Liam Barry Allan

As many of you may have noticed, SAP has removed Cloud Foundry from the trial free subscription and is suggesting developers move to the free tier. What wasn’t clearly announced, however, is that the free tier is not available for individual developers anymore, it is only offered through the Edge partnership. If you’re a developer looking to use Cloud Foundry for testing or learning, you don’t necessarily need BTP. Cloud Foundry is an open-source platform and can be deployed on your own computer or laptop for development and experimentation. #sapbtp #cloudfoondry #opensource #trialfree https://lnkd.in/gANwRbgJ

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𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦 Many IBM i modernization challenges aren’t about technology limitations. They’re about application structure. Over time, RPG systems often evolve into tightly coupled designs where business rules, data access, and process flow are all intertwined. This makes integration difficult — even when the platform itself is capable. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗜𝗕𝗠 𝗶 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 Companies start with the UI. Green screens become web screens. Start here instead: • Extract service programs • Define domain boundaries • Expose business logic through APIs Once the architecture is modern… the UI becomes easy. Breaking functionality into service programs is often the first meaningful step toward modernization. It allows logic to become reusable, testable, and ready for API exposure. 𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒎𝒐𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒛𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒑 𝒈𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒊𝒈𝒈𝒆𝒔𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒏?

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As my former colleague Fintan says, Cobol is just one part of the mainframe. There is everything else, which is not only hardware and reliability, but also the technical maturity of the organization using the mainframe and their appetite for change.

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I suppose I should comment on the Anthropic post about Claude rewriting COBOL code, but I think all of the great folks out there are doing a good job of rebutting the idea. That said, let me say that I don't think that Anthropic said what all the financial folks (that is, non technical people who have no idea what a mainframe is) think it said. You can use Claude to help understand your COBOL code... and that is a good thing. We want AI to help with that! But I have to add, AI is NOT going to rewrite millions of lines of COBOL code and render the mainframe obsolete! First of all, the mainframe is much more than just COBOL applications. Second of all, the rich tapestry of COBOL applications that contain decades of business logic are not easily replicated in another language without a lot of hard work. Sure, AI can help you. But we are NOWHERE close to being able to feed an entire suite of COBOL applications into an AI system and have it successfully rewrite it with exactly the same results. So, if you sold IBM stock because of this, shame on you.

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The Modernization Reality Most boards ask: “Why are we still on mainframe?” The better question: “Why is our most stable revenue engine not API-enabled yet?” IBM Z systems process trillions daily across banking, insurance, and retail. The risk is not the platform. The risk is skills erosion + integration gaps. Smart CIO strategy in 2026: • Preserve core transaction engines • Wrap with APIs • Automate DevOps • Reduce batch windows • Invest in cross-skilling Modernization is not emotional. It’s economic. #CIO #EnterpriseArchitecture #MainframeModernization #mainframe #MainframeModernization #Mainframe #IBMMainframe #SystemZ #zOS #COBOL #CICS #DB2 #MainframeDevOps #LegacyModernization #ApplicationModernization #EnterpriseIT #DigitalTransformation #HybridCloud #APIIntegration #Technology #Innovation #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #CloudComputing #Automation #FutureOfWork #TechLeadership #ITStrategy #CIO

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Anthropic's new Claude Code COBOL tools wiped ~$40B from IBM's market cap in a single day. The market overreacted fast & is slowly undoing the damage. Some of my thoughts included in VentureBeat’s coverage: → Applications don't run on mainframes because they're written in COBOL. They run on mainframes because mainframes deliver a class of determinism, scalable compute & reliability that general-purpose servers can't match. → COBOL modernization has been technically solvable for years; Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google have offered similar tools since before this week's headlines, as does IBM with its watson.x tools. → Anthropic's real foothold is in distributed/non-mainframe COBOL environments and developer teams already in its ecosystem. The Anthropic announcement is meaningful, no question, but it's a blip in a competitive market IBM has navigated for decades. This is not an existential disruption for Big Blue. Read VentureBeat’s coverage at the link. It's a good summation of what's happening. #EnterpriseIT #COBOL #Mainframe #IBM #Anthropic #AIInfrastructure #CloudMigration #TechAnalysis https://lnkd.in/eCNRwY6G

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🚀 Most production issues aren’t caused by bad code, they’re caused by bad app design. If you’re building applications for the cloud, containers, or microservices, the 12-Factor App is still one of the most practical playbooks out there. Why it matters 👇 ✅ Predictable deployments ✅ Easy scaling ✅ Cleaner config management ✅ Fewer “works on my machine” problems From stateless processes to environment-based configuration, these principles help teams move faster with confidence in production. 📖 I wrote a clear, practical breakdown here on Medium: 👉 https://lnkd.in/ePaNAeBj 💬 Which of the 12 factors do you find hardest to follow in real projects? #12FactorApp #CloudNative #DevOps #SoftwareEngineering #Microservices #BackendDevelopment #ScalableSystems

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Today I implemented 'Positional Prompting" in the VS CODE for IBM i CL Prompter. You can now type in a command without keywords and it'll properly insert the values into the correct parameter(s). It always did this but wasn't "parameter arrival sequence aware" which I knew about, but lived with. Today that subtle but important feature has been implemented. So now a command like this will prompt correctly: DCL &MSGTEXT *CHAR 10 VALUE('Running...')

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