Culture Archives - Popup Mainframe

DevOps Excellence Awards 2024

We are very proud to announce that PopUp Mainframe has been awarded Highly Commended in the category ‘DevOps Tool/Product of the Year’ at the DevOps Excellence Awards 2024.

We are thrilled to be recognised alongside some well-established players in the DevOps space.

For many organisations, mainframe is often the last piece to achieve automation. Most businesses have established automation and DevOps ways of working for the distributed teams, but haven’t managed to apply these to the mainframe areas yet.

Adopting DevOps for the mainframe poses some unique challenges. These include a lack of dev and test environments in which to trial automation, new ways of working and new tools, as well as lack of innovation opportunity. Compounding this, there is a skills shortage in mainframe and sometimes resistance to change.

At PopUp, mainframe modernisation and mainframe DevOps is at the heart of everything we do.

Our mission is to empower mainframe businesses to deliver changes faster, cheaper and better with on-demand environments for dev and test. We see this as a necessary pre-requisite for organisations to move into this final ‘Automation & DevOps frontier’ (where ALL teams, including mainframe, can embrace automation and DevOps practices), and truly achieve their agility aspirations at all levels.

PopUp enables customers to take mainframe on their DevOps journey by creating fully functioning z/OS instances on-demand, on-prem or in the cloud, and controlling them through pipelines. This overcomes dev and test mainframe unavailability – the number one blocker to mainframe DevOps.

PopUp liberates mainframe teams, enabling automation, DevOps innovation and continuous improvement with no risk to the physical mainframe.

PopUp helps fast track DevOps initiatives in the following ways:

Aiding the implementation of automation and pipelines (e.g. with BMC tooling pre-installed on a PopUp)
Continuously improving ways of working and increasing collaboration
Helping to create real, lasting cultural change
Increasing productivity by reducing wait times
Modern tools boost the productivity of all team members
A catalyst for mainframe innovation and fast feedback
Ready-made cloud z/OS environments (e.g. Azure)
PopUp & Git integration is a cinch
Accelerating DevOps journeys with new talent

PopUp also provides additional features to boost your DevOps journey which are not available on the physical mainframe. For example, PopUp can be replicated to create multiple z/OS clones including applications and data, and mainframe instances can be deployed and torn down using APIs or pipelines. In conjunction with Delphix, mainframe instances can be bookmarked at any stage, then they can be rewound or fast forwarded to the snapshot using a self-service portal.

To learn more about how PopUp can help you achieve your DevOps goals, read the blog: Fast Track your DevOps Mainframe Initiatives.

Curious to know more about DevOps for the mainframe, how ephemeral mainframe instances can accelerate your projects, or automating your mainframe processes? Contact us.

Old School, New School … Mainframe is for Everyone!

At PopUp, we believe mainframe can and should be for everyone.

Let’s start this post with a definition.

‘Old School’ Mainframe Engineers: People who may have been working on the mainframe for many years who are comfortable with green screen and traditional ways of working.

‘New School’ Mainframe Engineers: The next generation of people who want to utilise modern tooling and work in collaborative agile ways.

Of course the situation is not black and white, and there are many mainframe engineers who fall somewhere between these two groups. But these phrases will be helpful for discussion.

The ‘New School’ perspective on the mainframe

For some ‘new schoolers’, mainframe is seen as an old, outdated technology which is not required in the modern world. They may also think that a career in mainframe is not a wise choice due to the perception of mainframe usage reducing, therefore providing less opportunity to grow and develop new skills. However this is far from the truth of the situation.

The results from the recent 2023 BMC Mainframe Survey Report tell us that year on year, more and more people working in mainframe, and particularly at the executive level, believe in the mainframe’s ability to grow and attract new workloads. This perception is growing, and reflects a steady rise in data volumes and workloads on the mainframe in recent years.

Mind the Skills Gap

Unfortunately, we are in a situation where many (‘old school’) mainframe developers are retiring from the workforce leaving behind a workforce skills gap, and in many cases, extensive and difficult-to-support code libraries.

To address this skills shortage, companies need to attract the next generation of mainframers (‘new schoolers’) to their teams. To be attractive, organisations must provide modern mainframe development tools and embrace modern ways of working (which are usually appealing to ‘new schoolers’). Although many people love trusty ISPF, it’s just not sexy!

‘New schoolers’ need to see that mainframe is a dynamic, relevant platform which is here to stay for the long term, with a wide enough scope to sustain a long career.

For new hires to be effective, ‘old schoolers’ and ‘new schoolers’ need to work side by side collaboratively and productively on the same projects. Due to the different working styles and expectations, some organisations are struggling to get these groups of people to work effectively together.

It doesn’t matter if you’re ‘old school’, ‘new school’ or somewhere in between, PopUp can help!

PopUp Mainframe is a z/OS virtual instance running real z/OS code for Dev and Test, identical to a physical mainframe. PopUp comes packaged as a fully featured, optimized virtual machine image. It runs on any enterprise x86 hardware you choose – on prem or in the cloud.

PopUp helps attract ‘new schoolers’ to your organisation, while supporting ‘new schoolers’ and ‘old schoolers’ to work together and improving team productivity. It does this in many ways:

With PopUp, ‘new schoolers’ can easily use automated pipelines and APIs. PopUp also makes it easy for teams to adopt modern ways of working introduce automation pipelines and start using git. This is very attractive for ‘new schoolers’ and may aid recruitment.

‘New schoolers’ will be at home using a PopUp, as PopUp ships with modern tools already installed set up and ready to go (meaning nothing needs to be installed on the physical mainframe). ‘New schoolers’ can use IDEs which provide remote debug and editing, code assist and more.

Using PopUp, ‘old schoolers’ are free to use green screen and traditional mainframe tools, which look exactly the same on a PopUp as they do on a mainframe (since ZD&T is a hardware emulator and emulates the Z hardware).

PopUp levels the playing field for ‘old schoolers’ and ‘new schoolers’ by offering a range of tools with which to perform development activities and enabling each team member to choose which tools they are most comfortable with (while working side-by-side on the same projects).

This strategy of providing a range of tools to team members and letting them choose which ones they are most comfortable with also brings other benefits. It supports ‘old schoolers’ to adopt new ways of working and new tools at their own pace. It is likely to improve job satisfaction as team members have some autonomy about their tool usage.

Organisations can recruit new team members who prefer ‘old school’ ways of working, ‘new school’, and anything in between. New hires will be quickly productive either way.

Together we all can (let’s be confident!) … will… change the perception of mainframe as a legacy technology.

An Example

One of our customers, a pensions company, supported their team members (which consisted of ‘old schoolers’, ‘new schoolers’ and some people in between) to transition from green screen to modern mainframe tools in a phased approach. They did this in small groups, by giving each person a PopUp and supporting them to use modern mainframe tools when each person was ready – at their own pace and comfort level. This approach was driven by empathy and resulted in a very successful project and productive team.

As this customer said,

“From going from a green screen, to having an IDE…that’s just a complete game changer.”

If you are curious to know more about how PopUp can support your mainframe modernisation goals, contact us today.

Culture DevOps

Fast-track your mainframe DevOps initiatives

DevOps on the mainframe is particularly hard

In IT, mainframe is often the last piece to achieve automation. Many organisations have established automation and DevOps ways of working for the distributed teams, but haven’t managed to apply this to the mainframe areas yet.

As we see it, the main challenges in adopting DevOps for mainframe are:

Lack of dev and test environments in which to trial automation, new ways of working and new tools.
Culture, mindset, and ways of working changes (and ensuring those are sustained in the long term).
Inability to innovate due to locked down systems and timeboxed access to the physical mainframe.
Governance processes which are entrenched and inflexible.
Mainframe skills shortage and difficulty attracting new joiners.
Create a right-sized virtual z/OS instance with the right data and applications to suit the use case (not just a full copy of the LPAR).

We developed PopUp to help solve some of these pressing business problems.

At PopUp, our mission is to empower mainframe businesses to deliver changes faster, cheaper and better with on-demand environments for dev and test. We see this as a necessary pre-requisite for organisations to move into this final ‘DevOps frontier’ (where ALL teams, including mainframe, can embrace DevOps). This is necessary for businesses to truly achieve their agility aspirations at all levels of the business.

Find out more information about PopUp here.

How does PopUp fast track mainframe DevOps initiatives?

PopUp enables an organisation’s mainframe DevOps initiatives to take off, in a number of ways. PopUp enables companies to eat the elephant of mainframe DevOps by starting small and making progress quickly.

A. Pipelines & Automation

Automation and pipelines are a must for any DevOps journey. PopUp aids the implementation of automation and pipelines by:

Enabling users to spin up and manage fully functioning z/OS instances through a pipeline via RESTful APIs.
Making it easy to align mainframe pipelines with pipelines for distributed systems.
Providing mainframe teams with automation tools pre-installed and pre-configured on the PopUp.
Using the built-in test automation tools, developers can write unit tests and run them through automation in a PopUp.
Providing test automation tools which can be used to build a full regression test pack.
Making it easy to include code validation in pipelines.
Integrating out of the box with Git.

B. Increase Productivity by Giving Developers Mainframe On-Demand

The main bottleneck in mainframe delivery is lack of mainframe environments. This causes a huge knock-on effect when teams have limited slots on the physical mainframe, and have to schedule those far in advance. PopUp delivers z/OS environment capacity to teams at the speed its needed. This newfound availability of mainframe instances in turn enables fundamental changes to the teams’ ways of working.

Team members no longer need to wait days or weeks for their slot on the mainframe, instead they can do their work as needed. Once the biggest blocker is removed, wait times and idle time are reduced through every stage in the delivery process. This has a massive impact on productivity, as well as team satisfaction.

C. Modern tools boost the productivity of all team members

There are more and more tools available which allow developers to interact with mainframe systems without ever logging into a mainframe green screen. Modern mainframe tools provide a host of benefits including intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces, automatic code completion and syntax checks, debug tools, automation, and instant feedback.

However, it’s not always easy to adopt modern tools on the physical mainframe. On PopUp you are free to install or use any modern mainframe tools you wish and experiment in an isolated, completely risk-free environment. Mainframe teams can then realise the benefits of modern mainframe tools with no risk to the physical mainframe. Modern tools not only improve productivity of new joiners (who can be very productive using intuitive tooling even without prior mainframe experience), but vastly increase the productivity of existing team members too, who experience the same benefits.

D. DevOps with Compliant Data

One challenging element of ephemeral environments is getting the right data. Using PopUp in combination with Delphix, production data can be masked and moved onto the PopUp. This gives developers and testers the ability to test against fully compliant production-like data. The benefit of using prod-like data for testing is hard to overstate – it facilitates better test scenario creation and increased test coverage.

Another powerful feature of Delphix & PopUp is creating a Gold Copy image which includes masked data. This Gold Copy can be cloned as needed to provide a full z/OS instance with compliant data, ready to go. The test data can also be refreshed easily, ensuring that dev teams always have recent, prod-like, compliant data.

E. PopUp is a catalyst for mainframe innovation and fast feedback!

PopUp brings increased opportunity for innovation to mainframe teams since they can work and experiment in 100% safe, disposable environments. In a risk-free mainframe sandbox, you can be confident in experimenting with new capabilities which cannot be risked on the physical mainframe. This gives the opportunity for fast feedback on new tools and capabilities without needing to install anything on the physical mainframe.

Using Delphix alongside PopUp allows users to provision copies/clones of a PopUp, snapshot the instance during testing, then just rewind / forward-wind to any of the snapshots as needed. There is no need to worry about breaking the PopUp. This gives app teams tremendous flexibility and independence to develop, test and deploy changes faster.

F. Ready-made cloud z/OS environments

PopUp is available to buy directly through Azure MarketPlace and can be up and running in less than an hour. This provides near-instant z/OS compute capability in the cloud to service DevOps initiatives.

PopUp is also compatible with other cloud environments.

G. Accelerate your DevOps journey with new talent

Skills shortage is a big challenge in the mainframe space and can derail DevOps initiatives. Mainframe businesses need to attract a new generation of mainframe engineers, who usually want to use cutting-edge mainframe tooling, like desktop IDEs and automation tools.

Modern mainframe tools come out of the box with PopUp. So PopUp simultaneously appeals to traditional mainframe engineers who may prefer green screen (and enjoy the ability to spin up their own mainframe environments on-demand), as well as new mainframe engineers who prefer modern tools. Using PopUp, you can hire people with no green screen experience and be confident that they will still be able to integrate with and develop mainframe systems.

H. PopUp – Git integration is a cinch

Most DevOps initiatives rely heavily on modern version control tools. Git is regarded by many as the best, easiest to use, and the most effective one available and it’s everywhere in the world of distributed applications – but not yet for mainframe. PopUp enables Git integration with mainframe source out of the box, giving yet another boost on your DevOps journey.

How does PopUp help to create real, lasting DevOps cultural change?

This is often one of the trickiest parts of a DevOps transformation journey. It can be particularly difficult in mainframe teams which may have been operating in similar ways for decades and have no appetite to change.

It’s easier to make incremental cultural changes than forcing a completely new way of working in one go. PopUp provides the vehicle for this as users can adopt PopUp at their own pace alongside their existing ways of working on the physical mainframe.

PopUp empowers users as they benefit from the self-service capability, and that results in appreciation and uptake from the mainframe teams.

PopUp gives extra features to boost you on your DevOps journey

One amazingly powerful thing about PopUp is that it provides capabilities which physical mainframes cannot. This opens the door for deeper innovation and new working practices:

Replicate PopUps to create multiple z/OS clones including applications and data
Deploy and tear down mainframe instances using APIs or pipelines
Baseline and version PopUp instances
Take snapshots of PopUp throughout projects using Delphix
Return to a baseline (rewind), and fast-forward to snapshots
Switch a PopUp off when it is no longer needed. When it is brought up again it is exactly as it was – there are no ongoing maintenance costs as you have for a physical mainframe.

Curious to know more about mainframe DevOps? Contact us to discuss.

Cloud Culture Data Masking Delphix DevOps

DevOps Dozen 2023 – Finalists!

We are very proud to announce that PopUp Mainframe has been listed as a finalist in 2 categories at the DevOps Dozen Awards 2023!

This recognition is particularly special to us as we are a very small, very young company, competing against some established players in the mainframe space.

We are finalists in the categories

Best DevOps for Mainframe Solution
Best New DevOps Tools/Service Provider

Awards Cloud Culture Delphix DevOps

GSE UK Conference 2023 – Photos!

The UK PopUp team (or “PopStars” as we call ourselves) attended the GSE conference at Whittlebury Park from 30th Oct – 2nd Nov 2023. It was a very well-attended event, brimming with mainframe enthusiasts, and copious deep discussions on all aspects of mainframe.

Thank you to the organisers, it was well run and enjoyed by all.

Legal & General – PopUp Mainframe driving Pensions Application Transformation

There were many highs across the four day event – the best was probably our founder, Gary Thornhill, joining one of our customers on stage to present their story.

Vamsi Bhogireddy and Javeed Miyandad from L&G shared how they transformed their pensions application with the developer experience at the heart of the project.

Using PopUp Mainframe to provide ephemeral z/OS instances in Azure, they reduced development cycle times with purpose-built, pre-configured tooling, driving pipeline automation and agility… whilst increasing the quality of deliverables.

What else we got up to

The team were joined by a brand new addition to the PopUp team – ‘mini PopStars’ in the form of lego minifigures.

The ‘mini PopStars’ got to meet their idol – the human-sized lego z16.

The PopUp team got up close and personal with a Formula 1 car.

We even let the ‘mini PopStars’ have a go at driving!

Our PopUp pants were a big hit and were snapped up quickly. If you missed out on a pair this time, come along to a future event for some more unique merchandise.

GSE attendees were lucky to be the first people to get their hands on our brand new PopUp Handbook.

The Handbook is your guide to getting the most from PopUp on your mainframe modernisation journey. It covers the future of mainframe, how to eat the elephant of mainframe modernisation, shift left testing, increasing agility, accelerating batch testing and many more topics.

Read The PopUp Handbook here. If you want your own copy, join us at one of our upcoming events.

We loved GSE 2023 and can’t wait for next year!

Cloud Culture DevOps GSE

Git for the mainframe? How Git boosts collaboration, improves productivity and enables CICD

Git is everywhere in the world of distributed applications, but not yet for mainframe.

Should you consider Git for your mainframe? Why?

Git is excellent at facilitating and accelerating collaboration for software teams. People with a distributed background already know this, but some of us are resisting a bit in the mainframe world.

Git is a distributed version control system which can store not just code, but nearly everything related to software development – including test packs, data, documentation, configuration and more. It is a common repository which can be shared across teams. This helps to break down silos between teams, as it means that everyone can access what they need and work together more effectively.

Why embrace Git?

Work with teams more easily as you can simply give them access to see the source code for your projects that they need to see. Collaboration is not shut down like it is when they don’t have a hope of getting access to your code.
When a change is made to part of your system which impacts another system, there is no need to send the edited code/new specifications across to other teams. Instead, you can inform them that there has been a change, share a link to where the new version is in Git, and they immediately have visibility. Pipelines can be shared between teams so when Team 1 edits an artefact e.g. copybook, Team 2’s API can be automatically rebuilt with the updated version.

Git liberates developers to work in a more agile way which results in changes being released faster. For example, using Feature Branches each person can perform their work at their own pace without affecting anyone else, and merge it to the Main Branch when its ready. This encourages small and frequent code check ins and ultimately a more agile way of working.

Git is the standard for version control across industries and systems. Even if your existing mainframe team members need upskilling to use Git, new joiners to your team will likely already have the skills and be productive quickly. Git (as well as the agile processes Git enables) can also be an attractive pull for people to join your company as Git skills will be key for most developers in future.

Git works extremely well with continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) pipelines. Git integrates by default with all CI and CD tools, which enables you to build mature automation and streamline your entire SDLC. Pipelines provide consistency and traceability, ensuring that every piece of code goes through the same rigorous validation and quality checks. For example, your pipeline could include mandatory code scanning for security standards.

Automate testing for higher quality changes. Streamline processes by creating automated test packs for unit as well as system and integration testing, which are associated with the code and run in pipelines. Test packs can be stored in Git alongside the code so they are always available and its easy to keep them in sync. Once you have completed your development, you can kick off an automated pipeline to do testing and deploy to the next environment. No need for slow, error-prone, manual testing.

Reduce handovers. No need to create a ticket to another team since the automated pipeline does the build, testing and deployment. There is no information lost/misunderstood, and no time wasted on ticket systems/calls to discuss the work/waiting for another team to be ready.

Empower the dev team to make infrastructure changes. No need to raise a ticket and wait on another team. For example, if you need to make a database change, add the DDL scripts to your Git repo and it will be included in the pipeline, tested and deployed. Terraform patterns and other infrastructure definitions can be incorporated into a pipeline.

Since Git is standard across most platforms, third party products are increasingly providing Git integration out of the box. This reduces the overheads in setting up a new system for your team.

Git is by no means the only distributed version control system available, but Git is regarding by many as the best, easiest to use, and the most effective.

If you want to talk about how to migrate from your existing SCM to Git, how Git can boost your dev and test practices, and hear some client stories, contact us.

Culture DevOps Testing

Is outsourcing a barrier to mainframe modernisation?

The evolution of mainframe modernisation is rapidly accelerating

In my opinion, the biggest challenge to mainframe modernisation is not technical. It is cultural and organisational with some ‘stuck in their ways’ siloed mainframe teams reticent, or even obstructing change.

Often these siloed teams within a single organisation are outsourced with teams being run by multiple vendors. As a result, for lots of organisations in 2022, even making any BAU change is incredibly slow and cumbersome. Moving mainframe workloads to the cloud, implementing mainframe automation, and mainframe DevOps, is not feasible or realistic, purely because of organisation structure and antiquated processes.

Unless organisations invest in mainframe modernisation both technically and culturally, mainframe change will become an increasingly heavier ball and chain that will drag some notables down in the coming years.

“In this digital age the winners will always be those that can adopt technology the fastest. The mainframe is no exception to this rule but organisations must recognise that unless they can embrace operational change first, the technology will not even get a chance to shine.”

– Gary Thornhill

Outsourcing blocks innovation

In my experience outsourcing is the worst culprit and the biggest barrier for mainframe organisations to innovate. A big part of the problem is procurement’s insatiable appetite for driving down cost. When outsourcing deals are squeezed too far, the vendor has to protect their margins by operating in much narrower corridors, reducing flexibility to the client.

For example only urgent fixes are applied and any new software installs are charged separately. We have been recently working with a client where the incumbent outsourcer insisted on building a whole project team to install one load module as this was out of scope of the BAU contract.

Locked out of your own system!

The client themselves often do not have access to work on their own systems because they are outsourced and they simply do not have access as part of the contract. An analogy would be if you see your favourite flower parched for water in your back garden but you are not allowed to use your own watering can to resuscitate it!

Relentless focus on cost savings

As a result deploying new technology becomes very difficult and at a disproportionate high cost. Most of the time is spent ‘costing’ the work with a laborious change control process to get the work signed off. This suits the outsourcer perfectly. When it comes to renewal, they can just drop the cost slightly as the environment is completely stable since there has been no technology change!

This is where procurement often fails its organisation, as it’s so obsessed with driving down cost it forgets about cost’s older and wiser cousin: value. So whilst procurement get a big pat on the back they are actually strangling their own organisation’s ability to stay competitive in the long term. The worst thing is this status quo is just accepted by the client and they suffer in silence.

Mainframe modernisation is essential

For some of the organisation’s IT teams this is a good state of affairs, as they are not pressured to deliver much change. But it is deeply frustrating to the modernisers who know that change is essential to maintain profitability and competitiveness in the long run.

For mainframe innovation to be successful, change must be straightforward and the cultural norm. Mainframe change should be a key part of the IT strategy with all departments understanding their responsibility to drive mainframe change.

About PopUp

PopUp Mainframe enables organisations to spin up mainframe environments quickly on x86 hardware. PopUp meets the need for mainframe development and test environments with absolutely no dependence on the physical mainframe. PopUp offers a solution to mainframe outsourcing and rigid contracts, and in turn, enables mainframe innovation to flourish.

Culture

Introducing PopUp Mainframe

We are very excited to introduce PopUp Mainframe – a brand new offering which finally removes the bottleneck of mainframe test environments by making mainframe self-service a reality.

Mainframe environments are expensive to buy and time-consuming to build and maintain. This leads to a shortage of mainframe test environments, project conflicts and slow production releases and time-to-market.

PopUp Mainframe enables mainframe testing to be agile!

Our new solution, PopUp Mainframe, allows mainframe environments to be provisioned instantly using modern automation tools, and satisfies dev and test environment requirements on-demand in line with project delivery.

Projects will no longer be held up due to unavailability of a mainframe test environment – projects can progress at speed without requiring long mainframe test cycles planned far in advance.

Mainframe in the cloud? Yes!

PopUp Mainframe enables another key capability, which is mainframe in the cloud. Our PopUp Mainframe solution can run on x86 Linux platforms – be that on a server, virtual machine, in a container, or in private, public or hybrid cloud.

With PopUp Mainframe your mainframe test environments can scale at the speed you need, keeping costs down and removing maintenance overheads. Now mainframe can finally be a part of your cloud strategy.

Why now?

The impact of the COVID pandemic has required organisations to drastically find way to save time and money to survive. PopUp Mainframe is one way to do that while simultaneously enabling your organisation with agile and cloud mainframe capabilities to take project performance to new heights.

Learn more

Download our Solution Overview, or contact our team.

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