SPARTA News

March 2018

SPARTA President’s Corner

contributed by Randy Springs

The new year is already two months completed, and at my company we are preparing for zOS 2.3 and other upgrades to enhance our performance and availability, along with new crypto services and other new projects.

A reminder that your SPARTA group needs a volunteer to replace Pam Tant as treasurer. This position does not involve a large time commitment, so consider serving and talk to Pam about the position. Her number is in the newsletter.

Our speaker this month will be Peter Mills, who is SVP of development and support at CorreLog. Peter will demonstrate the capabilities CorreLog offers for the real time correlation of mainframe and distributed architecture event logs for information security and compliance purposes.

Please plan to join your colleagues for subs, networking, and education on Tuesday, March 6 at 6:15 p.m. at our usual LabCorp location.

Randy Springs
BB&T

Future Speakers

(subject to change)

Mar. 6, 2018 - Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) by Peter Mills of CorreLog

Apr. 3, 2018 - SHARE Conference Report by Ed Webb of SAS

May 1, 2018 - TBD

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.

2017-2018 SPARTA

Board of Directors

Randy Springs - President

BB&T                  (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

Pam Tant - Treasurer

LaChapelle Properties, LLC      919-795-7572

1204 Village Market Place #223

Morrisville, NC 27560

Ed Webb -  Communications Director

SAS Institute Inc.  919-531-4162

SAS Campus Drive

Cary, NC 27513

Mike Lockey -  Web Master

Guilford Co. Information Services  336-641-6235

201 N. Eugene St.

Greensboro, NC 27401

Meetings

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.

January 2018 “CBT Tape” Shareware Online

The directory and files from the latest CBT tape V495 (dated January 15, 2018) are available from www.cbttape.org.

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

Minutes of the February 6, 2018 Meeting

• The meeting was called to order at 7:00 PM by Randy Springs, the SPARTA President.

• The meeting was held at a LabCorp conference room in RTP, N.C.

• Fifteen (15) people were present of which Thirteen (13) are 2017/2018 paid members.

• Everyone introduced themselves, told where they worked, and briefly described their job functions or their job hunting challenges.

• The presentation was given first to meet the presenter's schedule - see the presentation below (7:05-8:10 PM).

OLD BUSINESS

• The minutes of the December 5, 2017 meeting as published in the February 2018 Newsletter was approved.

• The January 31, 2018 Treasurer's report was approved as published in the February 2018 newsletter. The balance was $560.89. (See details later in this newsletter).

• 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.

• Randy reminded everyone to leave the LabCorp conference room clean.

• 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 on Tuesday, March 6, 2018 at LabCorp in RTP.

• Food for the March 6 meeting will be Sub sandwiches.

• The 2018 dues are due ($30) starting in February 2018. Please pay Pam Tant.

• Thanks to LabCorp and Bill Johnson for hosting the meeting.

• There are currently 76 people on the SPARTA-RTP e-mail list.

• Send any e-mail address changes to Chris Blackshire so he can update the SPARTA-RTP Listserv. You will be added by the moderator (Chris = SPARTA-RTP-owner@yahoogroups.com) sending you an invitation to Join the list.

• No update from Randy Springs on the SPARTA website connection to LinkedIn.

• Chris is in the process of putting a package together for Brad Carson, Tommy Thomas, and John Bryan's SPARTA contributions and death information on the web page under a new Emeritus section.

NEW BUSINESS

• Pam Tant will be resigning the SPARTA treasurer position and a volunteer replacement is needed.
-The treasurer position duties are:
--Collect dues and pay expenses at each monthly meeting.
--Deposit income at the BB&T 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..

• Duane Reaugh will check into the 2018 DTS Corporate sponsorship for SPARTA.

• The Business portion of the meeting ended about 8:30 P.M.

• Presentation: The Proxy Coupling Technology Solution
- - - - Or - - - - - - Offloading The Mainframe Into The Cloud

By Ron Hilton of Proximal Systems Corporation (PSC)

THE MAINFRAME IS NOT DEAD!

• Worlds leading businesses run on IBM z Systems
- 92 out of the top 100 world-wide banks
- 10 out of 10 of the world's largest insurers
- 23 of the top 25 US retailers
- 23 out of 25 of the world's largest airlines

• Processing the world's transactions & data
- 30 Billion business transactions processed on the mainframe per day
- 80 Percent of the world's corporate data resides or originates on mainframes
- 91 Percent of surveyed CIOs said that new customer-facing applications are accessing the mainframes
- 55 Percent of all enterprise applications need the mainframe to complete transactions

OK, SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

• "BIG IRON" MEETS THE CLOUD
- HETEROGENEOUS CLOUD
- Mainframe - - > IFL - - > LUW Servers - - > Cloud

• PROXY COUPLING TECHNOLOGY
- Linux or other OS - - - - -- | - - Mainframe
- Task1 . . Task1 Offload - | Proxy Task2 . . Task2
- - - 0 - - - - - - m - - - - - - - -| - - - - - - - 0 - - - - - n
- Operating System 1 - - - - | - Operating System 2
- - (e.g. Linux, Windows) - - | - (e.g. z/OS, VSE)
- - - - - Firmware 1 - - - - - - -| - Firmware 2
- - - - - Hardware 1 - - - - - - -| - Hardware 2

• HETEROGENEOUS DATA SHARING
- CPU-10 CPU-11 . . . CPU-1x | CPU-20 CPU-21 . . . CPU-2x
- I/O-1 - - - Net-1 - Memory-1 | Memory-2 - - Net-2 - - I/O-2
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Network - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - Storage - - - - Storage - - - - - Storage - - - - - - -

• PROXY-COUPLED DATACENTER
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Network - - - - - - - - - - - -
- Mainframe (zLinux-z/OS - - | - - LUW Server(s)
- Open Storage - CKD Storage - Open Storage

• SIGNIFICANT TCO SAVINGS
% MIPS OFFLOAD - % COST SAVED - % TOTAL SAVINGS
- - - - - - 10% - - - - - - - - - - - 65% - - - - - - - - - - - 6%
- - - - - - 20% - - - - - - - - - - - 72% - - - - - - - - - - - 14%
- - - - - - 30% - - - - - - - - - - - 76% - - - - - - - - - - - 23%
- - - - - - 40% - - - - - - - - - - - 78% - - - - - - - - - - - 31%
- - - - - - 50% - - - - - - - - - - - 80% - - - - - - - - - - - 40%
- - - - - - 60% - - - - - - - - - - - 82% - - - - - - - - - - - 49%
- - - - - - 70% - - - - - - - - - - - 83% - - - - - - - - - - - 58%
- - - - - - 80% - - - - - - - - - - - 84% - - - - - - - - - - - 67%
- - - - - - 90% - - - - - - - - - - - 85% - - - - - - - - - - - 77%

• The presentation and Demonstration ended about 8:10 PM

• Contact Info:
Proximal Systems Corporation
2121 Kayland Way
Holiday, Utah 84117
www.proximalsystems.com
Ron Hilton, PSC Founder and CEO
Phone: (801) 272-005
Email: ron.hilton@proximalsystems.com

• Presentation Access - See SPARTA webpage for the complete presentation

• The February 2018 monthly meeting ended about 8:30 PM.

Treasurer’s Report for February 2018

contributed by Pam Tant

The balance in the account is $623.52 as of February 28, 2018.

SPARTA Financial Report
3/01/2017 through 02/28/2018

Items of Interest

SPARTA Schedule and Menu for 2018

contributed by Chris Blackshire

March 6, 2018 - Subs
April 3, 2018 - BarBQ
May 1, 2018 - Pizza
June 5, 2018 - Fried chicken
July 10, 2018 - Subs (date changed because of the July 4 holiday)
August 7, 2018 - BarBQ
September 11, 2018 - Pizza (date changed because of the Labor Day holiday)
October 2, 2018 - Fried chicken
November 6, 2018 - Subs
December 4, 2018 - BarBQ

SHARE Announces Its 2019 Meeting Schedule

Contributed By Ed Webb

Can't attend SHARE in Sacramento which starts this coming weekend (March 11)? Start working now on getting to SHARE in St. Louis, Missouri August 12-17, 2018.
And be prepared to participate in 2019 at one of these just announced venues:

SHARE Winter 2019:     Phoenix, AZ   March 10-15
SHARE Summer 2019:  Pittsburgh, PA  August 4-9

You can always see the future SHARE schedule here.

IBM Hot Topic: Transform z/OS Output to Accessible PDF for the Visually Impaired

Contributed By Ed Webb

"In an earlier Hot Topics article “Transform Your Data Into a PDF File to Share Across the Cloud” (August 2015, issue 29), we described how to transform Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) input to PDF format using the AFP to PDF transform product. In this article, we will describe how to augment information from AFP input and produce accessible PDF output that’s compliant with the ISO 14289-1 PDF/UA standard or WCAG 2.0 AA.

Accessibility regulations are increasingly gaining traction to meet the needs of individuals with varying degrees of visual disabilities. A growing number of organizations and corporations are looking for ways to enhance and enable their existing production print solutions to comply with new regulations and produce accessible digital content. The PDF/UA format can meet these needs and requirements."

Use this IBM Systems Magazine how-to article from the IBM Hot Topics series to transform AFP (Advance Function Printing) output into an accessible PDF in your shop.

Cost-Effective Cybersecurity Strategies

Contributed By Ed Webb

"This is the first of a five-part series asking the security division technical leaders what are the most frequently asked questions about security. The five most asked questions are as follows.

What is the single most cost-effective thing I could implement in my organization to increase my cyber security posture?
Will we ever get rid of passwords in our lifetime?
What is the one emerging technologies that I should budget for?
How will an investment in big data, data lakes, or data mining significantly change my security posture?
I don't know what I don't know about my security weaknesses. How does your technology tell me what I don't know?
Question 1: What is the single most cost-effective thing I could implement in my organization to increase my cybersecurity posture?

While trends such as advanced persistence threats (APT), ransomware, and fileless malware garner a lot of industry press, statistics show that the majority of threats, including those enumerated above, originate from a 20-year-old attack vector when combined with more advanced techniques such as spear-phishing. Ironically, phishing is a problem whose most effective defense is not a specific tool or technology—but a well-trained workforce. In fact, a recent study by the Ponoemon Institute comparing the cost of phishing attacks to the benefit of employee training found that a training program from one vendor resulted in a net return on investment of approximately 50 times. "

Learn more from this web exclusive article from IBM systems Magazine.

Humor

Computer History Videos

Contributed by Chris Blackshire

Some interesting and amusing mainframe related videos that I have stumbled upon.

Top 10 Fastest Computers in the World 2016 - How much faster is a supercomputer than a PC or iPad Pro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBpkSIJ9KwU

Membership Information

Don’t Forget the Next SPARTA Meeting

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

7 p.m.

Location: LabCorp in RTP

Take I-40 to Miami Boulevard and go north. Turn right onto 1912 T.W. Alexander Drive. Go about a mile or so. Then turn right into LabCorp complex and turn left to the CMBP Building. In the lobby, sign in as a visitor to see Bill Johnson. Bill will escort you to the conference room. Use 1912 TW Alexander Drive, Durham, NC 27703 in your map app.

Free Food before meeting: Subs, Sodas and Tea, Dessert

Program:

CorreLog's Real-time z/OS and Windows/UNIX-based SIEM

Speaker: Peter Mills, VP Development and Support at CorreLog

SPARTA News

P.O. Box 13194

Research Triangle Park, NC  27709-3194

First Class Postage

SPARTA Corporate Sponsors: