The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2014 has been published

Every year, about this time, mainframe users are excited to get their hands on the latest edition of the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook. What makes the Yearbook stand out is that it’s an excellent reference work for all IBM mainframe professionals – no matter how many years of experience they have.

What makes this annual publication so important? The answer is that it provides a one-stop shop for everything a mainframer needs to know. For example, the technical specification section includes model numbers, MIPS, and MSUs for zEnterprise processors (zEC12s, z196s, and z114s). There’s also a hardware timeline, and a display of mainframe operating system evolution.

In addition, there’s the glossary of terminology section explaining what all those acronyms stand for, in a way that means you can understand them. And this year we’ve added a number of Big Data terms that are becoming commonly used.

One section provides a media guide for IBM mainframers. This includes information on newsletters, magazines, user groups, blogs, and social networking information resources for the z/OS environment. Amongst the things it highlights are Enterprise Tech Journal, IBM Listservs, SHARE’s Five Minute Briefing on the Data Center, Facebook pages, and LinkedIn discussions; as well as user groups such as SHARE and IDUG.

The vendor directory section contains an up-to-date list of vendors, consultants, and service providers working in the z/OS environment. There’s a summary of the products they supply and contact information. As usual, there are a number of new organizations in the list this year – indicating that this is still an exciting market place to be in.

The mainframe strategy section contains articles by industry gurus and vendors on topics such as:

• Research Report – Software Diversified Services’ E- Business Server: Encryption, Compression, Key Creation and Management?
• The Challenge: Actively Control MLC Costs for IBM’s System z
• Mainframe meets mobile
• Your Business is Dynamic – Are You? Empowering the Dynamic Data Center.

For many people, the highlight each year is the mainframe user survey. This illustrates just what’s been happening at users’ sites. It’s a good way for mainframers to compare what they are planning to do with what other sites have done. I will be looking at some of the survey highlights in a future blog.

The other great thing about the Yearbook – as far as many of the 20,000 people who download it are concerned – is that it is completely FREE.

It can only be free because some organizations have been prepared to sponsor it or advertise in it. This year’s sponsors were: Software Diversified Services (SDS), Software AG, zIT Consulting, and CA Technologies.
 
To see this year’s Arcati Mainframe Yearbook, click on www.arcati.com/newyearbook14. If you don’t want to download everything at once, again this year, each section is available as a print-quality PDF file.

You won’t want to miss out on this excellent publication.