Whether or not the modern CIO wants to admit it, there has been and still is a chasm in the IT department between the mainframe and distributed sides of the house. Despite smarter planet building, agility, elastic clouds and the like, a truly unified IT department remains elusive.

People who haven’t worked as or directly with IT staff wouldn’t think there was much, if any, real difference between this group of IT staffers and that group on the other side of the data center, but we know different, don’t we?

Even in companies like mine that sell both mainframe and distributed solutions and services, employees are often labeled: You’re either a mainframer or you’re not—and there’s a difference, a big difference.

I’ve seen changes over the past year, though, strong indications that the chasm may be shrinking, or even evaporating, and rather quickly, I believe. Why? Why now? I see three factors:

• Linux. The explosive growth of Linux (including Linux on System z, of course) now effectively puts the same operating system on both sides of the IT house. The newfound maturity of the operating system and management solutions to support it, combined with the cost savings and flexibility from all forms of Linux, have moved it squarely into the enterprise. These benefits are amplified by capabilities for application workloads in Java and Linux and Web applications to run across the entire enterprise. This shared value and focus on Linux are shrinking the chasm.
• zEnterprise and cross-enterprise solutions. Even before zEnterprise, solutions to unify and simplify functions and IT processes that cross the mainframe-distributed border were emerging. Organizations can now acquire technology that actually provides cross-enterprise performance management solutions for their applications that span the data center’s mainframe and distributed systems (think of a transaction working its way from the ATM in the lobby to Web and application servers and eventually to the database server running on the mainframe in the bank’s data center). Efficient cooperation and problem resolution now replace fingerpointing and blame storming among the keepers of the applications—chasm-closing events to be sure.
• Next-generation mainframe management. New mainframe tools and workspaces are the third key factor in closing the decades-old rift. These next-gen tools enable any distributed IT staff member to work on mainframe tasks because these new workspaces’ interfaces are graphical, intuitive, and resemble what the distributed IT staff have used before at work or even at home. These attractive tools also give organizations flexibility when hiring new graduates, as the green screen vs. GUI gap evaporates and candidates see less of a difference between operating systems and the applications that run on them.

Is the IT chasm closed yet? Of course not. But I can see the scene … it takes place in the exhibition center at a large IT industry event in 2012, or maybe even in 2011, where a loud-talking man is about to deliver his favorite rehearsed line for these types of events. He’s about to sarcastically ask, “How are the ‘green screens’ going over with this year’s computer science graduates?” The man is delivering his line (so loudly that people are turning in that direction and looking at him), and as if an occult hand had touched the 120-inch flat screen over his shoulder, it turns on and displays a sparkling new product demo showcasing a beautiful graphical workspace … for a mainframe solution! The crowd of IT professionals, CIOs, and industry experts all watch the demo and are intrigued and impressed. The loud man? He realizes he needs a new “line” for next year. You can almost feel the chasm shrinking under our feet, can’t you?