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Stuart, described by the host as “a standout voice in the modernization of mainframes, is a 2025 Planet Mainframe influencer and a transformation leader who brings a wealth of knowledge with his expertise. Not only this, but he has also been a driving force behind the GSUK application developer track”.

Stuart’s comments from the podcast follow.

Starting out in IT.

“I left school 16 and started a journey as an industrial chemist for a sugar refining company in the UK. The job, alongside education, was my path to become an industrial chemist. At that time in 1984 the company had just bought a mainframe to centralize data processing from the factories. The factories all had Unix based systems and on a nightly basis they would transmit data to the central location where I was working. A mainframe junior operator job became available, and I decided to take it. Back then, on the mainframe, the world of automation was embryonic, we were at the beginning of using technology to automate our batch processes (UCC7, a forerunner of CA7). Throughout my career, I’ve always changed manual to automated where possible, whether in a lab or a mainframe environment. And I’ve never looked back. I love the mainframe community and the ecosystem around it. For me, it isn’t legacy, it is legendary – it is not going anywhere and remains vital to the industry.”

A reliable roadmap for mainframe modernization.

“In the distributed world, things like DevOps have been an approach for some time.  When you lean into what the distributed world have been doing successfully, that’s where the biggest rewards come from any kind of modernization. For example, introducing continuous integration tools – there are lots of mainframe products that are aware of GitHub and Jenkins. Big tools that are in the market for those automation approaches. And that can work just as well for the mainframe. A great way to look at it as it is just another server in the data center.

“We can approach development in a similar way with VS code or an IDE of choice whether it’s IntelliJ or an Eclipse-based offering, then everyone can work on the mainframe just as any other environment. I’ve met lots of polyglot developers that have five or six languages that they know quite well, and with assistance – such as autocomplete from the IDE – languages such as COBOL are easy to learn, and there’s a lot of PL/I support out there as well. For me, from a development perspective, I aim to make the approach the same, to unify the cultures and bring commonality into the mainframe environment.”

An Open, Neutral Perspective.

“In a DevOps tool chain, it’s all about having links that do certain things and companies will have great innovations, or maybe there’s an open-source option that that comes out that you can investigate that fills a gap. I’m a great believer in being vendor neutral rather than exclusively under one company, when swapping things out for improvement, whether that improvement is technology or financial. I’m a great admirer of Broadcom, BMC, and IBM. All their tools are fantastic, but it doesn’t mean you must align to only one. For example, now there are many GitHub / GitLab users including on the mainframe – the market has evolved towards trying to find the best fit.”

Z also means zero waste.

“As we all know, the Z in Z17 stands for zero downtime, because of its ultra resilient production environments – the mainframe world needs up times of 99.99999% or more. However, for coding, or testing, that’s not necessary. You need testing to be on demand, and it’s the content of the environment that matters most, not how long it was up for. In fact, conversely to the uptime metric, teams should focus on the fact it’s only “on” if they need it, and then off when they don’t need it. The means organizations are not wasting vital resources in the data center, whether that’s yours or in the cloud. At PopUp Mainframe, we’re noticing that shift which helps with the environmental aspects of mainframe computing.”

Making Your Tooling Work For You.

“For tool selection and strategy, it is about understanding the organization that you’re in, what’s available, and the skills you have, and build from there based on need. A core approach is to look at it along the lines of people, process, and tools – in that order – and bring the people along on the journey.

PopUp Mainframe’s customer, L&G, adopted a people-first approach to their mainframe transformation, and it was a great success. They swapped out tooling and processes, but those changes were built around their team, their culture, their skills, their training needs, and their strategy. They didn’t just rip and replace everything. They talked to their vendors:  Broadcom, BMC, IBM, and PopUp Mainframe, of course.

What obviously works is to start with the culture and then potentially processes that are going to make it easier to get the returns”.

Investing in the Community, and You.

“In the mainframe world, networking is a hugely advantageous aspect of your professional behaviour.  Head to an industry event such as GS UK in your first year, you might just be an observer at each session. You’re in learn mode, receive mode. Or so it feels. But in the downtime, you’re going to meet a lot of people, some of them at your level, some of them more senior, some are rock stars of the industry. Yet if you if you wander up and say, “Hi, I’m Stuart and I saw you on so and so.” They’re going to be happy to share some time with you. And as for the type of interaction, I always advise people – when the opportunity arises – ask a question when you can, especially young people or early in career people, always be inquisitive. Ask the why. Why do we do it like this?  If someone can’t explain to you why they’re doing it like that, maybe that’s a good indicator that a process has become too complicated, or it’s lost its way. I’ve seen early in career people ask questions that trigger phenomenal change.”

Final Advice For All Mainframers.

“One thing I’d recommend to employers, vendors and individuals, is to ensure you focus on the people skills and coaching side. Soft skills are often considered expensive and are not necessarily the natural tendency for technicians. But teamwork, communication, networking, and connections are vital for success. Also, I’d love to give individuals more time in their schedule for research, because good ideas can come from anywhere, not just the people in charge, provided you give encouragement and time for people to raise them. This requires a culture of psychological safety, and an open culture, where the flow of ideas is supported, and there’s no such thing as a bad idea All breakthroughs in tech come from a place where an idea was able to germinate in a team that supported it.”

For the full Podcast, go here.Editorial note – Some changes have been made from the original transcript to improve clarity.