In this episode of I Am a Mainframer, host Steven Dickens talks with Marcus Davage, Lead Product Developer at BMC Software and an OMP ambassador, about how a schoolboy fascination with early home computers in the South Wales Valleys turned into a decades-long career in Db2 and mainframe technology. From discovering a Commodore PET at a Welsh Eisteddfod to sitting at a 3270 terminal during his placement at British Steel, Marcus traces the key moments that drew him into enterprise computing.
Marcus explains how Db2 became the constant thread in his career—spanning mainframe, OS/2, Windows, Linux, and AS/400—and how staying curious and “tinkering” opened doors across roles in banking, consulting, and software development. He also shares how that same mindset now powers his work in R&D on AI and AI agents for mainframe customers, and why he believes the future lies at the intersection of mainframe, AI, open source, and quantum-safe computing.
Read on for Marcus’s insights on building a long-term career around a core technology, the importance of open source in a once closed platform, and his efforts as an Open Mainframe Project Ambassador to inspire the next generation of mainframers at universities in Wales.
Watch Full Episode here:
https://youtu.be/TiSJ0FlUHgY
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Transcript:
Steven:
“Hello and welcome to another episode of the I Am a Mainframer Podcast. Looking forward to this episode. People you interact with on your LinkedIn and you chat with, but you’ve never met. Welcome to the show, Marcus. Introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers and tell us a little bit about yourself.”
Marcus:
“Thank you very much, Steven. It’s an absolute pleasure and an honor to be on this esteemed podcast.”
Steven:
“Esteemed—you say all the right things to the host in the first intro. That’s going to be good.”
Marcus:
“I only say that because I run a podcast for IDUG, the International Db2 User Group. We call it Db2 Table Talk and we do pretty much the same thing. So it’s quite nice to be on the other end of the microphone.”
Steven:
“And in the round and be on the other side.”
Marcus:
“Yeah. So you wanted to know a little bit about my history..”
Steven:
“I mean, first off, name, introduction, tell us who you work for and then we’ll just kind of go from there. Obviously Db2 is going to be part of the discussion, but we’d love to just get the listeners and viewers oriented first.”
Marcus:
“So my name is Marcus Davage. I’m a lead product developer for BMC Software.”
Steven:
“We won’t hold the BMC part against you, Marcus. Don’t worry. You’re in a safe space here.”
Marcus:
“I know you’re a fanboy already.”
Steven:
“Yes, yes—a lot of the people over there: Dave Jeffries, Matt Whitbourne, Martin Enterington. Some really smart Brits who work for BMC. So maybe there’s a bit of alchemy.”
Steven:
“So, I mean, we were talking about it off camera. We’ve got a shared Welsh connection. I’m not Welsh, I’m English. It’s rugby season, we’ll not talk about that. Cardiff alumni—really had a fantastic three years. My wife was in Cardiff as well. My daughter is actually looking to go and do a master’s.”
Marcus:
“Yes.”
Steven:
“So maybe let’s start with a little bit of the sort of career arc, Marcus. Where did you go to college and kind of how did you get into the mainframe space—or IT first, if it wasn’t the mainframe?”
Marcus:
“Well, yes, it was IT first. I was born and brought up in the South Wales Valleys. My first introduction to computing was—if you’re Welsh you probably have heard what an Eisteddfod is. It’s a Welsh cultural programme that runs every year. It’s competitions, singing, recitation, poetry, music, and all sorts of arts as well. And there are loads of stalls in the final in the Eisteddfod. And one of the stalls had a Commodore PET back in 1982, something like that. And I just fell in love with it. So as soon as I got back to school I asked if I could go into the computer suite where we had a computer—Research Machines, RML. Then I did computer science or computer studies O‑level. We played around with BBC Micros. I had my own Dragon 32. I got into game programming by decoding somebody else’s BASIC computer game and then rewriting it—or at least the interaction—in Welsh. And I thought, yep, let’s do this. So I went to Aberystwyth University and did computer science as a degree. I had a year out in British Steel in Llanwern, in Newport, in the steelworks there. And they threw me in front of this green screen with the numbers 32 and 70 after it. And I had no idea what I was facing. Little did I know at the time it was going to be the opening door of the rest of my career. Sat in front of 3270. It was no emulator. It was an actual 3270.”
Steven:
“So maybe let’s unpack that a little bit. So that probably dates it to the mid to late 80s, something like that.”
Marcus:
“1988 was my year out. I graduated in 1990 and I went straight back to British Steel to do a bit of COBOL and 4GL MANTIS/SUPRA.”
Steven:
“So what’s the… so you’ve got a bit of a sort of—I mean, it’s interesting, people of our age, whenever you hear the word ‘Commodore’, my first computer that I sort of played around with was a Commodore 16, back when you used to load the games on a cassette tape.”
Marcus:
“Yeah.”
Steven:
“The white in my beard sort of does age me. Talk to me about that. You’ve sort of had hands‑on with some early PCs, as they probably would have been known then, and then you get given direct access—not even terminal emulation—direct access to a 3270. What’s that kind of, if you can remember back, what was that kind of first experience like?”
Marcus:
“Oh, great question. Yeah, I love playing games on my Commodore Amiga, which I had after Dragon 32. I started to teach myself C. I had my first PC and I’d already been turned off Windows. So I asked for OS/2 to be put on it in British Steel. So by that time I’d already been moved to the data center in Port Talbot Steelworks, where they taught me Db2. The first thing I did was install Db2 2.3 on the mainframe. And they said, ‘Hey, you know Db2.”
Steven:
“But b capitalized, or was it a small b?”
Marcus:
“Oh, it was, it wasn’t even Db2 in capitals. It was database 2 on the manuals.”
Steven:
“I need to understand database 1 and its history at some point, not on this podcast, but I’m seeing a lot of memes and Emerald’s been on the show and Db2 kind of meme that made me chuckle on LinkedIn this week. I’ve got to admit, so if you’ve not checked them out on LinkedIn, you’re absolutely sure that if you’re on that one.”
Marcus:
“That would be a good podcast.”
Steven:
“Yeah, yeah, she’s—she’s fantastic, real sort of really fresh take on the platform, really fresh take.”
Marcus:
“Yeah, yeah. She’s really cool. She’s one of these shining stars and it’s going to be holding the future of the mainframe.”
Steven:
“Yeah, if one of you vendors did pick her up and make her do something amazing soon, I’ll be shocked when you put it like that.”
Marcus:
“Right, I’ll take that on board.”
Steven:
“Yeah, but we don’t rest. We were talking about Db2 in your sort of first kind of experience. I mean, that to me sounds—we’re talking about talking about it, that you do an iDUG sort of podcast. I’m assuming then Db2 has been a pretty big part of your life over the last… I don’t want to say how many years”
Marcus:
“30‑something years, yeah.”
Steven:
“For those watching the audio and video kind of just brought a cup there. I mean, tell me a little bit about that because having a product kind of become your career kind of—is it interesting to me at least, but maybe just unpack that for us, Marcus.”
Marcus:
“Yeah, sure. As you know, Db2 sits and sats on many platforms and when you’re working for a cost center. So you’re not actually making any profit. You’re actually a drain on your other company’s resources. They want to make, you know, they want to do things as efficiently as possible. And so, you know, we try to adopt as much good practice from Db2. And then they came along and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got Db2 on OS/2. Will you learn that?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve already got OS/2 on my machine back home. So I know OS/2, let’s learn Db2.’ Then I changed companies. I went to Lloyd’s after a brief stint of consulting. And I started working for them as a DBA on Db2 on the mainframe. And they said, ‘Oh, we’ve got Db2 on Db2 UDB. It was a Universal Database on Windows, can you administer that?’ Said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ Then they said, ‘Oh, we’ve got Db2 on AS/400. We’ll send you on an AS/400 course.’ So it doesn’t really matter what the platform was, whether it’s Linux, Windows, AS/400 or iSeries, or the mainframe. Db2 has always been there by my side.”
Steven:
“So, talk to me a little bit about what that means. You obviously need Db2 expertise. That goes with—I mean, if you’ve learned it on at least three or four different platforms. And I’ve got such a story of career with you. What does that mean from a career arc? We have a lot of younger professionals and people sort of students looking. You know, you obviously built some domain expertise in a particular technology regardless of platform. What’s that been able to do from a sort of career trajectory? How’s that kind of taking you through various companies? You’ve mentioned at least a couple of big company names. You’re obviously now working for a sort of mainframe software vendor. Maybe just color in the lines a little bit there for me.”
Marcus:
“Yeah, sure. It’s all about staying curious. No matter what age you are. You just stay curious. And always I have the viewpoint that I’m not an expert. There is stuff I don’t know. Let’s solve that. And somebody can go out and out more…”
Steven:
“You really kind of desire to go read that extra manual. Go watch that lecture, try any goals.”
Marcus:
“Yeah, or get your hands dirty and play. And if there’s an opportunity to do something, do it. Take it. Yeah. So what I’ve got now is I’ve got a UDB Linux Db2 server running on a little server that I’ve got at home. I play about with that. And I can even write prototype SQL or Python applications. I have my LUW at home. And then I can just port that application to the mainframe. And it just works. It’s pretty cool. And you can gain all sorts of experience.”
Steven:
“It sounds like that sort of tinkerer mindset. It’s been kind of there throughout the career. You talked about some of those early systems. You know, the PETs and the Commodore systems. They were very tinkererish machines back in the day. Is that sort of tinkerer mindset—always having a system at home. You mentioned it. Always having something to be able to go and play on a certain box, if you will, has that always been a key component?”
Marcus:
“Oh, absolutely. As I said, stay curious and stay tinkering. I think the word is hacker, but not as a cracker. Somebody who breaks in, but somebody who likes to take things apart and see how they work and see what you can do, what you can achieve.”
Steven:
“So a phrase tinkerer rather than hacker. Hacker for me sort of means you’re trying to break into something; tinkerer—playing with something I think. So maybe that’s the phrase we’ll use going forward. So tell me a little bit about what you do now. So we painted the color in and sort of got us to this point. What does the job look like now? What do you do today?”
Marcus:
“Well, forgive me for just repeating what we’ve just been talking about, but I’m tinkering. I get to be paid to tinker. So I’m in research and development and part of Dave Jeffries’ team. And we are working on AI and AI agents and what they can do for our customers. And this is literally hot off the press. I’ll be started working on a prototype that me and a colleague have come up with. So this is what I do. It’s tinkering, but it’s not tinkering for tinkering’s sake or for not just for self‑education. This is more from the standpoint of the customer having a problem. What can we do to solve it?”
Steven:
“I think that’s fascinating. You know, so many people will be there early in their careers playing around with technology, sort of getting familiar with. And I think the thing I’ve taken away from the sort of 12, 13 minutes we’ve had so far is you can go on a career on this. You can go work for a couple of big corporations. You can work for a software vendor. And you can keep that tinkering mindset and have that become part of your job. I think what we do when we speak to some of the younger listeners here is really paint a picture of there are some career options available. If you have a passion for technology, you can turn that into a career. And a long‑standing one too, through some really big organizations—mentioned Lloyd’s Bank, one of the biggest international banks in the world working, one of the big software vendors. You know, you can paint a career of just becoming an expert and playing around with a particular piece of technology. I don’t want to age you, Marcus, but I’m assuming it’s more than a few years. It’s at least a couple of decades. But you know, if you’ve never played with a technology and had that become part of your career, it’s just fascinating for me to be there. And that’s one of the reasons behind the show, I Am a Mainframer. To be able to paint this picture to some of these earlier professionals to say, get involved in this technology. You can be around for a long time and build a career with this.”
Marcus:
“What’s really exciting about where IBM are taking the mainframe now, there’s the Z series, is that we’ve got onboard AI processing, we’ve got these spire cards to generate your models on. It’s just so exciting. “
Steven:
“So, once in a while, because of these issues, I’ve been able to… I’d describe it as in‑transaction AI.Yeah.”
Marcus:
“Yeah”
Steven:
“Because we talk about AI and it’s obviously becoming a ubiquitous term and it’s part of everything we do. But you never have to apply it in‑transaction at any kind of line speed, if you will, just fascinating for me.”
Marcus:
“Yeah, it’s incredible what we can achieve in our days. And I’d love to be able to see it in action.”
Steven:
“Yeah. I mean, I think going back to this big curious, the open source community is a fantastic place to sort of be curious. You look at what Louise is doing and her career—early sort of early to mid‑career at IBM and how she’s been involved in an open source project. I think it’s… I love the way that you can just get involved in open source. But I mean, my role on the Open Mainframe Project and on the board, don’t have to write code to get involved in open source. I’ve never written a day’s code in my life. But what I do is I’ve run this podcast and get involved with the project. The project will take all comers if you want to, like Rahat who produces this podcast. He helps the project by producing a podcast. They’ll take marketing advice. They’ll just take volunteers. So I think getting involved in open source—whether that’s you want to contribute to the Linux kernel, like deep nerdery, or you want to be a podcaster. The project will take you and sort of gladly embrace you regardless of what your skill set is. And for me, that’s huge.”
Marcus:
“Absolutely. And that’s why I like being an Open Mainframe Project ambassador. I’ve got the freedom to be able to go to conferences and talk on this subject and extol the virtues of open source on what used to be quite a closed‑source platform. I use those opportunities now to go to universities in South Wales, like Aberystwyth, Cardiff—I’ve been to twice—and in Swansea, just talking about, this is what the mainframe is. This is the new enterprise platform. This isn’t your daddy’s S/360 anymore.”
Steven:
“Yeah, we’re talking about a cutting‑edge platform. It was kind of amazing when you see that sort of comment on LinkedIn or in the media. ‘The bank was running on a 40‑year‑old mainframe.’ There’s no bank in the world running on a 40‑year‑old mainframe. The software might have been developed 40 years ago. But the Linux kernel was developed 30 years ago. Nobody says Linux is 30 years old, but that’s a soapbox. I’ll save that for a different time.”
Steven:
“So Marcus, a couple of questions I always ask. And I’d love to get your perspective. I’d like to get back to going back to that young yourself, that person starting at British Steel. What advice would you give? You can go back and just tap yourself on the shoulder. What advice would you give to yourself?”
Marcus:
“I would probably look over my shoulder and smile and nod. I think, yeah, you’re doing all right. You’re on the right path already. I would probably go back and say, don’t do this. Don’t drop that tablespace in production. Or that kind of thing. It’s not…”
Steven:
“Yeah, I imagine.”
Marcus:
“Yeah, don’t do that silly thing. Or something like that. But honestly, I’d look back at myself and I’d think, yeah, this was a curious guy who liked tinkering. I’d keep at it.”
Steven:
“Yeah, that’s great. I think that mindset is crucial. So one of my questions that I always ask is to sort of bring this home here. You get to look ahead. You get to look in the crystal ball. The fog parts. What does the world look like on the mainframe sort of four or five years out from here?”
Marcus:
“Great question. The fog parts only reveal more fog. There is so much going on in AI now, particularly with, as we said, AI onboard processing and in‑transaction, in‑flight AI deduction. It’s quite impressive and quite scary. I think in five years, there will be a marriage between AI on the mainframe and possibly quantum computing. I know the Z series has got quantum‑safe encryption and I don’t think we beat that drum loud enough. But I certainly think the way quantum computing is being developed in that direction, I think there will be some kind of synergy between that and the mainframe. Possibly a hybrid cloud version. Who knows. But it’s something to consider.”
Steven:
“So maybe that’s where the next realm of tinkering is. Those people who are listening to this in their early 20s, maybe need it. That’s a steer from somebody who’s got some wisdom, I think, on this platform. Go tinker.
So Marcus, I’ve loved that in this conversation. Well, I’m really sort of disappointed that we only get to chat for 20‑30 minutes. I think—meet you expansion… Well, for a pint or brains in Cardiff, we could probably have a much longer conversation. But no, Marcus, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s a genuine pleasure to chat to you. Always good to meet somebody who you interact with in your LinkedIn comments. So thanks very much for joining us.”
Marcus:
“Yeah.”
Steven:
“Thank you very much. You’ve been listening to another episode of the I Am a Mainframer podcast. Please click, subscribe, share with a friend, and do all those things. And we’ll see you next time. Thank you very much for watching.”
OUTRO- Thank you for tuning in to the Mainframe Connect podcast. And this episode in the I Am a Mainframer series, sponsored by Phoenix Software International and by Vicom Infinity, a converged company. Like what you heard? Subscribe to get every episode. Or watch us online at openmainframeproject.org. Until next time, this is the Mainframe Connect podcast.
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