A Look Back at Rocket Software’s Time at SHARE New Orleans
September 13, 2023
Another exciting SHARE conference is officially in the books, and as we return from New Orleans, our team is excited by the energy and passion witnessed at the event. Over the course of our week at SHARE, the Rocket Software team joined mainframe professionals to engage in discussions and educational opportunities and attend sessions covering topics spanning everything from open-source development and mainframe security to hybrid cloud.
It is abundantly clear that the community of mainframe professionals at SHARE New Orleans is stronger and more energized than ever. Let’s look at a few of the biggest trends, topics, and takeaways the Rocket Software team had coming out of the conference.
Hybrid Cloud Efforts Are Maturing
IT and business leaders have been talking about the benefits of the hybrid cloud for years now. But the conversations at SHARE this year stood out compared to years past. In New Orleans, the conversations were much more tangible and impassioned when it came to embracing the cloud and mainframe. Attendees fully realized the value that hybrid cloud could unlock when it comes to optimizing operations and reducing costs, even coming equipped with a multitude of use cases and examples of projects that were beginning to progress and mature at a high volume. From the start, it became readily apparent that hybrid cloud has firmly moved beyond the hype cycle, with mainframe professionals openly embracing the approach as the way forward.
Security and Disaster Recovery Remain a Top Priority
As modernization efforts progress within the mainframe, security has remained one of the most talked about issues among attendees at SHARE. The mainframe is often where some of the most sensitive information in an organization exists. As more organizations modernize and adopt hybrid cloud strategies, the number of attack surfaces grows. Among attendees, we also heard concerns about ransomware and the effects an attack could have on the mainframe.
Disaster recovery and backups have become important pieces of effective security—particularly as more organizations find themselves moving data in and out of the mainframe. However, within the conversations happening at SHARE, the approach has evolved. Historically, following a disaster, the recovery effort was focused on getting the entire system back online immediately, which was a time-consuming, complex process. Now, the market has progressed to become much more strategic and focused on getting the most important applications and data back online first to improve recovery time.
Open-Source Application Development is On the Rise
We saw a much more robust conversation happening around the value of open source related to mainframe application development and DevOps. Sessions focusing on open source ports to z/OS and on the open source community Zowe project were standing-room-only. As more mainframe professionals seek out ways to optimize and reduce costs of application development, open source is receiving greater recognition as a tool to achieve exactly that. But there’s more to it than just a business case for embracing open source during the conference. Throughout our time at SHARE, it was apparent that the voices of the next generation of mainframe professionals are having greater impact in the community. And as more early-stage professionals get involved, there’s a direct line-of-sight to the rise of open-source development for mainframe applications. While there’s still some debate over the use of open source among the mainframe community, it’s clear that there are benefits to be had and the technology has firmly entered the mainframe modernization conversation.
Learn more about everything from SHARE New Orleans and find out what’s coming up next. Heard enough? Check out how Rocket Software can help you modernize without disruption.
