Prof. Appleby's Blog

If you are a project manager leading a mainframe project, I’d like to share with you some general action items to include in your project plan.  My first suggestion is that you request from your mainframe vendor a current list of the features on your mainframe today and review the list together.  This report is sometimes called a detail report.

This report will show you the machine type you have, the model, the capacity setting, the capacity marker, the amount of memory, and how many and what types of adapter cards are installed.

It’s a good starting place to see where you are today.

You can learn some helpful things from this report – things that might prompt follow-on questions and potentially save you some money.

For example, you might see that you have many more ESCON adapters than you need today.  At one time, ESCON was leading edge technology, replacing the slow, bulky parallel channels.  But ESCON is now old (and fading) technology and many mainframe users have lots of unused ESCON ports because they have either eliminated older ESCON-attached I/O devices or migrated from ESCON to the far superior FICON technology.

So, for example, you might discover that you have 48 ESCON ports, but you’re only using 12 of them.

When your vendor proposes a new mainframe, they may initially assume that you still need all 48 ESCON ports.  The number of ports you need drives the number of cards you get.  ESCON ports are “enabled” in groups of four ports.  The cards themselves have sixteen ports, of which one is a spare.  And, the System z will always have at least two cards for the sake of redundancy and availability.

Let’s explore this a bit.  If I have 48 ESCON ports available for use, then I’ll have four 16-port ESCON cards.  Why not three cards instead of four?  After all 3 x 16=48.  Because one port on each card is reserved as a spare.  So, three cards give me 45 available ports.  To get 48 ports, then, I need four cards.

Four cards actually give you 60 ports (ignoring spares), but ports are “enabled” (think $$$) in groups of four.  Doing that gives you better granularity, so you don’t have to buy many more ports than you need.  So you paid for 48 ports.

If I now only require 12 ESCON ports, then I only need two ESCON cards (remember, that’s the minimum for the sake of redundancy).  So I can go from four ESCON cards down to two ESCON cards.  That frees up two slots for other uses – OSA or FICON, for example – so, even though I already paid for 48 ESCON, I may save myself some money down the road (or even immediately) by freeing up a couple of slots for use by other cards, thus potentially avoiding having to purchase another I/O cage or drawer.

As you go through your detail report, you may see other things you can eliminate: older OSA technology (e.g., Fast Ethernet), etc.

One word of caution: In the case of ESCON, be sure that you get accurate data as to what’s being used and what isn’t.  You don’t want to scale back and then discover that you actually need more than you thought.  Check the adapters to see if a cable is plugged in.  If there is a cable, but you think it’s not connected to anything on the other end, you can always unplug it (within your change management guidelines) to verify that it’s no longer in use.

But my primary suggestion is simply to get the detail report and look it over.  If it prompts questions, ask them.  If there’s something on the current machine that’s missing from the newly proposed machine, ask why.  Check the features and check the quantities on everything, just to be sure.

I’m blogging a lot tonight, I know. I suppose it’s because I’m very much preoccupied with the problem of how to open up job and career and professional opportunities for young people (I’m talking about the 18-30 year range). I’ve asked this before – how did we get into a situation where bright, talented, hardworking people can’t find work? But it’s more than that. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people this week which have shown me just how stacked the deck is against some folks.

I couldn’t be more serious.

I was talking the other day with an extraordinary young man who was telling me how certain educational requirements in a certain graduate program are actually causing people to just abandon the program and give up on their professional goals. Now, you might say, well, that’s as it should be – if they can’t cut it, then they should get weeded out. But that’s not what’s happening. The requirements are tangential, at best, to the point of the program – and being able to attain them (I’m just going to be blunt here and take my lumps, if I must) seems linked more to being on “the fast track” or being in “the in crowd.” But, even if this harsh evaluation on my part is wrong, even if the requirements were established with the best of intentions – they are terribly misguided.

When you design a curriculum, you ought to ask yourself if any of the requirements are “unnecessary parts” and discard them. Focus on what’s important. Strip away what’s unnecessary.

But, I’ve gotten off track.

Here’s what I’m thinking. As I said in my last post, I think that young people should focus on starting their own businesses. We need to stop paying lip service to small businesses and get serious about opening up opportunities for people to get started. Now, politically, that means we need to do things that facilitate and encourage small business development – not frustrate it. But I’m not going to delve into the politics.

My thinking is that our IEM Program, with it’s already considerable focus on entrepreneurship, should either expand its scope or spin off a similar program that is designed to move people from point A to point B in 20 months. We should look for clients who have a serious interest in starting a small business and, hopefully, some ideas of the kind of business they want to start, and then, work with them to develop a plan and take them through a process that leads to their being in business when they leave the program.

We could do this within IEM; we’re already doing it in part, but with a technical focus. Why not broaden the scope? Our UAB School of Engineering is full of talented, innovative people. If a person, or a group of people, entered our program and said “we want to get started in the X business,” we could certainly develop a process to get them from A to B. We could be a conduit – an enabler – for small businesses throughout this region.

Want to start a software company? A consulting firm? Get into construction? Start a new fast food chain? Design and market something new in electronics? Start a financial firm or an insurance company? Why can’t we teach and guide and mentor people toward these goals?

We ought to consider how to use our knowledge and experience to help young people get established in business. It’s no longer enough to prepare them to work for somebody else – that ship is rapidly sailing away for so many of them. We have to help them get started on their own. We can’t afford a lost generation.

I have decided to merge my old blog (profappleby.wordpress.com) into my newer blog.  I’ve carried across some of the old posts, including my recent foray into mainframes for project managers, and will bid farewell to the old blog at the end of this month.