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Jim Utsler

Contributor

Jim Utsler, freelance writer and former senior writer, has been writing about technology since the mid-1990s. He has covered myriad technological advances—and seen numerous IBM platform name changes. Although he currently focuses on customer success stories, he also writes articles of general computing interests and about new and emerging technologies. He has also written stories for magazines like Automotive News, Electronic Commerce World and PGA Magazine. Jim is a freelance illustrator and the author of two currently unpublished novels (one a thriller about the early days of PC development). Jim has a degree from the University of Michigan. While in school, he was a copy editor for Mathematical Reviews, an experience that taught him that math actually does make sense. His now, oft-repeated rebuke of himself is, “If I had been born smart enough, I would have been a physicist.” Jim can be reached at jjutsler@provide.net.

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Articles

Insurance for Db2 for z/OS

Jim Utsler

December 8, 2022

As the old saying goes, there are never enough hours in a day. Which seems to be the case in many IT departments. When companies grow, the folks in the data center are responsible for introducing new technologies or better leveraging what they already have to ensure there are no backend hiccups that will slow […]

Articles

The Mainframe Ecosystem: A Community Effort

Jim Utsler

January 10, 2022

Community. That’s the driving force behind the burgeoning IBM Z mainframe ecosystem, whether supported by IBM itself, ISVs, universities or end users—or more likely, all of the above.  Indeed, each of these segments benefits from the others by working toward common goals, such as improving mainframe ease of use, cultivating skills for the future or developing open-source […]

Articles

Protecting Data Within New HA/DR Parameters

Jim Utsler

September 30, 2021

There are two types of organizations in the world: those that have experienced unplanned system downtime and those that will. Of the first group, many have likely tightened up their high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) methods and tools as a result of their incidents, moving, for example, to hosted cloud-based HA/DR services. Within the […]

Articles

Embracing Automation Enables Effective IBM i HA/DR Planning

Jim Utsler

June 4, 2021

Automation is a boon for systems administrators. They can, for example, schedule jobs to run at specific times and days, considering issues such as job types and runtimes, differing time zones, end-of-day office closings and resource consumption. Although not entirely hands off—admins may have to respond to various job alerts—automation has addressed some particularly acute […]

Articles

COBOL Supports the World’s Business Operations

Jim Utsler

March 17, 2021

“Fine wine gets better with age,” or so the phrase goes. Oddly, this aphorism also in a way applies to COBOL. It was great when it was developed, but over the 60-plus years it’s been around, it’s actually improved in some ways, even enabling many companies to enter the digital age. Reports suggesting hundreds of […]

Articles

The Business Benefits of Modernizing IBM Z and IBM i

Jim Utsler

January 8, 2021

The title of a new white paper from IDC and sponsored by Rocket Software, “The Quantified Business Benefits of Modernizing IBM Z and IBM i to Spur Innovation,” authored by Peter Rutten, an IDC research director in the infrastructure group, pretty much gives away the report’s central premise. But what are the factors behind this […]

Articles

4 Customer Journeys From Tape to Cloud

Jim Utsler

December 8, 2020

Necessity, it’s been said, is the mother of invention. Such was the case when information technology outsourcing (ITO) company Blue Hill Data Services faced a number of obstacles as it prepared for the data migration of four mainframe-based customers (including a state pension fund, a large state government, a state government department of labor and […]

Articles

Sensitive Data Control

Jim Utsler

September 1, 2020

It’s an unfortunate fact of business life that bad actors are out there trolling for sensitive data. For them, the risk-reward is relatively low. For those whose data is breached, though, the costs can be exorbitant, whether from loss of intellectual property (IP), being socked with massive fines or losing customer goodwill. The news isn’t […]

Articles

New Levels of Computing Flexibility

Jim Utsler

May 4, 2020

Designing a comprehensive computing environment was once a relatively straightforward endeavor: install a server and other hardware, load an OS and applications, and offer access to end users. This has become a bit more complicated as computing moves outside the confines of data center walls to become part of hybrid multicloud environments, which is a […]

Articles

PowerAI Vision Democratizes the Development of Visual AI Models

Jim Utsler

January 2, 2020

It used to be that only programmers actually programmed—that was their area of expertise. End users simply worked within the parameters set before them. But then something happened that began to alter that relationship. Tools like spreadsheets allowed average employees to essentially do their own programming, building smart columns, rows and cells that could predictably […]