What We Learned at SHARE Kansas City
Last month, we joined our fellow IT industry leaders at the SHARE Conference in Kansas City—an event bringing together senior leaders of I&O, mainframe infrastructure, and systems operations leaders to gather and discuss some of the most pressing challenges and technology topics.
After a week full of exciting panels, informative sessions, and engaging conversations, we’ve learned, and shared, a lot with our fellow attendees. From delivering one of the keynote sessions to sponsoring the Making Strong Communities Stronger event, we covered a lot of ground. Here’s a closer look at what the Rocket Software team got up to during SHARE Kansas City.
Enhancing Mainframe Capabilities with Generative AI
Among myriad topics covered at SHARE, it’s no surprise that AI had a significant presence—how can we leverage it and where does it fit within the context of mainframe operations? During the event, our very own Tim Willging gave an in-depth keynote presentation about how mainframe systems can benefit from AI and generative AI (Gen AI). During his session, Willging explained that when it comes to leveraging AI on mainframe systems, there are two main avenues that Rocket Software is supporting its customers—modernization in place and hybrid cloud.
With modernization in place, it’s all about supporting customers' modernization needs but also ensuring they can do so while maintaining their existing IT infrastructure, rather than a costly rip-and-replace approach. Tapping into the power of AI in this strategy helps mitigate skills gaps and reduce the cost of ongoing maintenance. An example of this in practice may be using AI to look at a modernization initiative and predict the impact of any workload changes beforehand.
The second of these viewpoints on AI comes with hybrid cloud. Mainframe data is a critical source of vast amounts of transactional and historical data and leveraging a hybrid cloud approach ensures that data can be moved bidirectionally, securely, to AI models in the cloud and back. Rocket Software supports customers with hybrid cloud solutions that make this possible, enabling them to classify, catalog, and synchronize core transactional data in real-time.
But beyond these key points, the session also covered important aspects of Gen AI and predictive AI, the challenges that stand in the way of GenAI use, and a case study on the impact of AI on a leading RF parts manufacturer.
Making Strong Communities Stronger
As part of our time at SHARE, Rocket Software was proud to be a sponsor of the Making Strong Communities Stronger (MSCS) session. This event brought together experts from Rocket Software and our colleagues to cover important topics in our industry as it relates to diversity, equity, and inclusivity for the professionals who make the SHARE community so great. The session was facilitated by Dr. Gloria Chance, along with four members of the MSCS team demonstrating through an active role play on stage. It was a fun and engaging opportunity for everyone in attendance to connect and learn how to make a lasting impact for themselves and their colleagues.
Hear just how insightful the MSCS experience was for our own Brennen Glover, Manager, Onboarding & Employee Development:
“My biggest takeaways were that no matter the phase of your career, we all have insecurities and need mentorship to help us through those challenges. Without the ability to become vulnerable and unmask ourselves to feel comfortable expressing who we truly are, the value of mentorship becomes null and void. I will take these key learnings and implement them in my future career pathway, and I’m excited to share them for the rest of my career to truly help and impact others.”
Find out more about what events Rocket Software is off to next.
