Join host Steven Dickens in this inspiring episode of I Am a Mainframer featuring Sarah Julia Kriesch, Senior Lead Mainframe Architect (Open Source) at Kyndryl, an Open Mainframe Project ambassador and co-chair of the Linux Distribution Working Group..
Sarah shares her journey from Linux system administration and computer science studies to discovering mainframe through Germany’s Academic Mainframe Consortium, writing her bachelor thesis on Kubernetes on mainframe at IBM, and maintaining the s390x port for openSUSE. From her early conflicts balancing IBM contributions with open source to founding the Linux Distribution Working Group, Sarah discusses how cross‑distribution collaboration solves upstream challenges, supports s390x testing, and secures new hardware upgrades for the community.
Celebrating Women’s History Month: This episode highlights Sarah Julia Kriesch’s leadership driving open source innovation on mainframe during Women’s History Month. Sarah represents the growing diversity and technical excellence women bring to the mainframe ecosystem, proving that open source communities thrive with inclusive perspectives.
Watch Full Episode here:
https://youtu.be/89JOLeTRIHs
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Transcript:
Steven:
“Hello and welcome. You’re joining us here on another I Am a Mainframer Podcast. I’m your host, as always, Steven Dickens. I’m joined by Sarah. Sarah, welcome to the show and tell the listeners a little bit about you and what you do.”
Sarah:
“Hello, I’m Sarah Julia Kriesch. I’m working as a Senior Lead Mainframe Architect Open Source at Kyndryl. Based on this role, I’m allowed to contribute to open source, especially continuing my open source and release management stuff. I’m allowed to lead the Linux Distribution Working Group at the Open Mainframe Project, answering questions for upstream developers and everything, and go to conferences, speaking there about the Open Mainframe Project and our open source topics. And then I have got a second part of my job: our customers. I’m involved as a lead architect in customer projects, where I support them from pre‑sales into the delivery of full‑blown lines, as I lead, interacting above the consultants.”
Steven:
“Fantastic. Well, there’s a lot to unpack there. Tell us a little bit about your journey to the mainframe. How long have you been working with the platform? When did you first come across it? Maybe just give us a bit of that sort of… The show’s called I Am a Mainframer. So we try to understand a little bit about you and how you’ve gotten onto the platform and what that looks like.”
Sarah:
“I started my career without the mainframe on x86 and Linux. Therefore, I started as a Linux system administrator with a dual education. And when I continued with my studies in computer science, and during this phase, I have met the Academic Mainframe Consortium in Germany, where professors are teaching mainframe skills for students. And we meet us one time per year in the building in Ehningen. And I was so fascinated by that that I said I want to continue there, and wanted to write my bachelor thesis at IBM about Kubernetes on mainframe. And with that, I joined the mainframe community. After my bachelor, I have received the responsibility for the s390x port at openSUSE and maintained it. But anyway, there was a small conflict at IBM that I wasn’t allowed to contribute to openSUSE and upstream in parallel. So I joined Axians as a consultant and said I want to drive it a little bit more in the wider area. And I founded the Linux Distribution Working Group at the Open Mainframe Project for all Linux distributions. That was a real hit. I have to say we are collaborating, share our knowledge. If anybody has got problems, others are helping out with their own patches and with upstream contributions. We are a point of contact for upstream developers. Because if they need something—as an example, at first I was asked by a COBOL compiler developer, ‘Through COBOL, as an example, we want to receive VMs. Can you help us here?’ I said we have got the LinuxONE Community Cloud. If you need something, you can reach out—and that’s a great success.”
Steven:
“So it’s fantastic to hear you talk about the Linux sort of working group. I was one of two product managers who launched LinuxONE back in 2015. I see the penguin on your shelf above your head, the LinuxONE penguin from back in the day. Just listening 10 years on to you talk about the Linux Working Group in the Open Mainframe Project just gives me a warm glow. Maybe talk a little bit more around what the Linux Working Group is doing day to day to bring open source to the platform. This was always part of the vision of the project. I promised, when I had the pleasure of starting it with the Linux Foundation guys, this was the project‑to‑project collaboration—bringing this open source to the s390x chip architecture was always kind of part of the vision. You’re now actually leading that group and making that real. Talk about what the group is doing and some of the sort of successes that you’ve had.”
Sarah:
“Yes, you should know the different Linux distributions—we are receiving continuously latest software from upstream into our Linux distributions. And sometimes, although IBM does not know about latest software and a bit failures. And therefore, if there are any problems with compilers or something like that, or dependencies, or upstream projects require s390x resources, we have a point of contact where we can reach out, or others can reach out, and we clarify what is going wrong there. One IBM Distinguished Engineer is also part of it. If IBM can support here, he’s interacting there and collaborating and is forwarding issues. If our Linux distributions—as an example, openSUSE has got a problem and Fedora knows how to solve it because they have updated it already—we are collaborating here. At the moment we have got, as an example, Rust as a hot topic, of course. And many PyPI modules have got test failures, you should know. And yes, IBM has solved it for two years. And now we are working together that we can receive the bits working again on s390x besides all the other architectures. What I have achieved also last week is that we can receive new hardware next month. We are receiving a mainframe upgrade.”
Steven:
“Fantastic. Always a good moment, right, when you get new hardware.”
Sarah:
“Yes, we are receiving new hardware next month.”
Steven:
“I love it, I love it.”
Sarah:
“And what is the delivery? It’s really fast, I have to say, for IBM.”
Steven:
“Are you getting a z17?”
Sarah:
“I don’t know which version. I hope so. It is a z17. But I’m not sure whether it is z16 or z17; z16 is out of delivery. But it can be that anywhere is a mainframe in the background, of course—that can be possible. But in general, yes, z17 would be great when we can build LLMs and something like that also, and test more outside of only building. And include also ISVs for s390x in upstream projects and everything else for that. And the benefit for IBM is they are not alone with that. But for development, they can receive also support from the community and other open source communities via the Open Mainframe Project, and that will be a great step, I have to say.”
Steven:
“So if I’m there listening to this show and I want to get involved, I see the fantastic work you’re doing, and as somebody in the Linux community or the open source community more broadly I want to get involved with the mainframe—what would you recommend? Would you say get into the repos and start to look at code? Would you reach out to you? What would you recommend as the next first good step?”
Sarah:
“Yes, I recommend: test it in the LinuxONE Community Cloud, whether your code is working as a project maintainer. And if we have test failures, you can try it with tests for multiple architectures and adapt it. And based on such a VM, if you like it—working in such a mainframe environment with Linux, the best thing—then you can also receive long‑term VMs via the LinuxONE Open Source Software Community Cloud. Many people are surprised at first, of course: ‘What, you can receive VMs for free?’ But yes.”
Steven:
“Ten years after we launched it—ten years ago we launched it as part of LinuxONE and the Open Mainframe Project—and people are still surprised that you can get access.”
Sarah:
“We are reaching out via LinkedIn, at conferences, everywhere. ‘Where is the form link?’ I forward it and then they are happy.”
Steven:
“So, one of the questions I always ask—and I’ve been doing the show now for, I think, seven or eight years. What do you see… So you get the opportunity to go back, chat to your younger self and kind of give yourself some advice. And picking up that you love technology and picking up that you’re curious and picking up that you like to work in a community. But what advice would you give to the sort of 22‑year‑old self as you looked to sort of form your career? What advice would you give to yourself?”
Sarah:
“I would say be careful with choosing your first employer. You should look for the qualification of the other side also and not only on your qualification, because you want to grow and you need mentors in your first job. Look that this company is matching your wishes with technologies in the background, what you want to use. And then you should look for a perfect match, that a mentor can teach you and advise you how to use it all.”
Steven:
“That’s really good advice. I think I look back from my own career and the people who put an arm around my shoulder and kind of helped me. I’m thinking of all the names that are coming to the front of my mind—I’m actually meeting with one of my mentors tomorrow.”
Sarah:
“Exactly.”
Steven:
“It just really—I think if you can find those people who are willing to sort of help you early on in your career, it makes a huge difference. One of the other questions I always ask is: you get to look ahead. I think with your perspective and the open source perspective, I’m looking forward to your answer. You get to look into the crystal ball; the crystal ball, the fog clears, and you get to see a vision of the mainframe five, ten years from now. What do you see?”
Sarah:
“We already spoke a little bit about AI and the role for us in the open source community. I would expand that with the usage of that in the banking industry. We have got blockchain and our topics as a hype at the moment and that will become our reality from my point of view. But we create a blockchain network between different banks and their mainframes… and with that, we create connections between different data centers which are protected inside with confidential computing on the mainframe, integrated AI. And that we can do some encryption with data and exchange between.”
Steven:
“So do you see a vision where the mainframe is still at the center of financial transactions but they just happen on different payment rails and they are empowered by blockchain? Is that what you see?”
Sarah:
“Yes, that’s what I can see. From my point of view, if I’m looking on our customers, there are only a small amount of banks who were able to move away from the mainframe. You cannot find any other system which can apply so many transactions in parallel. And with that, that will be kept as a foundation for the financial industry also in the future. But money will become digital, of course. And with that, the role of the mainframe will grow from my point of view.”
Steven:
“So Sarah, I don’t think I can think of a better way to wrap up the conversation. Mainframe at the center of innovation, new sort of transactions come into the platform and the mainframe being at the center of it all. You’ve been listening to another episode of the I Am a Mainframer podcast. I’m your host, Steven Dickens. Please click and subscribe, share with a friend, 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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