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I am a Mainframer: Rebecca Levesque

By | March 21, 2022

In this episode of the “I Am a Mainframer” podcast, Steven Dickens welcomes Rebecca Levesque, CEO of 21st Century Software. During their conversation, Rebecca shares her professional journey and how 21st Century Software fits into the overall mainframe ecosystem.

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TRANSCRIPT

Steven Dickens:
Hello and welcome to the “I am a Mainframer” podcast. I’m your host today, Steven Dickens, my dog’s in the background for those of you watching on YouTube. The “I am a Mainframer” podcast is brought to you by the Open Mainframe Project, a collaborative project from the Linux Foundation, focused on driving open source in the Mainframe space. I’m joined today by Rebecca Levesque from 21st Century. Welcome to the show, Rebecca.

Rebecca Levesque:
Thank you so much, Steven. I appreciate being here. It’s exciting.

Steven Dickens:
Well, let’s hopefully keep that spirit going for the rest of the show. So just to get the listeners up orientated here, just to give us a little perspective on your role, what you do for 21st Century and then we’ll use that as a jumping off point into the rest of the conversation.

Rebecca Levesque:
Sounds good. So I’m the CEO and President of 21st Century Software. Basically, I’ve been in Z for as long as I can remember. I’m a huge Z champion, but it’s not just the Mainframe itself or software, it’s the whole ecosystem. It’s the operating systems, it’s the community, it’s the customers. I have amazing customers, an amazing community and I’ve been doing it for over 25 years. So in doing that, I’ve traveled the world and I’ve really tried to help people see the value of what we have here. It’s gone virtual unfortunately, I much prefer one-on-one. You’ll see me at every conference. I swear, the number of Share conferences, the number of tech use across the globe, it’s been a lot of fun, but that’s what I do.

Steven Dickens:
So fingers crossed that we get to see each other in person at SHARE in a few months’ time. Fingers crossed, I’m with you there.

Rebecca Levesque:
I know right. Exactly, yes.

Steven Dickens:
So just for some of the listeners, I’ve had a lot to do with 21st Century and you and some of the team over the last few months. Maybe just orientate the listeners there on who 21st Century are and where you fit in their overall mainframe ecosystem. Because I think for maybe those listeners who aren’t aware, that’s going to be a really interesting place to go first.

Rebecca Levesque:
So 21st Century Software’s been around for a very long time, but we were a standard of living business. When you were in the ’80s, ’90s, and even early ’00s, you could be a really focused small eyes and do some things really well. And that’s what we did. We did things around resiliency and storage super well and we had some things that we didn’t. But more recently, 2012 on, we’ve taken on more of a role that allows us an IP relationship with IBM for one in 2017. And we’ve been growing and we’ve been exploring our strength and what we do. We’re in a growth spurt right now, a large one, and we’re continuing. We are strongly developing products within insecurity, data management, resiliency taking advantage of AI. We always thought the mainframe, the Z had a lot to offer, right?

So SMF data was something we were very keen on and we used, and we always saw analytics with automation. That was actually a term we used 10, 15 years ago, right? Anytime you had analytics, we used that SMF data. It should do something with it. It shouldn’t be left up to the customer. And so now that we have this relationship with IBM and partners and we’ve grown. We see ourselves being more paramount and driving that as we move forward. So our entire organization is being growing. It started small, but we’re definitely on a growth of trajectory. And we’re doing this across with IBM with this business partners and especially them with its customers as well.

Steven Dickens:
So you mentioned the analytics piece. I know IBM launched the Telum processor, which we’ll see in the next box sometime soon. The Internet’s blown up today because I think Arvin said something in the earnings earlier this week that was maybe a bit more specific about when we can expect the new box. For those of us listening it’s January 26th, so IBM just announced its Q4 earnings. And there was some comments there around when we can expect the new mainframe. But you touched on analytics. I’m seeing that come through a lot more or obviously it’s going to be a big focus for IBM as they look towards the launch. Where do you see that specifically?

Rebecca Levesque:
Well, your dog had the answer first. I see it specifically-

Steven Dickens:
The joys of working from home. Right?

Rebecca Levesque:
I know isn’t it great. No, I think it’s fun. No. No Worries. So specifically I think that the Telum processor is going to allow large customers, to be able to make business decisions close to where the data is actually running. So think about it. You have a secure, resilient, transactional, strong, right? One of the biggest features of this platform is that we transactional processes fantastic, which means we’re shoving a lot of data through it and we’re giving answers back. We’re doing processing. Well, if you can take that data and you can feed it and use the Telum processor, now you go beyond analytics. You can get to prescriptive, you can get to machine learning, you can start getting AI. Now instead of just automating, we’re doing something. And that’s why I really like that concept of fit for business purpose when I talk about that.

So everybody talks about hybrid cloud. They talk about, “We got to go here. We got to go there.” No. Think first. We’re taking a platform that’s very green in of itself and we’re putting inside of it, a chip that… I was just listening to Tina on a podcast she did with you, not too far back. And that chip and of itself might get an award or something from CBS as I was finding out when I was listening. That’s amazing. Right? So here you are, you have IBM investing, putting this analytics because we always had SMF data. We always had logs. We always had journals. We always have that base of information and now we’re going to take it and bring it into AI and how businesses can have real time at their fingertip. Now real AI can start getting into the mix now, real prescriptive. We can be a lot better about automating it. Even if we just improve automation, it would be incredible, but this is all about AI. And I think it’s going to be fantastic. I think it really will bring more to the platform.

Steven Dickens:
And I think this is the interesting thing. And you and I were talking about this before we started recording the show. I think if people were listening to the show and weren’t realizing we were talking about a mainframe with a new process. So with aim AI instructions built in, they’d be surprised. So I know that’s a theme for you around how people are looking to transform their perceptions of the platform.

Rebecca Levesque:
Yes, absolutely. I think that’s the biggest hurdle we have. It’s not that the platform is where… It is where it should be. It is advanced. It is where you should put transactional processing. It is where you want your secure, resilient data. However, people because of its age and because people run it in a less than modern way. What do I mean by that? Well, if you’re running your Z processor, like four or five versions back, you’re not taking advantage of all of what’s been going forward. It be like, if you’re running windows 95, you mentioned that earlier and then you expect it to have all the latest and greatest stuff in Microsoft. You wouldn’t be very thrilled with that either. So I think it’s the same. I think people have bias. And I think that we just need to help customers understand that if they modernize, that’s interesting of itself, everyone talks about digital transformation and modernization.

The digital transformation is the business side of it, right? It’s about taking advantage of technology and making sure your business can work. But the buzzword about modern transformation is that you’re taking technology, hardware, softwares, whatever, and you’re using that technology to make sure your business is taking advantage of the technology that the definition by floor, I think it is. But the fact is that, that information on the mainframe can be at your fingertips in real time. You can use AI with the town processor it’s going to be in there. It’s fabulous. And so if you take bias out, you can really have an amazing journey with technology.

Steven Dickens:
Yeah. I mean, people have heard me say this before and maybe it’s being a car nut. If you talked about the new Porsche 911 or the brand new Corvette, you’d think of those as modern super cars running the latest technology, the cutting edge of super car and sports car advancements, both of those cars were launched in 1964. The same year as the mainframe was launched. If you said, “Oh, the new Porsche 911’s old technology and its legacy,” the Porsche fanatics would go insane as would, those Corvette’s fanatics. But it’s the same saying the new Porsche 911 is based on 50 year old technology doesn’t make sense. And it doesn’t make sense for the mainframe to be talked about it the same way as my opinion, at least.

Rebecca Levesque:
But what’s funny though, is you’ll find those people out there who want to drive that older Porsche without power steering without all the things. And they think that’s great. Right? And I think with the mainframe, what happened was we lost our connection with the business sometime at one point, because we weren’t willing to get out of the old car. We liked that sense of, “I can have my clutch and I can shift my gears. I’m in control.”

And look at this car, it’s fantastic. It’s a Mustang, right? Who wouldn’t give up an older Mustang, but then now we’ve realized as even people in the driver’s seat that we like, all those new features and those new features are pretty darn good. And that there’s a commitment my IBM to continue down this path of continued Z next and so forth on and so forth. So we like this new car. And now what we have to do is help everyone else understand that this new car is really got all the bells and whistles. You don’t have to spend some gobs amount of money and you don’t have to go to somewhere else to do it.

Steven Dickens:
Yeah, no, I think we are hearing a lot from IBM, particularly around mainframe modernization. And I think we’ve maybe past the point where it’s get off the platform, it’s kind of renovate what you’ve got and transform what you’ve got. Are you seeing that same dynamic?

Rebecca Levesque:
Absolutely. I mean, even the IDC quoted some numbers and I jotted them down for this. I thought you might ask that. Think about it. IDC in a recent report may note that CapEx for hardware, software and staffing would go down with the use of modern technology in Z itself. You don’t have to go anywhere. And that it was generating more revenue. What Blore said was what people were not doing. And they called these the three truths. And when Blore talked to these three truths, one of the things that they made clear is that a lot of times people don’t take it into account. The fact that when you get to where you’re going, is it really going to cost less? First of all, and second, one of the other truths was, are you counting the cost of getting there?

And what are the risks in that? But if you modernize where you’re at and you take advantage of what you have, there’s two things you’ve done. One is you’ve taken a lot of the risk out and you know where your cost is. And you know where you’re at. The other thing that you’ve done is you’ve really played the right level of playing field. Now you can go even for, even if you take a five, 10 year old mainframe environment and you take applications that you have that modernized and you haven’t taken advantage of the possibilities that you have here, and you say, “Well, I’m going to go move over here.” But then when you get there, if you sit there 10 years, are you going to be any happier with them?

So modernization is taking advantage of technology year over year. It’s a continuous process. You can’t just go today and say, “I’m going to go there and sit there for 10 years.” No. Then you’re going to have to continually modernize that. So wherever you go, whatever you do, however you do it, whatever platform you choose to do it on, understand this is not a… The world is changing faster than you can keep up with. So you have to end whatever you choose, stay modern. And that includes this platform. If you use it in this one, you’re in a good way.

Steven Dickens:
And I think you make a really good point. This isn’t a once move, get from point A to point B and then it’s frozen in time. Once you’ve got to point B, applications don’t work that way. Agile doesn’t work like that. DevOps doesn’t work like that. Digital transformation, if you want to go the next level up is a continual process. So you should be thinking of about the vibrancy of those applications on an ongoing basis, irrespective of what platform they go on.

Rebecca Levesque:
That’s why I like hybrid cloud, right? Because hybrid cloud accepts the fact that not everything belongs on there, and we understand that. And you understand it. Everyone understands it. We’re not saying that right. But what we are saying is use the right technology, the right operating system because applications are going to run and they’re going to do their thing. And they’re into intermix. We already are own intermix. So what do we need to do? We need to have a platform that can run a hybrid cloud environment, and then you have to manage it on the top, but then you’re being smart and you’re taking advantage again for business purpose. Where’s the best place for this data to run. And then how do I manage it as a whole? That’s where I think IBM is really going to have a future, right? Because they’re not only saying I’m going to do better.

I’m going to be smarter. I’m going to do all these wonderful things with the Z platform, but I’m also going to be smart and say, “Hybrid cloud, we’re no longer biased. We were just as biased as everyone else. At one point, we’re Z. Yeah, we are Z. But we are also acknowledging that there’s other things out there and we want to help manage all those cloud experiences.” People aren’t just going to one cloud. It’s not just AWS or Azure or Google or whatever. It’s the private cloud. It’s the public cloud. It’s the whatever cloud and whatever definition cloud, but we need something to manage it. And it doesn’t mean Z goes away because it’s just part of the cloud experience.

Steven Dickens:
I think that’s the key point. We’ve been talking about fit for purpose for a long time in the mainframe space. And you hear the new frame of that same discussion through the cloud lens. Where should these workloads reside? What are the characteristics, the non-functional characteristics, the security, availability, performance, scalability, where should this workload sit? Which cloud? Which platform? Which chip architecture? You’re seeing a fragmentation, all of the work that’s going on in the chip space with all of the different architectures. I think that looking at the mainframe in the context of that type of discussion around where should the workload sit and what are those non functional requirements, it’s almost coming back into vogue for me.

Rebecca Levesque:
Yeah.

Steven Dickens:
It’s almost coming back into, are you seeing that same dynamic?

Rebecca Levesque:
Absolutely. I mean the funny part was is I read a report that said 50% more growth and transactional. I actually hear people talk about the mainframe in a much more different light. I was just talking to clients in, they and said, they’ve absolutely reinvesting and doubling down on mainframe, which is fantastic. And when you hear organizations say, “Hey, we’re going to take advantage of cloud.” That doesn’t mean they’re getting rid of their mainframe in the same breath. They just reinvested in their mainframe. Why? Because it still does what it does well. That’s why I like fit for business purpose, because then you’re making a business decision.

And if you’re unbiased about it, there’s space for a lot of different technologies and you have to be able to see which one makes best sense for your organization, but then guess what, all these applications, all of this data at some point has to tie together. And if you are bringing Z into that mix and you’re tying it together and you want to have a repository and you want to place in which you’re doing the transactions and you’re doing a lot of the work and then you have the AI and the hybrid, it pulls that together. Right? And you have that overarching, I think that’s the whole point. I think that’s where IBM and Z are bringing it together. And I think it’s a good solution.

Steven Dickens:
Exactly. I would agree. And where do you see 21st Century playing a role or if that’s the broad lens that we’re seeing in the arc of the conversations and you are seeing the same dynamic that I’m seeing, where do you see 21st Century playing a role in that? How are you helping clients who were on that broad journey that we just spent a few moments talking about?

Rebecca Levesque:
Well, if you think about it, I really, for as long as I’ve been in Z or mainframe I’ve always thought that it has the most amount of data at your fingertips. And so you can make a lot of decisions. If you just get that in a format in which you can have the analytics and now the AI, and now you can automate and do the things and be prescriptive and all of that. But within the Z future, the township is the answer to everyone that says, “Are they investing?” Remember how it was for a couple of years for a number of years, oh Z, blah, blah, blah, IBM. They went and bought Red Hat. What’s the Z’s future. I think they’re telling us, I think they’re saying “No, we’re here to stay and we’re making invest and we’re doing things.”

And by the way, and we know we’re green, we know we’re secure. We know we’re resilient. We know we do transactional processing. Well, so we’re not going anywhere folks. So it’s now up to us and the customers in the world at large to say, “Okay, they do these things well, let’s modernize and get to where they’re at.” Right? And then I think the direction they’ve been taking on hybrid clouds is a smart way because we’re acknowledging, we’re doing something we didn’t do in the past. It used to be all or nothing. Right? Z. We are Z. No, it’s not. It’s fit for business purpose. So where is the best place for the data to reside? Where are you going to get what you need out of it? Not everything belongs on Z. If you’re just going to go and one time you get rid of it, go put it somewhere that doesn’t cost you a whole lot, dump it, if you brought it back is going to cost you a lot.

But if you’re never going to bring it back, okay, fine. That’s fine. But if you’re going to really going to be using data, make sure you put it where it’s supposed to be. And I think that, and the way that IBM’s handling the ability for us to do that is huge. And I see 21st being a part of it, part of what we do is we think of ourselves as an organization that is revitalizing and reinventing Z that’s part of our vision mission. Right? So if that’s in our statement, is that just about technology? Are the teams that we have at 21st, just technology driven. Yeah. We’re R&D folks a lot of us, but there’s a passion that the teams have and there’s a drive to be creative and out of the box thinking and be fast and try to push the envelope, see the gaps and fill them, get the of dots and put them together.

And I’ve been said I’m a little bit passionate at times and sometimes demanding, but so is all the teams that we have at 21st, we all like what we do. We love it. And we really want to make sure that we’re driving the Z community into the future. You’ll see a lot of my team members are on their own foot [inaudible] word, their own desire. They’re all part. They join up in volunteer at Share. You’ll see that they are trying to help the younger generation. We have lots of team members, are helping younger team members learn and become the devotees of this platform. So we’re really as an organization trying to support a multiplicity of ways in order to get it to where it needs to be. And the biggest one is bringing down those walls of bias, helping organizations to see the future with Z. And of course, drive the technology as fast as we can so that we can keep up with what’s going on.

Steven Dickens:
So it was interesting. And I’ll use that Levesque, you mentioned mentoring and bringing through younger members in the community. You talked about Share, and some of the work there, the show’s called “I am a Mainframer” and you mentioned your 25 year journey. Can you maybe just give some the edited highlights as just so that the listeners can and see how you go from an early professional to the CEO of a software company? I think we have a lot of younger listeners to the show as well. A lot of people who are early professionals. So maybe just paint a picture of that personal journey of ultimately how you became a Mainframer.

Rebecca Levesque:
Well, that’s an interesting question. So in truthfulness, I started… I don’t want to answer that one. No.

Steven Dickens:
Have I caught you out there? Is that one you don’t want to answer? Is there-

Rebecca Levesque:
Well, just answered in shows I’ve been out there too long. No woman wants to say how long. No.

Steven Dickens:
You can say started your 25 year career, age five and that’s up to age 30.

Rebecca Levesque:
OK. So that’s OK. Now I can go from there. So it’s actually been over 25 years. That’s the crazy part, right?

Steven Dickens:
I won’t tell anybody your secret’s safe with me.

Rebecca Levesque:
So I started, well, we’ll start with 21st. All right. So I was a bit young when I started and I started in the world of IT with Vaxxed and doing the backups, right. And then I worked for a software house that did mainframe and I actually started with 21st Edits Inception in 1992. And so that along, if you do math tells you I’ve been at it a while, and it was a great experience. It was a big risk myself and some other folks, we walked into a situation and said, “Hey, we can do this.” And we did it. It was very much, at first we did a lot of growth and we got it to where it wanted to be. And then being the ages we were and having started something, we then all started doing other different things too, like families.

And that’s when I say when it was a standard of living for a period of time, it helped. We did very, very well. We created unique softwares, but we kept it within a scope. And we were doing well. And a lot of small ISVs did very well in that timeframe. In the early 90s, early the 80s, early 90s into the 90s, even into the Os smaller software houses we did well. And that was a world in which you could be that and do well in Z. And then around 2012, my children are getting older and you have the opportunity of pushing it again. And that’s what we started doing. And it’s been exciting.

And I guess the point I’m making here is that you can have your cake and eat too a little bit. If you’re willing, like you can, within any IT infrastructure or within any organization, you can let your business side of the world and your personal side grow together. And that’s what’s happened. And then in the last 10 years, we’ve just really been pushing hard. And we are definitely in the forefront of development. We have offices now in Stuart guard and Perth, Australia and New Jersey is in our corporate offices, in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where I’m at. And so it’s definitely, it’s just perseverance and taking risks and doing what you need to do.

Steven Dickens:
So one of the questions I always ask on the show and we have some guests on, who’ve got that benefit of hindsight. And we’ve just talked about your career arc. Maybe if you could, what would you say to your 22 year old self? Maybe you’re coming out of college. You’ve got the opportunity to go back in time and look and give, give the younger Rebecca, some advice, what would that advice be with the benefit of hindsight.

Rebecca Levesque:
You know, there’s individual pieces I would probably change, the decisions I would make differently. Sure. But if I had to go back and look at myself, I listened to Tina. I know you asked this. So I was careful. I prepared a little bit. I thought to myself, don’t underestimate yourself, believe in yourself and still take the risks you took. When we started 21st, it was a risk. And there was a couple other software companies that I had been a part of along the way. And those are all risks. You look at it and you say, “Was it the right choice?” Well, maybe one or two of them I wouldn’t have taken, but this one was with. And so be willing to take that and know that it’s not always going to be easy and there’s going to be setbacks, but that’s okay. Don’t quit. And just do, I wouldn’t change the major things. Of course, there’s little things. Anybody would say they would change, but the big things now I would continue. I would do what I’m doing today.

Steven Dickens:
And the advice you’d give to yourself, would it be that, take those risks back yourself in those situations?

Rebecca Levesque:
Yeah. Take the risks. Because when you are doing something new, when you’re trying to change something, when you’re trying to be faster, better or smarter, those are the three words I always put to things, right. You want to be faster, better than smarter than the competitor. If you’re trying to just do things in that vein there’s risks associated with that, you’re going to fail. And I’m glad I did, sometimes it’s bumpy you. Sometimes it doesn’t feel good. It’s not always a fun day, but at the end of the day, I’m glad I did. And so take the risks. Don’t understand yourself, believe in yourself, take the risks. And I’m glad I did that. And I would do the same.

Steven Dickens:
I like that as a mantra there faster, better smarter. I can see how you could apply that to multiple disciplines. Is that something you live by and bring to most of your business discussions?

Rebecca Levesque:
Yes. You can ask anybody who’s with me. And when I say passion and demanding, it’s because everything’s faster that are smarter. It’s gotten into our presentations. It’s gotten into how I like to do things, because look, if you have the perfect box and it is perfect, but you’re not there to show it. I can show up with a box that has some bends and I’m not perfect. But if I show up with a box of people, believe in it, I can fix it. But if you never get there and you’re leaving the doors open and you got to be better than people, and that you have to really form the relationships.

And when I say better, I’m not saying like, you’re better than as a person. You’re better at trying to build those relationships and get people to work with you so that you can kind of, and smarter. You just want to have smart people around. You am not the smartest of my team by any shirt, but I have some really good teammates and they build on it so faster, better smarter is a 21st thing. It’s who I am. I try to be. But it’s also the way that I try to see how we do things.

Steven Dickens:
I like the way you describe the, and self-facing, but describe yourself first. I’m not the smartest person, but I’m trying to surround myself with smarter people, I’ve made a career in this industry by trying to identify smart people and tag myself to those and get that additional lift. I think if you are curious and on a journey to get smarter every day, you are going to get smart personally, and you’re going to have more fun and being associated with better people.

So, I mean, as we start to bring this home for the listeners here and start to think about it, where are you seeing the mainframe go? One of the things I always ask of the listeners here is we start to bring it to always ask of the guests. I’m behalf of the listeners is I’m really interested, especially when we get CEOs of software companies on you’re in a unique position with the strategic lens, you can start to look a wave and look further down the road. And I always ask the question with a crystal ball, where do you think we’re going to be three, five years out from the mainframe? Because we spent some time talking about the backwards looking lens and how the platform has evolved over the last 50 plus years. Where do you see the next five years?

Rebecca Levesque:
I see hybrid cloud and being a real important and part of our transformation. I see modernization and being a part of the digital transformation when I talk to the subject of business and making sure that we’re driving towards the business, the business is driving where we have to go. So we need to be listening. We need to be communicating with them. And then when we’re doing that, I think Z with the talent chip is going to be a core component of any large organizations, IT infrastructure. And it is my hope that if we can clear the mind of bias when it comes to the Z, that we actually will see new businesses come on Z because once we really share with them the ability that we have with the transactional processing, everyone wants to be green.

How green can you be with the transactions we can process in the I, we put through for that little box, look at the square, we take on a floor and then look at everything else and the power and everything they consume. Right? So if we really want to… I’m hoping, and I think that I’m betting on the fact that Z is here for many years to stay. And I think that it’s going to be a little different, it’s going to be cloud. It’s going to be hybrid cloud. It’s going to have to take on some nuances, but I think we’re up for the challenge. And I think with the talent chip and the commitment from IBM, I’m betting my horse on it and our organization. So we’re a Z company, that’s what we’re doing.

Steven Dickens:
I tend to subscribe to that view of the future as well. I think we’re past a lot of the get off the platform. The platform’s going to do rhetoric that was maybe there 10, 15 years ago. I think we’re starting to see a different dynamic. We’re starting to see that the more evolve thinking that you are advocating for here of, and maybe a more nuanced perspective, it’s not black or white on mainframe or off mainframe. It’s more around the mainframe coexisting as part of your hybrid cloud strategy.

Rebecca Levesque:
Absolutely. And it’s a core piece because it can do something super well. Right? Does some things extremely well. So if you have data that you need, what this platform gives, including the security, maybe you don’t need the transactional processing, but you need the security and the resiliency. There’s specific nuances to this platform that if you need them as an organization and an unbiased way looking at it, and that’s key, right? If the unbiased still to think out of the box, you can’t just go with the latest marketing merchandising. As some people say, right, you don’t want to look at the airplane. Remember we used to say the airplane book. We don’t want that. We want to be unbiased. We want to do our homework. We can make those decisions. Look at what it does. You can’t see a future for this point.

Steven Dickens:
Yeah. I tend to agree. And I think that’s a fantastic place for us to wrap. So thank you very much for your time on the podcast. Really enjoyed the conversation.


The “I Am A Mainframer” podcast explores the careers of those in the mainframe ecosystem. Hosted by Steven Dickens, Senior Analyst at Futurum Research, each episode is a conversation that highlights the modern mainframe, insight into the mainframe industry, and advice for those looking to learn more about the technology.

The podcast is sponsored by the Open Mainframe Project, a Linux Foundation project that aims to build community and adoption of Open Source on the mainframe by eliminating barriers to Open Source adoption on the mainframe, demonstrating the value of the mainframe.