A technology hidden to the common man

Despite the predominance of mainframes in the business world, these machines are largely invisible to the general public, the academic community, and indeed many experienced IT professionals. Instead, other forms of computing attrct more attention, at least in terms of visibility and public awareness. That this is so is perhaps not surprising. After all, who among us needs direct access to a mainframe? And, if we did, where would we find one to access? The truth, however, is that we are all mainframe users, whether we realize it or not (more on this later).

Most of us with some personal computer (PC) literacy and sufficient funds can purchase a notebook computer and quickly put it to good use by running software, browsing websites, and perhaps even writing papers for college professors to grade. With somewhat greater effort and technical prowess, we can delve more deeply into the various facilities of a typical Intel®-based workstation and learn its capabilities through direct, hands-on experience, with or without help from any of a multitude of readily available information sources in print or on the web.

Mainframes, however, tend to be hidden from the public eye. They do their jobs dependably (indeed, with almost total reliability) and are highly resistant to most forms of insidious abuse that afflict PCs, such as email-borne viruses and trojan horses. By performing stably, quietly, and with negligible downtime, mainframes are the example by which all other computers are judged. But at the same time, this lack of attention tends to allow them to fade into the background. Furthermore, in a typical customer installation, the mainframe shares space with many other hardware devices: external storage devices, hardware network routers, channel controllers, and automated tape library “robots,” to name a few. The mainframe is physically no larger than many of these devices and generally does not stand out from the crowd of peripheral devices. There are different classes of  ainframe to meet diverse needs of customers. The mainframe can grow in capacity as businesses grow. So, how can we explore the mainframe’s capabilities in the real world? How can we learn to interact with the mainframe, learn its capabilities, and understand its importance to the business world? Major corporations are eager to hire new mainframe professionals, but there is a catch: some previous experience would help.