The Mainframe Is Dead. Long Live the Mainframe!
Keywords:
Mainframe, Enterprise Computing, Enterprise Systems, Education, COBOLAbstract
Many have predicted the death of the mainframe over the last 10 to 20 years, yet it is still is a large part of enterprise computing today. Companies not only use the mainframe for “legacy” applications, but are also developing new ap- plications for mainframes, resulting in a rise in mainframe sales. These increases, along with an aging mainframe work- force and academia’s move away from mainframe-related curricula and courses, has resulted in a shortage of workers trained in mainframe applications. In this paper we report on a U.S.-based survey of industry and academia that con-firms the existence of this problem. We conclude with some possible future research directions to explore as possible so- lutions to this potential dilemma.
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[4] Arranga, E. (2000). In Cobol’s Defense. IEEE Software. Vol. 17(2), March-April, pp.70-72,75.
[5] Bray, H. (2005). Who’ll Mind the Mainframes? Few Students Are Learning to Run Decidedly Unsexy, but Vital, Systems. The Boston Globe, August 26, Third Edition, Business p. C1.
[6] Buyya, R., Yeo, C. S., Venugopal, S., Broberg, J., and Brandic, I. (2009) Cloud computing and emerging IT platforms: Vision, hype, and reality for delivering computing as the 5th utility, Future Generation Computer Systems. Vol. 25(6), pp. 599-616.
[7] Carr, D. and Kizior, R. J. (2003). Continued Relevance of COBOL in Business and Academia: Current Situation and Comparison to the Year 2000 Study. Information Systems Education Journal, Vol. 1(52), pp. 1-24.
[8] Cringley, R. X. (2008). Azul Means (Big) Blue: There’s a new kind of mainframe coming and it isn’t from IBM, Available: http://www.pbs.org/ cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080229_004404.html.
[9] Daga, A., de Cesare, S. Lycett, M., and Partridge, C. (2005) An Ontological Approach for Recovering Legacy Business Content, Proceedings of the 38th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’05), pp.224a.
[10] Evelyn, R. (2002). COBOL’s Revenge: When Programs Outlive the Programmers. Available: http://www.devx.com/devx/editorial/16357.
[11] Farber, D. (2008). IBM and the resurrection of the mainframe. Available: http://www.news.com/8301-13953_3-9933108-80.html.
[12] Fortune 500. (2006). Fortune, April 17th, 2006.
[13] Furneaux, B. and Wade, M. (2011) An Exploration of Organizational Level Information Systems Discontinuance Intentions, MIS Quarterly, (35: 3) pp.573-598.
[14] Garvey, M. J. (2002). Mainframe Talent: An Endangered Species. Information Week. March 4.
[15] IBM. (2004). The IT Skills Crisis: A Literature Review. Whitepaper: IBM Canada.
[16] IBM. (2008) IBM Academic Initiative, System z. IBM Corporation, Available: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/forums/servlet/JiveServlet/ download/1224-190447-14037891-317351/IBM_Academic_Initiative_ Systemz_2008.pdf.
[17] Kanter, H. A., and Muscarello, T. J. (2005). Reuse versus Rewrite: An Empirical Study of Alternative Software Development Methods for Web-enabling Mission-critical COBOL/CICS Legacy Applications: Fujitsu Software.
[18] Kelly, Sue; Gibson, Nicola; Holland, Christopher P.; and Light, Ben (1999) Focus Issue on Legacy Information Systems and Business Process Change: A Business Perspective of Legacy Information Systems, Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 2(7).
[19] Light, B. (2003) An Alternative Theory of Legacy Information Systems, Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Infonvation Systems (ECIS 2003). ECIS Publications, 2003.
[20] McGirr, G., Barker, R., Decker, J., & Schmidt, G. (2004). Crisis with COBOL: Where Industry and IT Departments Stand. Available: http://www.micsymposium.org/mics_2004/Mcgirr.pdf.
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[22] Robb, D. (2007). Legacy Life Support. Computerworld, July 30. Available: http://proquest.umi.com/ pqdweb?did=1333796581&Fmt=7&clientId=4 3838&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
[23] Roggio, R. F., Comer, J. R., & Brauda, P. (2003). IS Programs become Accredited: COBOL in Crisis. Information Systems Education Journal. Vol. 1(15), pp. 1-10.
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[25] Swoyer, S. (2006). Mainframe Sales Drive Surging Server Market. Enterprise Systems. Available: http://esj.com/enterprise/article. aspx?EditorialsID=2316.
[26] TIP (2008). The mainframe Conundrum: Escalating Workloads, Shrinking Staff. Whitepaper from TheInfoPro, Inc. Study commissioned by Computer Associates. Available at http://ca.com/Files/IndustryResearch/the-mainframe-conundrum.pdf.
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Published
2018-08-23
How to Cite
[1]
Sagers, G., Ball, K., Hosack, B., Twitchell, D. and Wallace, D. 2018. The Mainframe Is Dead. Long Live the Mainframe!. AIS Transactions on Enterprise Systems. 2, 1 (Aug. 2018).
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