Mainframes are dead! long live the mainframe!

[Fleetwood]

Mainframes are brilliant. They work,they're stable, and the young people of today aren't trained up on them.
Ker-ching!!!!
Sorted.

[threaded]

Must agree, but listening to the young uns in the office today I doubt they're trained up on PCs either.

[Moose423956]

Right chaps, had my training plan drawn up yesterday, loads of IBM Z/OS and AS400 stuff mixed in with a sprinkle of Solaris/AIX.

Before I go and put my heart and soul into learning these new technologies I'd like to know that my contracting future will be improved with the aforementioned skills on my CV?

TIA

As a mainframe programmer of some 20 years experience, I can see no end to the demand for good mf bods. If you really want advice, I'd recommend getting CICS and DB2 on your CV, as well as COBOL.

As someone said, young people don't want to do mainframes. Unfortunately, there are lots of Indians gaining mf experience.

[Joe Black]

Why would anyone need mf experience when it can all be wrapped in a .NET interop?

Now SAP, that's another story...

[TheMonkey]

I hear SAP can run on MySQL now?

RUN!

I replaced an ENTIRE IBM 360 payroll application with something written in Visual Basic 4 (32-bit) running on a P75 which actually did the job better!

[lilelvis2000]

Here we keep getting consultants in who always seems to say something like "When you're finally finished with the old metal, call us" ha ha. This is an insurance company mate....the mainframe will be around for a while.

[TheMonkey]

The only REAL problem with mainframes is the incredible power consumption. Personally, I think they should build lower powered machines with the same architecture.

[hattra]

i know as400 guys that are struggling... i believe the hay days of £600/day are over in this field

I've been working on AS400's (now called iSeries & the OS is now called i5 or something really stupid) since pre-release testing days - over 20 years now, and the rates are definitely down on what they used to be. But the user base is pretty solid, because the systems are so reliable. If you can, pick up the newer technologies, like Websphere, and MQ Series. Also, if you can pick up package experience, like Genius, SAP or any of the big banking packages, then you should be able to earn a pretty decent living. If you go for "traditional" stuff, make sure you've got SQL & RPG IV in your skillset (and RPG/free format - though not everyone uses it). Rates are around £275 - £350 a day for most A/P contracts at the moment, though I did see one for £600/ day (probably a mispriont) on Jobserve yesterday (senior techie type role). There's also quite a lot of work in Ireland & Holland if you fancy a bit of travel.

Unfortunately the Indians are indeed moving in - though from first hand experience, they're a pretty mixed bag (ranging from cr@p to really cr@p - but give them time)

[hattra]

The only REAL problem with mainframes is the incredible power consumption. Personally, I think they should build lower powered machines with the same architecture.

It's all them bl@@dy valves, innit!

Actually, I doubt they're much worse than Wintel stuff - they spin a lot more disks (I don't know about z/OS stuff, but AS400s use the same disk technology as Wintel servers these days) & have more processors (pretty much every subsystem has it's own), but if you scaled-up a wintel box to the same size, it would probably use similar amounts of power).

[Forumbore]

Unfortunately the Indians are indeed moving in - though from first hand experience, they're a pretty mixed bag (ranging from cr@p to really cr@p - but give them time)

they will become really really crap