In this episode of the “I Am a Mainframer” podcast, Steven Dickens welcomes Lisa Dyer, Global Vice President, Systems Z & Power LOB Leader at Ensono. Their conversation dives into Lisa’s 20+ years as a technologist building digital platforms, her fresh perspective as someone relatively new to the mainframer world, and what made her ultimately become a mainframer. Listen or watch now to hear Lisa’s career story.
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TRANSCRIPT
Voiceover
This is the “I Am A Mainframer” podcast, brought to you by the Linux Foundations Open Mainframe Project. Episodes explore the careers of mainframe professionals and offer insights into the industry and technology. Now your host, senior analyst and vice president of sales and business development at Futurum Research, Steven Dickens.
Steven Dickens:
Hello and welcome, my name’s Steven Dickens, and I’m joined today by Lisa Dyer from Ensono. Hey, Lisa, welcome to the show.
Lisa Dyer:
Hi, Steven. Thank you very much, glad to be here.
Steven Dickens:
Thanks for coming on, so before we get started here, let’s just get orientated. Tell the listeners that a little bit about yourself from what you do for Ensono?
Lisa Dyer:
Sure, so I run the mainframe and power systems managed service business for Ensono, that means we are a managed service provider, and we do all the hard stuff on behalf of our clients. That’s maybe a non-differentiator for them, so that they can focus on the more differentiating stuff that drives their business.
Steven Dickens:
I love that, the hard stuff.
Lisa Dyer:
Yeah, the hard stuff, and there’s a lot of it.
Steven Dickens:
Just let’s maybe break that down a little bit, so I know your business, have known you guys for a while, where do you fit… We’ve got a lot of people who listen to the show who come at this from various different angles, just give us a couple of minutes on what Ensono does for its clients?
Lisa Dyer:
Ensono, our portfolio includes the management, the day to day management, and the design, the build, the optimization, the modernization, across every single platform that exists essentially, from Mainframe to the public clouds and everything in between. Our client base consists of just about every segment in both the private sector, and the public sector. We have clients who are very large, and we have clients who are in the 500 million or so turnover range. It’s generally speaking the brands that everybody would recognize, and in the public sector, of course, the US states that you would recognize.
Steven Dickens:
Fantastic, and we’ve got to know each other over the last few months, but you are not a mainframer of longstanding. The show’s called I am a Mainframer, but you come into the platform with a sort of relatively fresh perspective. Maybe just give us a little bit of your story arc, how you got into the platform, what roles you’ve done before? Because I’m always really fascinated to interview people who see themselves as a mainframer now, but are relatively new to the platform.
Lisa Dyer:
Yeah, I mean, you may as well call… Me you could call me a mainframer, you could call me a clouder, you could call me a block chainer, the list goes on, I’m a technologist, and I’ve dedicated my entire career to applying technology, and then helping others apply technology to drive their business. That is, for me, what it’s all about. 20 plus years building digital platforms, web apps, mobile apps, API products, digital properties, you name it, on every imaginable platform until… Retake. I’ve been building digital platforms, web apps, mobile apps, API products, digital properties, you name it, on every imaginable platform besides, wait for it, the mainframe.
Steven Dickens:
We knew we’d get you eventually, it’s hard to escape.
Lisa Dyer:
Right, maybe I need one of those license plate that says, “I wasn’t born on the mainframe, but I got there as fast as I can.” Two and a half years ago, I had been… After being in many, many different startups, and publicly traded, privately traded companies, including one of them being IBM. I got acquired into IBM from a startup, spent a few years there. Then after that, went back into the startup business. Two and a half years ago, I was asked by our chief strategy officer to come and run the mainframe line of business.
Lisa Dyer:
Well, first of all, I’m not really building new products, which is what I did in my entire career. I’m taking all these capabilities that other people build and creating managed services around that, so as a product manager, which is what I am, I consider myself, it was a new thing, and it’s a huge landscape to learn. But ultimately, to me, a platform is a platform is a platform, they’re all designed to meet specific use cases, and to provide specific capabilities for those. Having most recently built stuff in the public cloud, it was not as big of a leap as you might imagine for me to learn about, well, what’s the mainframe grade at? What’s it uniquely capable of?
Steven Dickens:
I think that’s an interesting perspective, so much myth and shrouding of this platform in some of the historical context makes it, from the outside in, for those who haven’t come to the platform of this is weird, I’m not going to understand it. A phrase I use is we worship different gods, and we speak in different tongues. People come in and they say, “This thing is unusual” but it’s really interesting to hear your perspective. I subscribe to the same thing of ultimately the disciplines are the same, the same requirements are there, a virtual machine means the same thing.
Steven Dickens:
People can get their heads around what a logical partition is pretty carefully and pretty easily, hooking boxes together in a sysplex configuration. Well, that’s just a cluster of mainframes, I think we, in the mainframe space, often use a set of words that don’t naturally translate to the sort of distributed and cloud world. But when you fundamentally break down what these things are, if you explain ZVM to somebody and go, it’s a virtual machine management platform like VMware, they go, “Okay. Yeah, I get that, [inaudible 00:06:21].” I mean, yes, how you administer it may be different, but people fundamentally get it. Has that been your experience coming in? Have you been able to do that sort of Rosetta Stone translation almost?
Lisa Dyer:
Absolutely, I mean, the differences start to convey themselves when you get into the nitty gritty. Once you understand the differences in architecture, the capability’s the same, but you’re scaling vertically versus horizontally. But when you get into the nitty gritty, then you stumble upon these things like the data format is an [inaudible 00:07:00], and over here it’s something else. It’s just a different format for the same or very similar thing.
Steven Dickens:
Yeah, and what’s been the biggest revelations as you’ve come over? It’s always interesting, as I say, to interview people who’ve got a new perspective to this platform, whether that’s a college graduate who’s coming in for the first time, a developer who’s coming and transitioning over. But I’d be really interested to understand from your perspective kind of… I get the impression you’ve got a big systems architectural type view, what’s been that sort of revelation coming in?
Lisa Dyer:
I think one thing that I believe I’m seeing and hearing is a change in the tone of the conversation, I obviously didn’t live through the conversations during the eighties and the nineties, when people thought the mainframe’s dead, along with [inaudible 00:08:11]. But I think I’m picking up on a change in tone, where the tone was it’s either this or it’s that, it’s either public cloud or it’s a mainframe kind of thing to a it’s a this and that. The other thing that I think I’m seeing is a regeneration of Z talent.
Steven Dickens:
Just expand on that, when you say… I mean, I think most of the people who listen to the show would be aware of skills, gaps, whether they’re perceived or real, the silver hair generation’s starting to age out right of the platform. I mean, I feel we self perpetuate that sometimes, and I see a lot more younger professionals come into the platform. What’s been your sort of fresher device as you’ve come in, you’ve probably inherited a relatively large staff at Ensono, what’s been your experience?
Lisa Dyer:
At Ensono, we have our own mainframe academy, so we bring in I think about 50 people every year, who are either new career seekers, either straight out of college, or in the second career, new to the mainframe. We also have a similar one in the cloud, or we have advanced tracks where you’re mid-career, and you’re beefing up your skills, and you’re adding more sort of… You may have the traditional skills, I’ll call them, and then you’re adding more to your tool kit. We have our most senior people mentor the most junior people along the way.
Lisa Dyer:
Just zooming out looking at the market to the point of the story once upon a time was the mainframe’s going to be unplugged, whenever it was. I think it seemed to have divided the market into two camps, those who had evidence based on their own expertise that was not going to happen, they continued to invest, and then continuing the investment, they continue to invest in their people and their talent. I’m sure you know, most big banks, for example, other companies who absolutely rely on the mainframe for the foreseeable future have always had their own version of mainframe academy. Then there are those who believed that it was going away and didn’t feel the need to make that investment. What I’m seeing is there may now be a realization for those who had sort of let their talent regeneration slow down or stop, that there is a need now to do that. Of course, as a managed service provider, we can help with that, we can help with that skill need.
Steven Dickens:
Is that a large part of your conversations with your clients? Obviously, there’s a whole sort of spectrum of we could run it all for you, through to maybe at the most lightweight we could augment the team you’ve already got. Is that where a lot of your conversations start, with those accounts that have maybe neglected skills, and are now sort of having that come home to roost?
Lisa Dyer:
The conversations that we have always include, or I would say typically do include, the aspect of skills. They include other things, what should we do? Should we continue investing? How should we continue investing? Why should we continue investing? How can we make the most out of the mainframe that we have in conjunction with the other stuff that we have? I don’t think that we have many, if any, clients currently who don’t have at least two of those platforms that are running their business. Talent is always one of the aspects, one of the conversations, and it’s definitely one of the areas where we can provide immediate relief.
Steven Dickens:
I’d imagine one of the other conversation topics that comes up is a term, and I know when we spoke the other day, we sort of talked about it in detail, mainframe modernization. I joked with the CEO of Rocket the other evening that I got to spend some time with that if you asked 10 people about mainframe modernization, you’d get 11 different opinions. I wonder, as a phrase, you are probably uniquely placed at Ensono to have a perspective that probably isn’t in the stay on or get off camp. Where are you seeing those dialogues with your clients and what… Obviously, don’t tell me anything you shouldn’t, I don’t think you will, but just maybe paraphrase some of those conversations?
Lisa Dyer:
Well, it’s very similar to that this or that versus this and that conversation. Mainframe modernization has taken on a life of its own, and taken a meaning, depending on who you ask. I think sometimes it’s almost a misnomer, because if you’re talking about modernizing your applications, you may be doing it because you just don’t have any more people who understand, for example, your PL 1 code or your [inaudible 00:14:25], whatever. You don’t have that tribal knowledge anymore, and so you’re trying to figure out… But it’s still a [inaudible 00:14:34], trying to figure out what to do with it. Mainframe modernization is far more than that, and so to us it’s you are modernizing applications and data, and there’s so many different ways that you can take that.
Lisa Dyer:
But an act of modernizing the mainframe can simply be using the latest mainframe, because it unlocks new capabilities. Some of which are security related, others are quantum related, others are AI related, and an act of moving up to the latest stack can be an act of modernization in itself, and optimization, I should add, because you do get benefits. I think the conversations that we typically have are, “Look, I’ve got my core assets, my crown jewels on my mainframe, and I’ve got my systems of engagement over here on whatever other platform I have them on.” They’re trying to find the ideal sweet spot between where those workloads are and interconnecting them, and make making them play nice. While trying to include a broader pool of their own talent to interact and integrate those systems. A lot of the modernization stack is really evolving around enabling a broader talent space to do just that, like rest APIs, and all those kinds of things.
Steven Dickens:
Is that how you see them, I’ll use a phrase, the modern mainframe, and sitting as a core component within a hybrid cloud, a cloud native type deployment? You mentioned systems of engagement, and I love that phraseology, system of engagement, and system of record. Because I think, for me, it brings through what you were talking about earlier around these platforms are built for particular things. It’s not the one platform is better than another, it’s just that they’ve got different use cases. I use the analogy of just because the car was invented, doesn’t mean the train is obsolete, they’ve just got different use cases. Is that really sort of… I know we’ve spoken previously about the Ensono point of view. Is that really what you are seeing in the space of that’s your advice to your clients of you should be looking at this holistically and saying, “You’ve got this crown jewels platform, this system of record, how do you surround it with systems of engagement and API enable it?”
Lisa Dyer:
Well, absolutely, our advice would be to look at it holistically, and we often start engagements by helping clients do exactly that. Let’s understand everything that you have, not just from an infrastructure perspective, from an application, and data, and a security perspective. Let’s first make sure that you understand everything that you do have, and then let’s look at… Given the context that you have, given the business drivers that you are trying to achieve, let’s figure out what is best for you.
Steven Dickens:
It’s really interesting you mentioned business drivers there, not technical religion of I like this shiny object.
Lisa Dyer:
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that technology decisions should be based on, I don’t know a better word for it, fashion.
Steven Dickens:
That’s the perfect word for it.
Lisa Dyer:
Things that you know, there are things that you don’t know that may a good fit, not a good fit, a better fit. We want to make sure that people understand the full art of the possible, relative to what they have today. Then we can help guide the investments in the right ways that enable them to optimize for tomorrow and future proof tomorrow. Because, look, the world is hybrid, I don’t believe… You’re going to ask me probably, “Where do you see mainframes in five years?” They’re still going to be there and I’m [inaudible 00:19:19]-
Steven Dickens:
Don’t jump ahead, we got another six or seven minutes before we get to that question.
Lisa Dyer:
Yeah, but the world is hybrid, the world is this and that. You’ve got to understand what you have first, before you pursue your future state.
Steven Dickens:
Maybe let’s go a bit more personal with… As I say, we try and sort of get that story arc of the careers of the guests on the show here. Let’s tell our listeners and viewers a little bit more about your perspective, and I’m going to lead up to a question to go back and ask you about what you would say to your younger self, so you’ve got the opportunity to go back. I’ve invented this new time machine that enables you to go back to your 22 year old self, and impart two or three pieces of advice that would inform your career, what would they be?
Lisa Dyer:
Going back a couple of years, you mean?
Steven Dickens:
Yeah, it’s only a couple of years for you, Lisa, but maybe it’s not as useful as it would be for me. But just a couple of years back, to just when you finish college?
Lisa Dyer:
I believe that there’s certain qualities that you need to create a compelling, a fulfilling, and inspiring professional life, and one of them is curiosity. If you have curiosity combined with integrity and combined with resiliency, another way of saying it is you are bull doggedly pursuing what you believe you want to pursue. Then I think when you meet failures in your professional career and you fall down, if you have those intrinsically in you, you’ll pick yourself up and continue pursuing it, just [inaudible 00:21:21].
Steven Dickens:
Maybe let’s drill down a little, I mean, curiosity. I mean, as you can tell, I’m a book reader, I’m here in front of my bookshelves. I’m always consuming content and reading stuff online, what does that look like for you? What does that curiosity manifest itself as?
Lisa Dyer:
Well, I was very curious when I was asked to join two and a half years ago to run the mainframe line of business. That was all about curiosity on my part, it’s not something that’ve done before. I can see that there is an addressable market need and I could learn something, so I pursued that. For me, it’s all about growth, my ability to grow the business, grow myself, grow my wealth. Those three things have to exist for me to find something compelling. But outside of my day to day, my curiosity might manifest in I’m walking down the streets of Chicago, and I’m looking up at the sky, and I’m tuning out all the noises around me, imagining what it would sound like, what it would look like in 10, 15 years. Maybe I stumble upon a technology that I don’t know much about, I’ll just dive in on my free time, and pick it apart, and understand it. That’s what I was doing as a kid, I took something, I took it apart and put it back together just to do it, because I was curious about it.
Steven Dickens:
Yeah, and the second one I want to double click on, you mentioned resiliency, great mainframe word. What does that mean in the sort of context of your personal career?
Lisa Dyer:
Well, I think it’s overcoming obstacles, in a sense. This is not just in the mainframe world, but you may often find yourself in scenarios where you’re collaborating with people, or trying to collaborate with people, and you are faced with, well, this is how we’ve always done it. I think you have to have the resiliency to push through it, and find ways to help people maybe find some curiosity of their own. That can be sometimes difficult, because you’re trying to convince somebody to step out of their comfort zone.
Lisa Dyer:
When you’re busy in your day to day, and you don’t feel like you can take a lot of risk, it can be hard, that resiliency. But overall, I think it’s adaptability, is another way of saying it. If you can adapt to conditions, if you can adapt to new technology, you can adapt to new ways of thinking, you can adapt to things that go bonk in the night. Then you figure out how to turn that into a positive, or at least something that doesn’t become a negative, that’s what I’m talking about. That really doesn’t apply just to technology, obviously, or the mainframe, but you have to have that.
Steven Dickens:
As we draw to a close here, I want to take you back to a comment you made a couple of minutes ago. You’re walking down the streets in Chicago, you’re looking up into the sky, you’re imagining what the world’s going to be like. I’m going to maybe put a bit more constraint on that and ask you to do that in the context of the mainframe, but give me your view of where you see this platform say four or five years out? I’m not talking about the next release, I’m not talking about Z17. I’m talking maybe a little bit further out than that, a little bit fog gear on the horizon, where do you see the mainframe?
Lisa Dyer:
Well, I see the mainframe still being a very relevant platform. Is it going to be relevant for every single industry, every single organization? Maybe, maybe not, but certainly for some, because of the characteristics that it has. Whether or not it’s going to morph into something and we won’t call it a mainframe or even Z anymore, who knows? But I just know that because of the use cases that this particular system serves so well, I don’t see those use cases going away. Either the other systems evolve in a completely different way than we can perceive now, or the mainframe evolves in terms of making it easier [inaudible 00:26:15], easier to consume, to interact with, all of those kinds of things. I think that the use cases themselves will be here, and I know some of our clients certainly see the mainframe in the foreseeable future.
Steven Dickens:
I think that’s a fantastic way to wrap things up here. Lisa, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show, really fantastic perspectives. I think always good to get somebody who’s relatively new to being a mainframer on the show, so thanks very much for joining us today.
Lisa Dyer:
Thanks a lot, Steven, I enjoyed it.
Steven Dickens:
We’ll speak to you soon, thanks very much for listening.
Lisa Dyer:
Take care.
The “I Am A Mainframer” podcast explores the careers of those in the mainframe ecosystem. Hosted by Steven Dickens, Senior Analyst at Futurum Research, each episode is a conversation that highlights the modern mainframe, insight into the mainframe industry, and advice for those looking to learn more about the technology.
The podcast is sponsored by the Open Mainframe Project, a Linux Foundation project that aims to build community and adoption of Open Source on the mainframe by eliminating barriers to Open Source adoption on the mainframe, demonstrating the value of the mainframe.
