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The Broadcom team had a ‘latte’ of fun putting together the keynote session for SHARE Virtual Experience 2021, “Colleagues in Corvettes Getting Cappuccinos.” Inspired by Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” attendees join avid Corvette* enthusiast Greg Lotko for a weekend drive. Vaccinated and excited to hit the road, Greg takes a spin with several members of the Broadcom team, discussing a wide range of mainframe topics, from security, DevOps, and AIOps, to becoming a new mainframer. Here are some of our favorite highlights:
Cybersecurity, it’s no Joke
Carla Flores, mainframe security specialist, and Greg share a few fun car jokes and discuss some important security best practices. With all of the attempted hacks and ransomware threats continuously in the news, it’s more critical than ever to protect your core infrastructure. Some of the best practices Carla suggests include:
- Least privileged access – only giving people access to what they need to do their job and removing access that they don't
- Real-time monitoring – providing the right information quickly to warn when things might be going awry
- Multi-factor authentication – protecting the critical data and applications on your mainframe
- Data classification – knowing what sensitive data you have on your mainframe that requires protection
- Understand your security landscape – executing regular security health checks and assessments
For more on these and other mainframe security best practices, catch the replay of Carla’s cybersecurity session on the virtual event platform and watch “Applying Zero Trust to Mainframe.”
Corvette Karaoke and Journey of a New Mainframer
Greg and Katie Juhala, technical support engineer, perform some impressive Corvette karaoke that you don’t want to miss! Katie shares insights on what it’s like to become a new mainframer through the Broadcom Associate Software Engineer (ASE) program. Describing the experience as challenging, exciting, and full of opportunity, Katie highlights the mentorship program that follows the formal training as key to her learning experience. Greg and Katie discuss how fueling your IT workforce today, especially for the mainframe, is similar to the experience the whole computer industry went through in the '60s, '70s, and ‘80s, when many schools didn’t even have a computer science major yet. No matter what degree or background, if an individual displays intellectual aptitude and can think logically and technically, they can be trained to become programmers, developers, and systems operators. It’s really going back to the future and recognizing an inherent success of the mainframe platform … exceptional technologists come from unexpected places.
For more on building your Mainframe workforce through education and the Vitality Program, watch the replay of “Mainframe Education – The Real Life Stories.”
DevOps and Racing to the Finish
Michael Bauer, DevOps product owner and race car driver, joins Greg for a quick spin and discussion on the similarities between racing and DevOps. Speed and reliability are some of the common attributes, both requiring the right people, with the right skills, tools, and technologies, working together. And for developers, a key technology is Zowe. What’s exciting about Zowe is that it opens up the mainframe to a new world of popular, off-platform DevOps tools such as modern editors like Visual Studio Code, testing frameworks like Jest, source code control solutions like Git, and CI/CD tools like Jenkins. Using the Zowe framework and open source tools, your mainframe development can be part of your existing enterprise DevOps pipeline, eliminating manual tasks, reducing cycle times, and increasing code quality.
Whether you’re new to the mainframe platform or a seasoned COBOL programmer, we encourage you to take the Developer Cockpit out for a spin. This tool simulates a modern mainframe developer experience, providing a behind-the-scenes look at using an open approach to mainframe DevOps.
AIOps and Preparing for the Future
Greg catches up with Cody Giardinello, senior software engineer with Broadcom’s Mainframe AIOps development team and deputy project manager of the SHARE zNextGen project. Cody participated in the ASE training program seven years ago, starting off as a level two support engineer. His responsibilities with Broadcom and his volunteer work with SHARE have given him opportunities to learn about the day-to-day needs of IT ops teams from around the globe. Many organizations spend too much time maintaining and optimizing their business-critical systems that rely on the mainframe. A common need we hear from customers is, “Please make it easier to see how all our mainframe systems interrelate … and could you also show how a change to one component could impact another?” Cody shares the excitement around the new dynamic topology capability, which can save you tons of time by automatically discovering your mainframe infrastructure and topology. With just a push of a button, you can see, in real time, how your mainframe environment is connected and configured.
To learn more about how you can auto-discover your z/OS topology, watch the on-demand session, and catch the replay of “Seeing What you Can’t See: Take AIOps to New Levels” to see how you can shift from reactive to proactive operations by anticipating problems sooner, analyzing issues faster, and automating your operations wherever possible.
We hope you enjoyed SHARE Virtual Experience 2021, and look forward to sharing a cappuccino face-to-face next time!
*Corvette is a trademark of General Motors Corporation.
Cindy Peake is a senior marketing specialist with Broadcom’s Mainframe Software Division. With 30 plus years of IT experience — ranging from programming, systems analysis, and consulting to product management, marketing, and sales — Peake is currently responsible for marketing AIOps software solutions and technology initiatives that help customers optimize their mainframe operations in the ever-changing hybrid IT landscape.