ago, can you recreate it, if you are alternative on-premises infrastructure now running on a different platform? mitigates the increasing challenge of If someone queries a Of course, you can and should include managing mainframes in-house. transaction from“ five answering such questions in your design, years ago, can you but satisfying this requirement may add • Cultural issues including resistance to the cost of migration. to unfamiliar technology but also recreate it, if you are now A related question is that of addressing “blame cultures” and “hero running on a different maintaining the behaviours of your cultures” that make implementing platform? Of course, systems on a new platform. If you are fact-based changes harder. We deal with these in more detail below. you can and should reporting to an external regulator, they include answering such may take exception to seeing a step • The difficulty of finding specialist, change in your reporting as you switch to skilled, mainframe personnel these questions in your design, a new platform – even if the new figures days. but satisfying this are, in fact, more accurate. Will you have Knowledge management: the mining requirement may add to to account for many years of supplying • of the business knowledge embodied the cost of migration. the “wrong” figures? Even a small error in many legacy systems for re-use and could add up to a large sum in a big the capture of knowledge/skills in the system. What this means is that when heads of retiring ES-3 specialists. You you engage with external consultants for may need to outsource knowledge migrating off ES-3, the cost savings look and advisory services to a trusted impressive. But once you are committed, ” third party if they are no longer you get told about “regression testing”, to available in-house. prove the outcomes have only changed in ways that you attended – and the cost In general, you address these issues saving can markedly reduce. by designing a modernisation process Issues that you may have to consider with well-specified success indicators include: and review points, probably with the • Pressure from the rising cost of older, help of experienced external advisors. less mainstream, infrastructure. It is important that you budget (money and resources) for change management, Older, often monolithic designs may • cultural development, training and add operational complexity that knowledge management – and don’t impacts the operation of the business. overlook investing in modern tools such • Fewer skilled personnel who as machine learning. Don’t expect cultural understand older systems – issues change, say, to “just happen”; and don’t of death, retirement and career expect people to retrain in their spare time. development • A consequent need to reduce Application Modernisation – dependencies on systems that do technology issues not offer modern environments (so The business case for modernisation you might want to move from a should come first. There is little point traditional Mainframe to zLinux); in modernising an application which

7 A Bloor Market Review Paper is working “well enough” where it is, Linux, while fundamentally a far better beyond (possibly) adding APIs to extend design than Windows, was never really its scope. Nevertheless, when “businesses designed in the first place for the sort of run on software” it isn’t possible to workloads z/OS excels at (paradoxically, ignore enabling technology and many if you do want to run Linux, ES-3 may be existing ES-3 applications may be both the best place to do it) and still has some business critical and, being written in problems. old-fashioned monolithic (but, hopefully, Another technical benefit of ES-3 component-based) form, less part of the is the design of much of its software. mainstream IT of the organisation than There is a reason that businesses are they should be – which makes them still running on IBM’s CICS (Customer Even Linux, while prime candidates for modernisation. Information Control System) Transaction “fundamentally a far Before you start, however, think Server after some 53 years – and think better design than about your investment in ES-3. This of the aggregate business value it has platform is so powerful, scalable delivered over those decades. Parts Windows, was never and resilient, not just because of the of CICS were fundamentally designed really designed physical hardware you can see, which properly (in a very real sense “correctly”) in the first place for is impressive, but not uniquely so. in the first place, using mathematical the sort of workloads To a significant extent, the value of proof for key components [DOWNLOAD PDF], z/OS excels at. legacy ES-3 platforms comes from which is something that developers of the sophistication and design of their fundamental software components that operating systems and their integration will be widely reused could learn from with chip architectures. IBM’s z/OS today. The trick, we think, is to combine operating system on its Z ES-3 platforms mathematical proof, used where it works is a typical implementation of ES-3 well, with conventional testing, used ” using proprietary IBM chips, but the where it doesn’t. 8086 (PC) architecture capability has There is also a connected issue: even improved over the last 20 years and with all the current furore in the technical has enabled Unisys, particularly, to press about microservices-architecture, provide emulation of the expected ES-3 this may not always be the best design capabilities on this platform too. for applications. A microservices- Don’t overlook the importance of architecture is where applications the operating system. IBM’s z/OS has are built up from small, independent, its basis in the old OS/370 architecture easy-to-write modules, orchestrated (and before that OS/360) and has lasted with lightweight network calls to deliver because its original designers got it business outcomes. This has real benefits right. It was designed for performance, for coding efficiency and quality, and security, user isolation etc. from the start. fits will with modern developments In contrast, early Windows compromised such as containerisation. Nevertheless, its hardware abstraction layer with microservices also have shortcomings device drivers early on. What this means such as involving many more moving is, to speed up access to printers, disks parts, leading to difficulty in designing etc., they were allowed direct access and testing the system as a whole and an to the hardware and the Windows increase in infrastructure complexity. operating system kernel. Although things We wouldn’t go so far as to are a lot better now, Windows has been recommend absolutely monolithic playing catch-up [DOWNLOAD PDF] with applications (written as just one slab bolted-on security and fundamental of unstructured code; they can perform redesigns ever since. Think of Windows very well but are often the devil to Vista and Windows 10 and the upheaval maintain and enhance), as we spent they caused while addressing the a lot of the 1970s and 80s promoting security failings of Windows 95. Even component-based architectures and

© 2021 Bloor 8 reusable components. Component-based • The Open Mainframe Project, is design works rather well in COBOL, the the home of the Zowe open source Common Business-Oriented Language software framework that should used for programming back then for facilitate the management and what we’d now think of as monolithic control of software on the Z platform applications. Nevertheless, microservices- with a user experience familiar to based architectures are generally the Cloud users generally. We find Zowe first choice for today’s systems as they very in interesting in concept, but we are easier to code and test as individual haven't seen it used significantly in services; even if they are also harder production yet. to integration-test and more complex • ES-3 DevOps As the barriers as a whole system. Each approach has between Dev and Operations fall Microservices-based its place, and both can be disastrous and with solutions from vendors architectures“ are of used with a poor architecture or if like BMC and initiatives such as generally the first designed badly. It is, as usual, a question the Open Mainframe Project, ES-3 choice for today’s of matching the available approaches to development and operations teams the environment and business need. If you can increasingly manage, control systems as they are want a more technical look at the issues and develop software on, say, the Z easier to code and test here, which is out of scope for this paper, platform just as they would on any as individual services; there are many papers dealing with the other cloud platform. although they are also pros and cons of micro-service architectures on the Web. • LinuxONE, a IBM ES-3 platform harder to integration- Modernisation may, but need not, specialised for Linux, which scales test and more complex involve moving some functionality off an up to millions of sessions, tens of as a whole system. ES-3 platform. There are now key (and thousands of containers, 8,000 virtual well tested) technologies supporting servers and over 30 billion RESTful application modernisation from web interactions per day. Linux also companies such as Micro Focus, Rocket, runs on any of IBM’s z/OS platforms. DXC, IBM and so on. More generally, new • AI – IBM Research is using AI ” enabling technologies are now available: (augmented intelligence) to • Hybrid multi-cloud. This allows automate refactoring (modernisation) you to treat all platforms as one, of monolithic Java applications into using cloud-style APIs for access. modular components. This is not With hybrid multicloud, virtualised available for other languages yet, infrastructure can reside on public but it is a pointer to the way IBM, cloud, private cloud, on-premises and others, are thinking about private cloud. You can even treat refactoring monolithic applications systems running on-premises ES-3 on z/OS. hardware as a corner of your cloud with a particularly restrictive SLA, as One key technology issue is testing long as it is accessed through cloud- and, especially, as already mentioned, like APIs. regression testing. In theory, every requirement has a test or several tests – • Containerisation (with, for example, if a requirement can’t be tested, it isn’t a OpenShift and Kubernetes). Without real requirement. I can’t ask for a system going into technical details, that performs fast enough, as that is containers are light-weight virtual a matter of opinion. If I ask for it to machines, which can encapsulate maintain sub-second response times on existing components; and kubernetes 90% of transactions, with no transaction is an open source industry standard longer than 2 secs, while processing up for the orchestration of containers to 2000 transactions a minute, that can into business applications. be tested.

9 A Bloor Market Review Paper Unfortunately, if you are modernising an You can access Mainframe-as-a-Service older system, you may not have its original (MaaS) using an ES-3 platform running test cases and rest data; if you have, they in someone else's datacentre, via cloud may no longer run because of changes to services, if that makes more sense than the system. You will have to baseline the running your own datacentre. Another existing system (document its behaviour example: you can run Linux on z/OS, but and performance), design and implement you can also run it natively on a system x suitable test cases (while making sure bladeserver plugged into the back of your that the privacy of any real customers that ES-3 hardware. might be be included in your test data is Even pricing has got more flexible in protected) and build a test pack. This is the many cases – no longer do you always The bottom line is, equivalent of coding quite a large system have to install (and pay for) a bigger “don’t assume that and the resources needed may render ES-3 platform than you need, in case you understand replacing legacy systems from scratch you have to deal with, say, a pre-Xmas impracticable. Modernisation may be a peak in demand. You can often install ES-3 technology better choice than wholesale replacement extra processors or a processor speed issues and options simply because the less you change, the less switch which lets you pay for what you today because you you have to test. Regression testing, to prove are actually using and switch on extra used a green-screen that the behaviours of a legacy system power just for when you need it – and mainframe many haven’t changed except as anticipated, is a then switch it off and stop paying for it. problem for modernisation, especially if the Another innovation these days is flexible years ago. The ES-3 original analysis, design and requirements mainframe pricing. This gives ES-3 technology has documentation is no longer available customers more flexible pricing models evolved over the (there are working systems where even (by average CPU usage or machine years just as the rest the source code doesn’t correspond exactly capacity) than are traditionally available. of IT has. to what is being executed). It is an even See for example, Precisely’s blog. bigger problem if you rewrite from scratch, In addition, a particular capability on because you not only have to find out what many ES-3 platforms is the availability the requirements today are, you have to of “speciality engines”: hardware assisted determine how the old system behaved in services on specialist processors for things equivalent detail, so you can determine if like running Linux, computation-heavy ” there are any changes, and address them, processes such as encryption and so on. before anyone outside the organisation ES-3 handles multiprocessing particularly notices. well and these processors are sometimes Regression testing is really part of effectively free or involve a one-time cost managing change risk. However good and are critical to getting the best possible and well-engineered a new platform is, value out of your mainframe platform – as there is always the risk that something Precisely explains. has been left out of its design spec. or it The bottom line is, don’t assume that behaves slightly differently to how you you understand ES-3 technology issues expect it to. It’s a balance – a new, more and options today because you used a modern, platform may well be more cost- green-screen mainframe many years ago. effective than a legacy platform – but The ES-3 technology has evolved over the there is a risk-related cost of migration years just as the rest of IT has. too. When you are evaluating the cost of new technology and new hardware, don’t Enterprise Server 3.0 and DevOps forget to include migration cost and risk DevOps is about driving the business value management, unless you are building an of software delivery, according to “The IT entirely net-new system. Manager’s Guide to DevOps from digital. In summary, there are many more ES-3 ai”. DevOps has now mostly taken over platform options than there used to be. the development mindset in distributed

© 2021 Bloor 10 systems, although iterative variations maintaining ES-3 systems (although, as I on the Waterfall method are still used said, there can still be a place for iterative effectively in some outsourcing-style waterfall). Compuware can claim a lot of engagements. DevOps is, in essence, the credit for this, and it is a good place the removal of silo boundaries between to find out more about it. ES-3 DevOps Development and Operations, with a remains a strong part of BMC's vision after continuous delivery pipeline for delivering its acquisition of Compuware, although high-quality software to production, quality BMC and Compuware no longer have a being assured by continuous integration monopoly of ES-3 DevOps. and continuous testing. There is, in essence, Why ES-3 DevOps? Well, you should a positive feedback loop between software aim to achieve 5 positive outcomes from build and production release. its adoption: ES-3 DevOps is This is not the place to examine the 1 More Mutable ES-3 systems – systems now becoming“ issues and success factors for DevOps that can support continuous evolution ubiquitous and the in detail. For instance, whether Dev or in support of changing business needs; Ops predominates. We would say Ops default approach over Dev, since Ops looks after the 2 A greater velocity of software delivery to building and lifetime delivery of value from software, – small functional changes delivered maintaining ES-3 often; which needn’t be built (making Dev less systems. essential) but could be purchased as 3 Better quality software from containerised components. Then, there is continuous delivery/testing; the issue of whether the feedback loop 4 Better business outcomes from better is big enough, since what business needs quality software; is not just high-quality software but the right software – perhaps the pipeline 5 Better integration between teams ” should start with design thinking and working on Systems of Record and on deliver business outcome or business user user interface Apps. experience. And, should non-functional If you are not achieving these, and this requirements such as security and implies that suitable metrics are available performance be built into the pipeline – for determining this, than you should be of course they should. working out why not. This is relevant to ES-3 because DevOps is proving a key way of bringing Enterprise Server 3.0 the ES-3 culture, and particularly ES-3 and Systems Management Ops culture, into the organisation's Systems management is both the USP for mainstream. This is why DevOps has been ES-3 and a perceived barrier to adoption. given a section on its own here. It is also ES3 is supremely resilient, robust, secure, why the expanded view of DevOps above performant and manageable – providing matters, because ES-3 culture is based it is, in fact, managed. But there are real around very large systems, optimised differences with ES-3 from distributed throughput and business outcomes, not systems: ES-3 tends to perform better just software delivery. That said, DevOps when very highly utilised – one set of addresses some endemic issues with ES-3 benchmarks found average mainframe software delivery in the past – lack of CPU utilization over a 30-day period was change velocity; lack of flexibility; and a 53%, with the best-practice participant mismatch between highly regulated ES-3 averaging 75% utilisation. During prime Systems of Record and the modern Apps shift (Monday through Friday, 7:00 a.m. to which power user experience (both can be 6:00 p.m.), survey participants achieved maintained with a DevOps culture). average utilisation of 68%, with the ES-3 DevOps is now becoming ubiquitous best-practice participant reaching a high and the default approach to building and of 83%. This contrasts with PC servers,

11 A Bloor Market Review Paper which usually work best with much • Workload management. If you need to lower utilisation. And, you can’t easily put workloads on the most suitable, just plug in a new ES-3 when you run cost effective, platform, you had out of capacity, in the way in which you better understand workloads and can plug a new commodity Intel server how their characteristics change over into your cluster. But, these days, IBM (for time. Workloads may well need to example) will sell you (or give you access migrate to different platforms as their to) a much larger Z ES-3 server than you characteristics change. currently need and only charge you for the functionality you actually use. In fact, • Performance management. ES-3 can IBM will switch on (and charge for) extra be very performant but they are as Adequate ES-3 systems power to cope with a processing peak susceptible to bottlenecks and so “management training that only lasts for a few days, after which on as anything else. Since you are must be available, charging reverts to normal. probably using ES-3 because you What this means is that adequate ES-3 need the performance it is capable of, and you might even systems management training must be effective performance management is want to offer retiring available, and you might even want to offer a good idea. retiring ES-3 support staff a part-time role ES-3 support staff • Security. ES-3 can be made extremely a part-time role as as mentors for new staff. Nevertheless, a secure indeed, but some people mentors for new lot of distributed management knowledge tend to rely on “security by obscurity”, translates over to ES-3 well; perhaps one staff. Nevertheless, because “no-one knows how ES-3 of the biggest, yet least important, barriers works”. Believe me, if your ES-3 a lot of distributed to acceptance of ES-3 is terminology: the platform holds valuable information management use of terms such as DASD (Direct Access they want to steal, criminals can hire knowledge translates Storage Device – or disk drive), Workload, ES-3 experts. Moreover, there are over to ES-3 well; JCL (job control language) etc. This is easily published ES-3 exploits which require addressed with training and online support perhaps one of the no specialised ES-3 knowledge. You – but it does need to be addressed. need to ensure that your general biggest, yet least Some of the management skills security policies and best practices important, barriers to you may need for an effective ES-3 are extended to cover ES-3. installation (beyond the general system acceptance of ES-3 is Pricing models – and, in particular, terminology. management skills you probably already • have) include: recent innovations in pricing • Job scheduling. This is EC-3’s “secret sauce” – job schedulers aren’t widely The importance of keeping up with used in distributed systems (beyond the latest ES-3 trends cannot be over- ad-hoc scripting) but they are a mature stressed. Modern mainframes are ” technology on ES-3. If you want to smaller and tell a good “green” story: maximise throughput of very large water cooling, for example, facilitates workloads on ES-3, you want effective the reclamation of waste heat and IBM parallel processing. Running a network was using this technology in a Zurich of independent jobs in such a way that supercomputer as far back as 2010. And there is no competition for resources is there is now even an open source Open an effective way of maximising parallel Mainframe initiative. It held a virtual processing and a good ES-3 scheduler Summit in 2020, with leadership from is how you manage this. the Linux Foundation event team; and sponsorship from Broadcom, IBM, Rocket • Capacity planning. If you are Software, SUSE, Vicom Infinity, and Micro processing very large workloads you Focus; and more than 380 registrants probably can’t afford to install a great from 176 companies. The open deal of spare capacity “just in case”, so Mainframe project is intended to promote capacity planning is essential. the use of Linux operating systems and

© 2021 Bloor 12 open source software on ES-3 platforms. Its first project is Zowe which aims at making IBM’s z/OS more accessible with a choice if Command Line Interface; or the “Zowe Explorer” Visual Studio extension (a web browser from the Zowe Application Framework); or through REST APIs and web sockets served through the API Mediation Layer. Zowe is also an easy-to-extend tool plugin platform, although existing ES-3 DevOps solutions (such as those from BMC) can already be …a modern used to connect the ES-3 platform with ES-3 box“ even popular Open Source tools, such as Git looks sexy! and Jenkins. The bottom line is that ES-3 is by no means a “dying platform”. Interesting systems management developments are a good sign of there being life in the “old” platform yet – and a modern ES-3 box ” even looks sexy!

13 A Bloor Market Review Paper Cultural issues around Enterprise Server 3.0

he biggest issues you’ll to on the change journey. In house have with modernising ES-3 change managers often don’t have the T platforms and making them depth of experience needed and can be just another part of of your general IT hampered by a fixation on the status infrastructure are probably cultural. The quo and internal politics. Don’t overlook traditional ES-3 culture is risk-averse the wealth of knowledge available from and outcome-focused, fully aware that vendors, but it is probably best not to rely something going wrong that impacts on vendor support – sometimes it may be the business can lose it lots of money; biased towards their own products and The biggest issues distributed culture is innovation oriented agendas; and even if it isn’t, your staff and “you’ll have with and accepts risk, even at a cost to the other stakeholders may not believe this. modernising ES-3 business. You need both and part of what If you do use external change mentors, management does is balancing the safety don’t overlook the need for skills transfer. platforms and of the status quo against innovation and You don’t want to be locked into external making them just risk – depending on the organisation’s consultancy for ever. But you also want another part of of appetite for risk. to see cultural change as a continuing your general IT Prime directions for cultural programme, not as a project with an end infrastructure are modernisation are the removal of date, and you want to back it up with silos and the consequent barriers to “cultural awareness” training that starts probably cultural. communication and collaboration; with the induction of new staff. Culture and consideration of the needs of all isn’t simply a matter of retraining ES-3 stakeholders (including society – green staff either, it is a matter for all staff and computing – and auditors, customers and you must explain what the benefit is for regulators), not just the IT group. Some them – for instance, a focus on diversity ” of these groups are more risk-averse and resilience will probably improve than others, some are more fickle than the user experience for everyone. Career others, some more financially driven development is a part of managing than others. And silos may exist because culture, as is diversity and social inclusion. of the politics of strong personalities or Good culture attracts good talent, because the organisational culture is built so after you have modernised your around “command and control”. Cultural culture, put diversity commitments, modernisation needs thought and skill privacy policies and commitments to – it isn’t something trivial that can be social responsibility on your website. managed in someone’s spare time. Don’t ever try to fake them (this is very Cultural change must be specifically counterproductive, even to internal part of the organisation’s plans, with morale) but if they are genuine, they allocated resources, and it should appear help you to be seen as a good place to in the budget. If it doesn’t, we’d question work. Having a VP of Diversity or Social whether there is real management Responsibility, if genuine, might help too. commitment to the importance of culture Good culture isn’t just a nice thing to and doubt if anything will change – or, have, it brings real business benefits for at least, whether any changes will be quality and collaboration as well. “sticky” after top management attention moves on. Cultural change does need top management commitment but it can’t simply be imposed by diktat. Bottom up buy-in to change is important and it is often necessary to get independent external advice and provide mentors with experience of both where you are coming from and where you are going

Integration of new digital services with core ES-3 systems for a very large 1 US insurance company.

Risk Factors (in priority order) Consequences 1 Cultural change, integration of This organisation eliminated barriers to Agile and previously non-Agile change on the IBM Z platform, with one of communities. the first changes being to replace a legacy Source Code Management system with 2 Communication across diverse Git. It sees modern development tools as physical infrastructure platforms. helping to open up the ES-03 platform to younger developers with no existing Actors experience of IBM Z. Architecture managers. It is building on its successful high- availability ES-3 platform, which is Priority essential to its business and will continue Strategic to future success of the on into the future, with a new hybrid-cloud organisation. infrastructure, which supports a platform agnostic future for business automation Status – which each workload running on the In production implementation. most appropriate platform for delivering the desired business outcome. And, DevOps Challenge is allowing it to accelerate the software This organisation wants to accelerate development lifecycle, regardless of velocity of systems innovation and platform. introduce consistent and modern development practices across all of its development environments, including ES-3 (IBM Z). Its customers now expect a consistent user experience and ease of goal achievement regardless of whether they engage face-to-face, online or via a mobile app. It is moving to offering self- service tools, so time-to-market matters and development practices must support rapid change. The organisation sees its core ES-3 systems, tried and tested over 50 years, as offering competitive advantage, but also wants to compete on being nimble and responsive. It is achieving this, in part, by introducing DevOps practices to its ES-3 platforms, thus enabling all its developers to share a common culture.

15 A Bloor Market Review Paper Customer use case

A US State Court needs the 24x7 security and resilience of ES-3, but modernises to 2 reduce cost of ownership.

Risk Factors (in priority order) Using Java and IBM Websphere, it can 1 Change is always risky, especially when now provide a modern user-friendly GUI politics might be involved. experience for its existing applications, without moving them to Linux, although 2 Costs in government are always in the it does have Linux applications on its ES-3 public eye and mistakes are very visible. platform. It also has Linux applications on distributed systems, consuming data from Actors the ES-3 core. It’s new, simplified, platform IT Director. offers the possibility of further application simplification in future. Priority Mission critical – a 4x7 resilient high Consequences availability computing service is essential to The new ES-3 platform effectively cuts maintaining court services. maintenance costs in half and, as existing workloads can be accommodated with less Status CPU resource on a more modern machine, In production implementation. software licensing costs have reduced too. Photo © BMC Performance has been maintained, Challenge despite lower costs – in fact, this This institution had an effective working organisation cut overnight batch ES-3 platform based around two ES-3 processing times (it is critical that these servers. It wanted to consolidate, for jobs finish before the online day starts) by improved cost-efficiency and manageability, about 1.5 hours, even before tuning. without impacting the service being It also sees the new platform as provided. enabling valuable business initiatives such The second machine was acquired for as pervasive encryption of sensitive data. an externally-funded system and wasn’t And, the availability of Linux on Z makes it necessary for the organisations assessed easier for the organisation to attract new business continuity requirements. talent (it also supports ES-3 education at The organisation, with the help of universities across the USA) external consultancy, determined that moving to the latest generation of IBM Z server would both boost performance and reduce footprint – the ES-3 platform is not standing still – while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO). It is worth noting that part of its success comes from optimising the new ES-3 environment. Just copying applications from one platform to another would not be so effective, so that external consultancy is often worth the investment.

Major Chinese air travel and tourism provider 3 renews commitment to ES-3 after COVID crisis.

Risk Factors (in priority order) Consequences 1 Increased load following COVID 19 According to an SVP, at this company, it recovery. maintains and operates several critical passenger and cargo solutions used by 2 “Fashion” pressure to modernise China's air travel and tourism industries platforms radically post-crisis. including the Global Distribution System, Reservation System, Departure and Cargo Actors systems. As China’s aviation industry Senior management team. continues to rapidly recover after COVD- 19, the additional processing capacity Priority within the scalable, secure and flexible Essential to taking advantage ClearPath Forward environment will of COVID 19 recovery. enable it to process more transactions – such as reservations and load calculations Status critical to flight safety – quickly and Future commitment. securely. Key to the choice of the Unisys Challenge ClearPath Forward operating environment We’ve always seen China as less sceptical is its unmatched security record – it of ES-3 than some countries, probably claims to be the only ES-3 platform on the because Chinese culture is more inclined market from which data has never been to accept corporate hegemony and forcibly extracted. less impressed by individual “pirates”; and also because of the sheer scale of internal Chinese systems. In 2020, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) reported 13.26 million air trips during the eight-day National Day and Mid- Autumn Festival holiday October 1-8, 2020, representing a 91.07% recovery compared to the same period in 2019. In response to expected recovery loads, this firm chose to enhance its Unisys Clearpath Forward systems, as opposed to moving to a different platform, representing real confidence in the Unisys ES-3 platform.

17 A Bloor Market Review Paper Vendor Survey

his annotated list of overview • BMC is one of the ES-3 market leaders. vendor solutions, with a It has been actively extending its T sentence or two on each, offerings across both ES-3 and describes the vendor approach to distributed systems in the 21st modernising legacy from (where possible) century. Perhaps its most interesting a Business (rather than a technology) focus is on leveraging augmented point of view, and is largely based on the intelligence (AI), machine learning IBM Z 2021 Solutions Directory. and predictive analytics, in order to There is also a strong IBM Z and ensure performance, availability, and LinuxONE Community, if you want to learn optimisation across the evolving ES-3 more about IBM solutions. environment. Note that these classifications are not • DXC.technology is an important ES-3 absolute, most vendors play in many or services and management company all categories, but we have attempted to with grew out of the merger of CSC categorise by what we see as a main focus. and the Enterprise Services business of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Often Passively integrating collaborates with Micro Focus. ES-3 legacy into modern systems; i.e. just extracting its data • International Software Company (ISC), for use elsewhere. for batch workload automation (E-Gen} You need to worry about data duplication and scheduler migration (uWME). – one source of the truth – and data • Rocket Software is a privately-owned latency – how up to date it is. This is really company that has acquired a number of out of scope for this report (it is covered ES-3 systems management tools, some elsewhere in Bloor) but mentioned just available as Open Source. It is also for completeness. acquiring ASG. ES-3 Education and consultancy • Unisys offers assistance with cost • Enterprise Performance Strategies Inc. balancing, operations admin, assistance (EPS) facilitates and educates around with custom applications and performance management. management of Unisys cross-platform products, for its ClearPath Forward IBM TechU offers a variety of ways to • ES-3 platform. It supports hosted learn, grow and connect with ES-3. or cloud, remote management or • Interskill Learning offers ES-3 on-premises models. workforce training online. • Virtualz optimises/consolidates • Trident Services Inc. offers z/OS ES-3 software licences for significantly consultancy. lower costs.

ES-3 Systems Management • ZETALY leverages AIOps, FinOps, and Outsourcing Automation and Predictive Resource Planning for automation of ES-3 ASG (now becoming part of Rocket) • resource and capacity planning/ offers a range of ES-3 management optimisation. solutions including cross-platform job scheduling with ASG-ZEKE, and • Zowe is an Open Systems Software performance monitoring/optimisation project from the Linux Foundation with ASG-TMON. Open Mainframe initiative, which (along with Red Hat Ansible Beta Systems provides ES-3 system • automation) is bringing a cloud-like log analysis and archive tools as experience to Z. well as bulk document management and archiving, automated process management and so on.

© 2021 Bloor 18 Modernising legacy systems • Micro Focus is an important ES-3 tools, with DevOps, integrating them services and management company with other systems via APIs and with and extremely wide range of building new (e.g. COBOL) code, tools including important COBOL new use cases etc. programming tools and environments • ASG (now becoming part of Rocket) as well as some Hewlett Packard claims to revolutionise ES-3 DevOps acquisitions. Micro Focus often with a toolchain that operates from ES-3 collaborates with DXC. to cloud and is accessed from a modern • PKS produces eXplain for IBM browser-based interface. Mainframe for code analysis and • BMC is a market-leading ES-3 vendor quality improvement, especially providing solutions that enable where monolithic code has poor developers and operations personnel to documentation (it supports COBOL, PL/I, make applications and operations on the Assembler, Natural, Adabas, CICS, IMS ES-3 platform as agile and as modern as DC, IMS DB, Db2, JCL). any other cloud and distributed platform • Precisely is the new company formed is. BMC AMI and BMC Compuware through Syncsort’s acquisition of the provide a DevOps toolchain for the Pitney Bowes Software & Data business. ES-3 platform that supports an open It offers a range of solutions for ecosystem covering the whole IT integrating today’s infrastructure with lifecycle. This enables the enterprise to tomorrow’s technology (including some operate in a consistent, automated and data management and data quality efficient manner across all platforms. tools which ore outside the scope of • Broadcom is a market-leading ES-3 this paper). vendor which offers a lot of application • Rocket Software is an important development tools under its CA brand, but often overlooked privately- such as CA Brightside (an OSS application owned company with a strong IBM development solution using the Zowe provenance and a large range of ES-3 framework and extending supports to tools (including lifecycle management the Code4z mainframe extension pack and DevOps) for modernising the Z for the widely-used Visual Studio Code platform. It supports deep analytics and Eclipse Che IDEs. It also provides and augmented intelligence. It is also DevOps integrations for the CA Endevor acquiring ASG. configuration management solution. • Software AG sells the WebMethods • IBM is a strong supporter for Design Platform, which aims to include all Thinking, Agile Devops , augmented the API management capabilities intelligence and development generally necessary for the end-to-end lifecycle (including OpenSource solutions) on management of high-quality APIs. the ES-3 platform. Following IBM’s pivot to Open Source with its Red Hat • UNICOM Global modernises ES-3 acquisition, it has a strong integration with consumer-grade user experience story around Cloud Paks, OpenShift, using its UniGWdigital transformation zLinux and Linux ONE. platform to seamlessly connect ES-3 applications with web, mobile, chat and • HostBridge Technology HostBridge makes AI technologies. legacy CICS applications available as web services, using open standards such as • Unisys offers its clients help with JavaScript, XML, JSON, or HTTPS, without preserving existing application changing mainframe code. investments and with prioritising and delivering modernisation initiatives • Infotel supplies a DevOps solution for and cost reduction. There is also a quickly spinning up testing container ClearPath Extension Kit, supporting environments on IBM® z/OS – modern languages and tools, such as Application Parallel Testing(APT) Python and Git.

19 A Bloor Market Review Paper ES-3 Hardware and resilience. As we always say, there must Net-new ES-3 systems be a comprehensive whole-lifetime • Amazon Graviton 2. This is a business case for either migration specialised Amazon Web Services or modernisation/retention, and we server using 64-bit Arm Neoverse note that Astadia is a Micro Focus cores to deliver the best price partner. We also note that Astadia has performance for Amazon EC2 cloud acquired (in March 2021) an automated workloads. refactoring tool, for translating systems written in programming languages like • IBM Z. This is the archetypical ES-3 server from IBM and is a focus for COBOL (the latest version of which is ES-3 innovation and hybrid multicloud COBOL 2014), to newer programming integration, influenced by IBM’s pivot languages such as Java and C#. to Open Source and its Red Hat We would see this as a significant acquisition. IBM’s ES-3 (Mainframe) capability. revenue grew well over 50% year-on- • Amazon. There are many ways to year in 4th qtr 2020 its cloud revenue get mainframe data onto AWS for growth, across all segments, was processing – but this is often just healthy too [DOWNLOAD PDF]. extraction/replication, not integration. It looks to us like migration off of • Unisys ClearPath. This is a classic ES-3 server running one of two operating the Enterprise Server. For instance: systems: MCP, which came from How to Unleash Mainframe Data with Burroughs, and OS 2200, which came AWS and Qlik Replicate; How to Enable from Sperry; and now implemented Mainframe Data Analytics on AWS ; on x-86 hardware and Public Cloud Using Model9 Real-Time Mainframe showing that IBM Z isn’t the only ES-3 Data Replication to AWS with tcVISION game in town. from Treehouse Software. As soon as the Enterprise Server data is Replacing legacy systems unlocked and available within an (eliminating legacy servers AWS data store, such as Amazon completely) Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), • Astadia says on its website tagline, customers can use the wide array “We’re consultants on a mission to free of analytics and machine learning organizations from their mainframes”. It services available on the platform is important to run workloads in the for easy access to all relevant data, most appropriate platform and there without, allegedly, compromising are certainly some workloads that are security or governance. Customers not best suited to the ES-3 platform select AWS data services from data (although perhaps rather fewer of catalogue and data processing these with Z Linux available, we'd think, to interactive analytics, real-time these days). Astadia has successful analytics, operational analytics, customer stories for ES-3 replacement, dashboards, and data warehousing. for both Z and Unisys platforms, and Even innovation is possible, as once it has the technical expertise needed mainframe data is on AWS, customers for this in-house (we have talked to innovate by creating new functions its CTO). We are still a bit concerned with cloud speed. For example, some that its marketing message on its choose to create micro-services. website doesn’t mention regression with a complete serverless stack testing much and rather implies via AWS Lambda, accessing their that migration is the only solution mainframe data. Others decide to available and that it will be easier make mainframe data available than it may turn out to be in practice, to new channels, such as mobile if the workload being migrated really users via Amazon API Gateway or needs ES-3 levels of performance/ voice devices such as Amazon Alexa.

© 2021 Bloor 20 Mainframe data can also be easily moved into machine learning models. This all sounds good, but it overlooks a fundamental problem, which is probably addressable but doing so may involve considerable resources. Your AWS Data store is duplicate data. If the “one version of truth” is on the mainframe, how out-of-date is the AWS Data Store? Is latency an issue? Can people update the AWS Data Store without updating the mainframe data? • Fujitsu Progression. This claims to be the answer to moving on from ES-3 and converting legacy COBOL to newer languages. • Google. Google Cloud acquired Cornerstone Technology to assist with migrating mainframe onto Google Cloud. This reads more like rip and replace than modernisation. Cornerstone offers tools to help with planning a migration roadmap, including identifying microservises, converting code languages and databases; and automated data migration. If your workloads suit Google (not all will), this will be very useful. • Microsoft has a rich toolset for migrating ES-3 to Azure. The Azure platform seems to promise something like 99.9% availability, or about 8.75 hours downtime per year, which (although the devil will be in the details) falls far short of IBM Z platform targets. Enterprise-scale computing on Z is all about trust – “given our global operations, we need our systems to be available round-the- clock, so reliability is a priority for us. With IBM Z, we’ve never experienced any performance or reliability problems to shake our trust in the technology” –Ian Wilson, Managing Director, Fort Vale, and we’re not sure that Azure has achieved that level of trust yet.

21 A Bloor Market Review Paper Conclusion

t is clear that there is still When you are modernising ES-3, don’t considerable reliance on ES-3 forget that ES-3 is most cost-effective I systems and data in the very when heavily used. So, if it is satisfying largest enterprise operations and that a real business need, don’t overlook the moving off these systems is non-trivial advantages of moving more workload – partly because of their tried and tested onto it – perhaps by using it to support capabilities when scale, resilience and Linux virtual machine environments, throughput are critical, and partly because which it does very well. proving that behaviours haven’t changed, As Bloor analyst Martin Banks has except in anticipated ways, on a new put it: “in practice the process of business platform needs a lot of regression testing. transformation comes back to basic issues …if a legacy system If you want some, possibly surprising, such as ‘Why you want to do it in the first “is still fit for purpose, statistics around the importance of E3-3 place? What are the goals?’. These make providing a service- (mainframes) in business today, Precisely up the map that must then be followed, collected some, with information sources, with analysis of the data flows through based web API may be around June 2020. Organisations are applications detailing the paths and the sufficient modernisation. increasingly moving away from migrations pitfalls. Only then is it possible to decide based solely on fashion and platform which applications can be retired, which dogma towards modernisation, founded re-written and what is required that is new. on a documented business case. This is Only then will issues about technology come made easier by the move towards hybrid clear and make sense at a time when so ” multicloud, containerisation and APIs – if many vendors still seem intent on producing a legacy system is still fit for purpose, solutions in search of a problem.” providing a service-based web API may be Finally, your strategic aim should be sufficient modernisation. to make ES-3 “just another computer” and Less obvious issues you might have to ensure that the organisation’s service consider include: and security policies apply equally to • Managing culture change, the ES-3 ES-3 platforms as to everywhere else. To Culture is risk averse and tends to do this, you may need new technology prize reliable service delivery above (such as AI and machine learning) to help innovation (and especially above bridge any skill gaps between various innovation for its own sake); technical teams; and you may need to be very familiar with both old and • The business and operational new technology, in order to produce a knowledge held in the heads of long- functioning whole. We strongly suggest term ES-3 employees, losing which is getting assistance from independent 3rd wasteful; party operations as well as your existing • Supporting all stakeholders, in the vendors, as they can bring broader business not just in IT, of course, but experience to the process than you may also including regulators (internal and have in-house. They can also be a source external), business continuity, security, of experienced mentors, to help with archive, audit and so on. managing the change process.

FURTHER INFORMATION Further information about this subject is available from www.bloorresearch.com/update/2645

avid Norfolk was working He has worked in database in the Research School of administration (DBA) and operations D Chemistry at the Australian research for the Australian Public Service National University in the 1970s, when in Canberra. David then worked for Bank he discovered that computers could of America and Swiss Bank Corporation in deliver misleading answers, even when the UK, holding positions in DBA, systems programmed by very clever people. His development method and standards, ongoing interest in getting computers to internal control, network management, deliver useful automation culminated in technology risk and even PC support. He his joining Bloor in 2007 and taking on was instrumental in introducing a formal the development brief. systems development process for the Development here refers to Bank of America Global Banking product developing automated business in Croydon. outcomes, not just coding. It also covers In 1992 he started a new career as a the processes behind automation and professional writer and analyst. He is a the people issues associated with past co-editor/co-owner) of Application implementing it. He sees organisational Development Advisor and was associate maturity as a prerequisite for editor for the launch of Register implementing effective (measured) Developer. He helped organise the first process automation and ITIL as a useful London CMMI Made Practical conference framework for automated service delivery. in 2005 and has written for most of the He also looks after Collaboration and major computer industry publications. Business Process Management for He runs his own company, David Bloor, and takes a lively interest in the Rhys Enterprises Ltd, from his home in reinvention of the Mainframe as an Chippenham, where he also indulges a Enterprise Server. keen interest in photography (he holds David has an honours degree in a Royal Photographic Society ARPS Chemistry, a graduate qualification distinction). in Computing, and is a Chartered IT Professional. He has a somewhat rusty NetWare 5 CNE certification and is a Member of the British Computer Society (he is on the committee of its Configuration Management Specialist Group).

23 A Bloor Market Review Paper Bloor overview Technology is enabling rapid business evolution. The opportunities are immense but if you do not adapt then you will not survive. So in the age of Mutable business Evolution is Essential to your success. We’ll show you the future and help you deliver it. Bloor brings fresh technological thinking to help you navigate complex business situations, converting challenges into new opportunities for real growth, profitability and impact. We provide actionable strategic insight through our innovative independent technology research, advisory and consulting services. We assist companies throughout their transformation journeys to stay relevant, bringing fresh thinking to complex business situations and turning challenges into new opportunities for real growth and profitability. For over 25 years, Bloor has assisted companies to intelligently evolve: by embracing technology to adjust their strategies and achieve the best possible outcomes. At Bloor, we will help you challenge assumptions to consistently improve and succeed.

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