SPARTA News

March 2021

SPARTA President’s Corner

contributed by Randy Springs

As we look forward to Spring of 2021, some of us may be making preparations to return to a normal office environment. Others may continue to work from home as safety concerns dictate stricter policies for some. We continue to adapt and function in our jobs, which are perhaps easier for IT positions.

For the foreseeable future, we will be holding our SPARTA meetings via Zoom format. Hopefully, we can resume meetings at LabCorp in 2022. I hope that everyone is staying safe and healthy and that a vaccine option will be available for all who seek it as soon as possible.

For our March meeting, our virtual speakers will be John Baker and Todd Havekost from Intellimagic, speaking on getting the most out of SMF data for CICS, Db2, and MQ and also on IBM’s recent Tailored Fit Pricing option for software charges.

Please join your colleagues at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 2, on Zoom. Watch for meeting connection information coming your way soon.

Randy Springs
Truist

Future Speakers

(subject to change)

Mar. 2, 2021 - Boost Value of Log Data and Tailored Fit or Off the Rack TPF by John Baker and Todd Havekost of IntelliMagic

Apr. 6, 2021 - SHARE 2021 Virtual Summit Report by Ed Webb of SPARTA

May 4, 2021 - eventACTION™ z/OS Systems Management by Peter Sharma of Action Software

We need ideas and volunteers for future speakers. Presentations don’t have to be fancy, just informative and interesting. Even a 5 or 10 minute talk can start an interesting interaction. Contact Ron Pimblett by phone as noted below.

2020-2021 SPARTA

Board of Directors

Randy Springs - President

Truist                  (919) 745-5241

3200 Beechleaf Court, Suite 300

Raleigh, NC 27604

Ron Pimblett - Vice President

MDI Data Systems

Land line 613 599 6970

Mobile 613 981 6919

190 Guelph Private

Kanata, ON K2T 0J7

Chris Blackshire - Secretary

Retired (Dell, Perot Systems, Nortel)  (919) nnn-nnnn

street

Durham, NC 27713

Randy Springs - (Acting) Treasurer

BB&T                  (919) 745-5241

see Randy

Springs earlier

Ed Webb -  Communications Director

Retired (SAS Institute Inc.)  (919) nnn-nnnn

street

Apex, NC 27523

Mike Lockey -  Web Master

Guilford Co. Information Services  336-641-6235

201 N. Eugene St.

Greensboro, NC 27401

Meetings

Coronavirus Change: All meetings for the foreseeable future will be held online via the Zoom App. The link to meeting is sent to SPARTA Mailing list within 24 hours of the meeting time for security reasons. Stay safe.

Meetings are scheduled for the first Tuesday evening of each month (except no meeting in January), with optional dinner at 6:15 p.m. and the meeting beginning at 7:00 p.m.

These monthly meetings usually are held at LabCorp’s Center for Molecular Biology and Pathology (CMBP) near the Research Triangle Park (see last page). Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto T.W. Alexander Drive. Go about a mile or so. Then turn right into LabCorp complex and turn Left to the CMBP Building (1912 T.W. Alexander Drive). In the lobby, sign in as a visitor to see Bill Johnson. Bill will escort you to the conference room.

Call for Articles

If you have any ideas for speakers, presentations, newsletter articles, or are interested in taking part in a presentation, PLEASE contact one of the Board of Directors with your suggestions.

Newsletter e-Mailings

The SPARTA policy is to e-mail a monthly notice to our SPARTA-RTP Group. The newsletter is posted to the website about five (5) days before each meeting so you can prepare. The SPARTA-RTP Group is maintained by Chris Blackshire; if you have corrections or problems receiving your meeting notice, contact Chris at chrisbl@nc.rr.com.

December 2020 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V500 (dated December 20, 2020) are available from www.cbttape.org.

If you need help obtaining one or more files, contact Ed Webb (see Board of Director’s list for contact info).

Minutes of the February 1, 2020 Meeting

• The meeting was called to order at 7:05 PM by Chris Blackshire standing in for Randy Springs, the SPARTA President.

• This tenth (April 2020 to February 2021) virtual SPARTA meeting was held via the Zoom Software.

• Eleven (11) people were present at the virtual meeting.

• The business portion of the meeting followed after the presentation.

• For the Roundtable, everyone introduced themselves, told where they worked, talked about working from home, and briefly described their job functions and what they've been doing at work and home.

OLD BUSINESS

• The minutes of the December 1, 2020 meeting as published in the February 2021 Newsletter were approved.

• The December 31, 2020 Treasurer's report (no April-December income or expenses) as published in the February 2021 Newsletter was approved. As of December 31, 2020, the current balance was $1,489.66.

• Call For Articles: Articles are needed for this newsletter. If you would like to write an article for this newsletter, please contact Ed Webb. Keep in mind that you don't really need to write the article, it can be an article that you read that you would like to share with the membership.

• The SPARTA Web page is available. To access the SPARTA Web page, point your Web browser to this site: http://www.spartanc.org. Please send any comments or suggestions about the Web page to Mike Lockey. Be sure to check the Web page every once in a while to see any new or changed information.

• 2021 meeting dates, Future Speakers and Topics (subject to change based on internal politics, budget, the weather):

If you have suggestions about speakers and topics, contact Ron Pimblett.

• The next SPARTA monthly meeting will be held virtually on Tuesday, March 2, 2021.

• The 2021 membership fee is due ($30) starting in February 2021. Please pay Randy Springs.

• Thanks to Duane Reaugh for virtually hosting the meeting via Zoom.

• There are currently 95 people on the SPARTA e-mail distribution list.

• Send any e-mail address changes to Chris Blackshire so he can update the SPARTA distribution List. The February email meeting notices were the first being sent via a simple distribution list maintained by Chris. The previous Yahoo ListServer list of 101 people was reduced to 95 from rejects found and people asking to be removed.

• Randy Springs is looking for a new Treasurer volunteer. He projects about 2 hours per month is needed.
- The treasurer position duties are:
- - Collect dues and pay expenses at each monthly meeting.
- - Deposit income at the Truist bank monthly.
- - Make an updated monthly Excel income-expense list for the monthly newsletter.
- - Give a Treasurer report at each meeting.
- - One Time: Be added to the checking account authorization.
- Contact Randy Springs if you are interested.

• LabCorp Meeting Place Update: no update needed from Bill Johnson.

NEW BUSINESS

• Changing the SPARTA web page from HTTP to HTTPS. Chris to contact Mike Lockey about what would be involved.

• The Business portion of the meeting ended about 8:30 P.M. (And the meeting also ended at 8:30 p.m.)

• Presentation Topic: ASG Mainframe Offerings and Data Security

by Jeff Cherrington, VP of ASG Product Management, ASG Technologies

AGENDA
• ASG Background
• Where ASG Fits in Infrastructure Management and Application Development
• ASG Business Partners and Customers
• ASG Differences and Proof Points
• ASG Systems Management Portfolio
• A Trusted Partner
• Appendix

• Presentation Access - See Below for a full outline of the presentation. See the SPARTA webpage for the complete presentation.

• Contact Info:
Speaker: Jeff Cherrington
ASG Technologies
VP of Product Management
Office: 1-414-207-3988 or toll-free 800-932-5536
Email: jeff.cherrington@asg.com
Website: www.asg.com

• The February 2, 2021 monthly meeting ended about 8:30 P.M.

Treasurer’s Report for February 2021

contributed by Randy Springs

The balance in the account is $1489.66 as of February 28, 2021.

SPARTA Financial Report
4/01/2020 through 02/28/2021

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2021

contributed by Chris Blackshire

Mar 2, 2021 - Subs (SHARE 136 Virtual, March 2-4, 9-11, 16-17, and 23-24)
Apr 6, 2021 - BarBQ (Ed Webb speaker topic SHARE 136)
May 4, 2021 - Pizza
June 1, 2021 - Chicken
June 29, 2021 - Subs (July 5 holiday is in the July 6 week)
Aug 3, 2021 - BarBQ (SHARE 137, August 08-13, 2021)
Aug 31, 2021 - Pizza (Labor Day holiday is Monday Sept 6) - Speaker Ed Webb, topic SHARE 137
Oct 5, 2021 - Chicken
Nov 2, 2021 - Subs
Dec 7, 2021 - BarBQ
Jan 4, 2022 - No meeting!

SHARE Starts Tuesday, March 2 - Register Today!

contributed By Ed Webb

From SHARE's Executive Director, Brian Langerman:

"I invite you to join me at the upcoming SHARE Virtual Summit 2021 ..., starting March 2 and taking place ten days through the month.  The event features more than 150 sessions, curated by a program committee of practicing professionals across these high-interest areas.
·       Application Architecture Development and Integration
·       DevOps in the Enterprise
·       Enterprise Data Center
·       Information Management
·       Linux and VM
·       MVS
·       Open Source on Z
·       Security in the Enterprise
·       ZOWE

Your registration includes access to the entire SHARE Virtual Summit Program: come for a day or all ten days. Better yet, through our attendee portal, you can attend sessions in real time or on demand through June 31. We know your time is valuable and your schedule can be challenging; our educational content will be here when you’re ready."

Act now to review the technical agenda and Register at SHARE.org.

MicroGrids: Cutting the Utility Cord

contributed By Ed Webb

The recent weather disaster in Texas makes this topic very pertinent to all data centers. What steps are you taking to protect the power at your data center?

"Centralized vs. distributed is a question that pervades the IT industry. Not only do you need to answer this question for your compute and storage capability, you now need to consider this question for your electric power. Some companies intentionally build data centers to be close to data generating power, while others create their own power by building generation capability near their data center. The latter approach is a part of a microgrid strategy that can help increase availability by insulating you from natural disasters that could disconnect you from the grid.

There have been plenty of natural disasters that are threatening aging electric power utility grids around the world. If your data center is on a frail grid, you might be at risk for losing your power for an extended period of time. The Ponemon Institute claims the average power outage cost to a data center was almost $750 thousand in 2015. ...."

Learn more about using micro-grids to protect power at your data center in this article from Enterprise Executive 2020 Issue 6.

Virtual Machine (VM) on a PC

Contributed by Chris Blackshire

Have you thought about or setup a Virtual Machine on a PC? Here is a 28 minute video showing how easy it is to run VM on a Windows 10 computer.

You do not have to install it as the main OS on your PC, so there is no extra prompt at boot. A perfect way to run Windows 10 plus Ubuntu, Xubuntu, OpenSuse, and/or CentOS on 1 PC. You can even run Windows 10 under Windows 10 (like IBM's VM under VM).

More Interesting VM Reading: VMware vs. Virtual Box: Comprehensive Comparison at this link.

Hope you have fun with a simple way to run multiple operating systems on 1 PC.

Did I mention that the VM software is FREE?

Humor

Wit and Wisdom continued

contributed by Ed Webb

It's usually easier to love humanity as a whole than to love your neighbor.
Good judgment comes from experience: Experience comes from bad judgment.
We can't all be heroes: Someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.
The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which bridge to burn.
Experience is what you get when you expected something else.

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

7 p.m.

Location: Online

Information about access to our online meeting will be sent to our e-mail list by Tuesday, March 2.

Free Food before meeting: Your Food at Your Home

Program:

Boost Value of Log Data and Tailored Fit or Off the Rack TPF

Speaker: John Baker and Todd Havekost of IntelliMagic

SPARTA Corporate Sponsors:

February 2021 Presentation outline

• Presentation Topic: ASG Mainframe Offerings and Data Security

by Jeff Cherrington, VP of ASG Product Management, ASG Technologies

AGENDA
• ASG Background
• Where ASG Fits in Infrastructure Management and Application Development
• ASG Business Partners and Customers
• ASG Differences and Proof Points
• ASG Systems Management Portfolio
• A Trusted Partner
• Appendix

• ASG Background
- 30 YEAR HISTORY
- 1100 GLOBAL EMPLOYEES
- 3500+ GLOBAL CUSTOMERS
- 2019 REVENUE ~ $225M
- 4 YEARS OF GROWTH & INVESTMENT IN PRODUCTS (chart not copied)

• ENTERPRISE IT - WHERE ASG SYSTEMS FITS
INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT, APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT, AUTOMATION, CONTAINERIZATION
- Infrastructure Management
- - Security - Does Not Play
- - Databases
- - - Mainframe- IDMS DB Tools, Performance Monitoring
- - - Distributed- Performance / Capacity Management
- - Network
- - - Mainframe- Performance Monitoring
- - OS, Subsystems, VM
- - - Mainframe- Performance Monitoring, CICS Change Management, Workload Automation
- - - Distributed- Performance / Capacity Management, Workload Automation
- - Automation
- - - Mainframe- Workload Automation, File Transfer
- - - Distributed- Workload Automation
- - Storage - Does Not Play
- - Hardware - Does Not Play
- Application Development
- - Plan - Does Not Play
- - Create
- - - Mainframe- COBOL, JCL, DevOps-aligned
- - - Distributed- Value Stream Orchestration, DevOps-aligned, Workload Automation
- - Verify
- - - Mainframe- COBOL, JCL, DevOps-aligned, Date Manipulation
- - Pre-Production
- - - Mainframe- Source Code Management
- - Release
- - - Distributed- Value Stream Orchestration, DevOps-aligned
- - Configure - Does Not Play
- - Monitor
- - - Mainframe- Application Performance Measurement
- Digital Automation
- - Distributed- Low Code / No Code Digital Automation Platform
- Containerization, Container Management
- - Distributed- Value Stream Orchestration, DevOps-aligned, Workload Automation

• GLOBAL PARTNER ECOSYSTEM
ONE QUALITY BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP AT A TIME
- BUSINESS PARTNERS
- - ENSONO, RMIT, SIRIUS, MainLine, XMEG
- GLOBAL OUTSOURCERS
- - DXC Technology, CGI, ATOS, Syntel, IBM, NTT DATA

• CUSTOMERS IN ACTION
- FINANCIAL SERVICES
- - Bank of America, Credit Agricole, Citi, Societe Central, SEI, Morgan Stanley
- INSURANCE
- - Nationwide, American Fidelity, Primerica, AIG, Mutual of Omaha
- HEALTH & PHARMA
- - Celgene
- TRANSPORTATION
- - CSX, United
- GOVERNMENT
- - US Social Security Administration, OPERS
- COMMUNICATIONS
- - Verizon

• ASG’S DIFFERENTIATORS AND PROOF POINTS
LEVERAGING TRADITIONAL SOLUTIONS WHILE EMBRACING A MODERN APPROACH
- MAINFRAME TO CLOUD, OPTIMIZE PERFORMANCE
- - Optimize, automate processes
- - Rationalize & consolidate spend
- - With ASG, ONEY broke down silos & ‘discovered’ the mainframe to enhance productivity and mitigate risk.
- DRIVE TRUST IN DATA
- - Mitigate data compliance risks and concerns (LIBOR and Privacy)
- - Rationalize and lower TCO
- - ASG Helped American Fidelity Assurance Cut Duplicate Data Fields by 97.5%
- MODERNIZE, GOVERN, AND TRANSFORM CONTENT CENTRIC PROCESSES
- - Lower TCO, improve time to value
- - Mitigate compliance risks
- - Actionable automation
- - Reliance Nippon Life Increased Sales Productivity 50%, Transaction Size 30% with ASG.

• ASG SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT PORTFOLIO
MONITOR, AUTOMATE AND ORCHESTRATE FOR OPTIMIZED PERFORMANCE
- ASG SYSTEMS PORTFOLIO
- - MONITOR & IDENTIFY
- - - Monitor system availability with proven products
- - - Identify performance issues automatically across environments
- - SCHEDULE & AUTOMATE
- - - Schedule the automation of daily operational processes
- - - Automate and simplify the control of production operations
- - ORCHESTRATE & INTEGRATE
- - - Assess, plan and build an application release management process
- - - Integrate seamlessly with value stream production execution
- - IT OPERATIONAL PORTFOLIO
- - - DB2, MQ, ERP, COBOL, Servers, z/OS, JCL, TCP/IP, DevOps, IMS, CICS, VTAM

• A TRUSTED PARTNER
- Focus on customers, partners, innovation & quality products
- Continue to deliver & support an extensible platform
- Making products easier to use and consume
- Committed to partner ecosystem
- Investment in global support
- Scale and financial strength
- Continued investments-internally & externally

RESULTS MATTER
PEOPLE MATTER
CUSTOMERS MATTER

(See presentation Appendix for ASG Product Names and Details)

The virtual presentation ended about 8:15 PM followed by the business meeting.