
In this episode of the Mainframe Connect podcast’s – I am a Mainframer series, Steven Perva, Expert Mainframe Innovation Engineer at Ensono, shares his unique journey in the mainframe industry. From his early days fixing point-of-sale systems with his father to winning IBM’s Master of the Mainframe contest in college, Steven’s path led him to IBM Poughkeepsie and eventually to Ensono. He discusses the evolution of mainframe modernization, emphasizing that it’s not just about technology but about creating a more integrated and cohesive IT strategy. A highlight of the conversation is Steven’s role in building a vibrant mainframe community through Discord, which has grown to over 2,600 members.
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Transcript:
Announcer:: This is the Mainframe Connect Podcast, brought to you by the Linux Foundation’s Open Mainframe Project. Mainframe Connect includes the I am a Mainframer series, the riveting Mainframe Voices series, and other content exploring relevant topics with mainframe professionals and offering insights into the industry and technology. This episode is another in the I am a Mainframer series, exploring the career journeys of mainframe professionals.
STEVEN DICKENS (Host): Hello and welcome. I’m your host, Steven Dickens, and you’re joining us on another episode of the I am a Mainframer Podcast, brought to you by the Linux Foundation’s Open Mainframe Project. I’m joined today by Steven Perva from Ensono. Hey, Steven, welcome to you.
STEVEN PERVA (Guest): Hey, Steven, thanks for having me.
STEVEN DICKENS: This is going to get confusing with both called Steven. At least my English accent will help the viewers and listeners sort of differentiate. So let’s start straight in. Tell the viewers and listeners a little bit about who you are and who you work for?
STEVEN PERVA: Cool, absolutely. Again, thanks for having me. I’ve always been a watcher and listener of the podcast. Officially, I’m the Expert Mainframe Innovation Engineer at a company called Ensono. You’ve had my leader, Lisa Dyer, on the podcast before. I basically work in the product organization for her in the mainframe line of business. Expert Innovation Engineer is kind of a fun title.
STEVEN DICKENS: I like that. That’s a good job title. What does that mean?
STEVEN PERVA: Yeah, so when I came in, I was the Modernization Engineer. But then we got into this – you know the industry well enough – we got into the machinations of like what does modernization mean? And then it kind of became this game of tennis where it’s like, “Oh, it’s a good thing. It’s a bad thing. It’s a good thing.” And I’m like, let’s go with innovation. I think we can all agree that innovation is a good thing. So we’ve kind of ran with that.
STEVEN DICKENS: It’s interesting you mentioned that. Well, we’ll sidecar into it for a moment. I was having this debate with one of the vendors about how charged that modernization term is. You say mainframe modernization, and my perception is that means very different things to different vendors. If I was talking – and I do – I talk to the AWS teams and the Google teams and the Microsoft teams, and some of the vendors that can help people migrate off the mainframe – the Luminium Computings, the TmaxSofts, the Various Sources, the Blue Ages of this world – they would see mainframe modernization as modernizing off the platform. You then look at some of the open source projects in the Open Mainframe Project, you look at some of the work – the great work that IBM’s doing, that BMC’s doing, that Broadcom’s doing, that Rocket Software’s doing, and a whole plethora of others – they would see that modernization term as how do you create a microservices version of a COBOL application that still runs on the mainframe. So it really is distressing for me that what I think is a genuine term, mainframe modernization, as you say, gets into this political battle of, do you mean modernize on or off? The likes of Kyndryl and Ensono, I think, have probably the most evolved view of that, and it can mean both. And I certainly know Lisa and Oliver sort of press land on your team hold what I think is one of the most evolved views in the market – that it can mean all of the above, if it’s done off with API frameworks, the whole sort of shooting match. So it’s fascinating that you say that. Do you think, am I seeing it right? Is that how you see it?
STEVEN PERVA: So I would say that aligns with my perspective. And I’ve always felt like there’s some mainframe tribalism that we have. I’ve been in the industry for at least 15 years now, believe it or not. And there’s a lot of people that say the mainframe platform is as modern as it can be. You know, like we’re chomping at the heels of quantum, we’re talking about crypto from end to end at rest and in flight, et cetera. And that’s engineering and the hardware platform – it’s indisputable that that’s modern. That’s the definition of modern for enterprise computing.But then you start to reflect on some of the environments that people work on. I tend to be a z/OS specialist, that’s where I came up from, and that’s what I’ve been working on for the past decade and a half now. And when you look at that, you really find it hard to be like, “this is modern.” Someone asked me the other day, “What do you think’s going to happen when z/OS 4.0 comes out?” I’m like, “Probably look a whole lot like z/OS 1.12 did when I started.” Like when you log on, it kind of looks the same. It’s just about leveraging that hardware.So I think modernization, at least from my perspective, is getting the software and the user experience, the developer experience, and the infrastructure administration experience to start to match up with what people experience on other platforms. And I agree with you. I think the Ensono ethos about it all is spot on. And it’s why I align myself really well with that. And I think they like me because I’m in that sphere of mentality with them.
STEVEN DICKENS: So the show’s called “I am a Mainframer.” We’d like to sort of get a view of you. You mentioned you’ve been on the platform for sort of 15 years. Give me that kind of genesis story. How did you get onto the platform? What would those early days look like? Just sort of paint the picture for me as you go through, and we’ll use that as the next segment.
STEVEN PERVA: Absolutely. So, I’ll kind of 2x speed kind of my origin story into technology.
STEVEN DICKENS: For those watching podcasts, this is maybe the point to slow it down. Speedwise, he’s going to go fast.
STEVEN PERVA: So my dad worked for a company called Hardee’s. I’m sure anybody who’s anybody, at least in the United States, is probably familiar with Hardee’s. It became Carl’s Jr., the whole franchise chain of fast food burgers. He worked for Hardee’s as a manager at the restaurant, and then he became part of the point of sale system team. He would travel around the Midwest – I’m from Chicago. As a way to keep himself from falling asleep at the wheel during those several-hour drives, he would bring me along so I could talk to him. I would watch him run cables, watch him replace and solder chips onto boards. This is like traditional computing from what I would consider now the Stone Age. From there, I got into gaming and networking systems together. As a rebellious teenager, I caused a little bit of trouble. As part of my punishment, my dad was like, “You’re good with computers. You have to donate your time to this school and work on their network.” They just had an IPX network with Windows systems. I would fix their printer problems, image their Windows systems – I think they had Windows 95 at the time. I started my own business in this farm town where I grew up, doing networking, software installs, virus removal, all the tech support stuff. Told my parents I was going to live in their basement forever. I was like, “This is my job, this is what I want to do, I’m getting paid, I’m loving it.” And my parents were like, “No, you’re not. You’re going to get a real job or go to college.” So I went to Northern Illinois University. They have a pretty decent program with some cohesion with the mainframe – they did COBOL and high-level assembler as part of their curriculum. Throughout high school, I was always told by one of my teachers, “If you’re not prepared for class, do not show up.” One day, everyone was talking about the Master the Mainframe program. I was super late for class and thought, “Well, I’m not prepared, I’m not going to show up.” It just happened to coincide with the day that the Master the Mainframe program was kicking off. I went to the computer lab and started working on the Master the Mainframe contest. I breezed through it and got my resume into the database, which was one of the early prizes. I didn’t finish the other parts because I didn’t really want a TV or computer, and I didn’t understand what “Poughkeepsie, New York” meant at the time – that was the grand prize. I didn’t understand the whole “Big Blue” thing. Next thing I knew, someone from IBM sent me an email and called me on my flip phone. They wanted me to come work at Poughkeepsie, New York. I thought it was a scam – I thought someone was trying to get my social security number. But it turned out to be legitimate – they sent me an offer letter, and I ended up going to the place that I initially didn’t want to go to – Poughkeepsie, New York.
STEVEN DICKENS: It’s going to be a small sight to me. So I know it well.
STEVEN PERVA: So the next thing I know, I’m packing up my whole life and I’m leaving small town Illinois. And I’m moving to Poughkeepsie, New York to be a systems programmer supporting the engineering system test floor. I did that for a handful of years, had a tremendous fear of flying and I ended up moving back to Illinois. I worked for a private company in the Chicagoland area so I could be closer to my family.
STEVEN DICKENS: Oh, that’s crazy. So where did you live when you were based in Poughkeepsie?
STEVEN PERVA: So I started living in Fishkill, New York. And then I moved to Wappingers Falls. But yeah, I was in building – I think it’s Building One. Whatever the big engineering system test floor is on, I think it’s Building One facing the clock building, one building to the left of it.
STEVEN DICKENS: I know it well. I spent 10 years working for IBM and seven of those based in Poughkeepsie. So I know it really well. I was in 707.
STEVEN PERVA: Okay.
STEVEN DICKENS: We’re going down a rabbit hole quick. So great early part of the story. Tell me about the move to Ensono, kind of what that involved. And then we’ll get into a little bit more detail on it.
STEVEN PERVA: Yeah, absolutely. When I was working at this private company in the Chicagoland area, it was much like most mainframe environments might be today. It was a skeleton crew of folks who did pretty much everything. I did z/OS systems programming, networking, we did the hardware roll-ins and outs of the actual CPCs themselves – the physical mainframes themselves. I did a lot of firewall infrastructure there, some COBOL development, DB2, the whole bag of tools. I got to learn pretty much anything and everything. Then my journey with that company came to an end because there was really no technical growth trajectory for me. COVID happened, I had started a family, and I wanted to be home more. So here I am working remote. I was seeking out a remote job as everyone was doing their RTO stuff – the return to office. I was like, “I’m going to stay home. I really like being close to my family, having lunch with my wife and my daughter.” I applied for two roles at Ensono, one operational and one was in the newly founded product engineering team. The product engineering team got back to me first. I told the other side of the company, “Hey, I have this interview with the engineering team.” They said, “Tell us how that goes, and if anything falls through, come talk to us.” The engineering team snatched me up first because I was so ambidextrous, I think. And it’s just been a joy to work at Ensono since then – I’ve been there almost four years now.
STEVEN DICKENS: Yeah. I’ve spent quite a lot of time with Lisa over there. And I think I touched on it – I think you guys have got a genuinely good balanced perspective that meets clients where they are with regard to modernization and how best to think about the platform. So I’m not surprised. One of the things that was interesting as I was doing the prep coming towards this call was some of the things you’ve been doing for the project. I’m not on Discord. So maybe I’m a proxy for where some of the audience is – what are you doing for the project? What is that starting to lead to? And really how are you supporting the Open Mainframe Project with some of the efforts? We’d not come across each other back in the day when I founded this project and approached the LF. So I’ve been involved in it, but when I saw the background and we got the prep from the producer, I was like, “Oh, I’ve not spoken to Stephen, I’m really interested.” So just maybe talk me through it – what is it doing? How’s that going? What’s the impact?
STEVEN PERVA: Yeah, no problem at all. I always tell people I do a lot of really what I call wacky stuff. Just one look at me, one look at all the stuff behind me – like this guy is out there, he’s doing some strange things. This all kind of kicked off when I got to Ensono. I got to witness that ethos that we’ve been talking about, where they kind of see it as an integral overall holistic IT strategy, as opposed to just this tribalism, siloed experience. So I was like, this is really amazing. That’s my background through and through – I’m a networking guy, I ran LAN parties when I was a kid, I did it all. I want to kind of build more of this ecosystem out. For me, witnessing kind of InfoSec culture was the impetus I needed to say, I would love to make or start pushing towards a mainframe culture that mimics the good things about the InfoSec culture. There’s a lot of this and that about the InfoSec culture, but one thing about them is the good things that they do are very strong – it’s a really strong identity, a lot of cohesion amongst people in that industry. I started this Discord community with a couple other friends of mine. They kind of faded away because they found other things that were enjoyable. It started just the three of us. So I started inviting people. The next thing I know there was 50 people. I thought I’d changed the world – I’m like, “There’s 50 mainframers talking about mainframe stuff!” I go to every conference, I do technical talks about whatever things – Ansible, Python, all of the different stuff that I find interesting. And at the end of my slide deck, I would always say, “Love for you to join us on Discord.”
STEVEN DICKENS: How many people are in the Discord group now?
STEVEN PERVA: Oh, there’s over 2,600 people that hop on the Discord right now. And it’s an amazing community. I cannot say thank you enough to the people that swing by there and talk. People always like to compare and contrast it with the old IBM-MAIN community, which was the listserv that people did. This is kind of that, but like a new evolution.
STEVEN DICKENS: That’s right.
STEVEN PERVA: Exactly.
STEVEN DICKENS: A new platform, a new way to engage. Yeah. I was expecting you to say under a thousand. I’ve got to admit.
STEVEN PERVA: That’s, I’m cool with that. And I think that we’ve grown a lot recently. I’ve always told people that like we live in this world where everything has an identity. If you’re somebody who drives a Mustang, like Mustang is your identity. Or if you’re someone who is in InfoSec, InfoSec is who you are. I feel like this kind of really helps people tap into the mainframe community in a way that they can make that a core component of who they are in a good way.
STEVEN DICKENS: Right. Almost to the point where I think we should create a podcast show called “I am a Mainframer.”
STEVEN PERVA: Absolutely.
STEVEN DICKENS: It could be a thing. It could take off. I mean, maybe they’d get this crazy British guy to do it. And we’d run a podcast for six or seven years. But no, I mean, we joke. But I genuinely do believe – I’ve been going to SHARE conference for years, I’m going in February – I genuinely believe there is the technology, the stack, the software, the hardware, there’s various companies, there’s various vendors, but I genuinely believe that the mainframe community is exactly that – a community.
STEVEN PERVA: Yeah.
STEVEN DICKENS: The people I’ve had on this show, the conversations I’ve had, the way the dynamic works – you know, the fact that SHARE is the longest running open source community. When I heard that and we did the work as the Open Mainframe Project to kind of amplify that work that SHARE has been doing, it kind of speaks to it for me. And the community will support and engage. So I say I’m surprised, but then again, maybe I’m not surprised about how successful. So what are the types of conversations that are going on on the Discord? How are people using it? Maybe I’m a system programmer listening to this podcast, I work at a Wells Fargo or Citi or I’m in the government, and I want to maybe on the end-user side and not on the vendor side – how are people using the Discord?
STEVEN PERVA: So that’s a great question. I did write an article for the SHARE Intelligence, I think, is their publication that they do. But kind of the cliff notes about all of that is that it’s really a space for people to, we always say, come as you are. There’s no such thing as a foolish question. If I’ve reflected on some of the other communities that I’ve witnessed in the mainframe space, sometimes there’s “Well, did you search first?” And that always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I would always say like, okay, here we are talking about a piece of technology that was a core component of the mainframe in 1986. It’s 2025 now. It’s okay for me to ask about it again, because maybe something between now and 1986 has changed. And someone could say, “Yeah, we used to do it this way, but this is how we do it now.” So we invite systems programmers, developers, anybody who’s even enthusiastic. It’s a System Z enthusiast Discord. So maybe you’re retired or maybe you’re just curious about what it is. We’ve had people pop on to say, “Hey, I just found out about mainframes. I started searching, I saw this Discord community figured I’d pop in.” And like you have just illustrated, the community jumps in. We have volunteer moderators. So I kind of run the thing and the volunteer moderators – big thank you to all of them for the work that they do to make sure that nobody’s bringing negativity to the table or sending the conversation into a space where it doesn’t feel welcoming. We’re talking about how do I automate this? How would I write this in REXX? What are the latest open tools? So we talk about Zowe there, we talk about the Z Open community, all of that amazing stuff. We give feedback. We even have vendors who pop on and they’ll take ideas from the community. We run live events, stage events that we’ll run once a month. We call it the Z Rebels Technical Water Cooler where it’s basically a round table of mainframers. 50 to 75 people come live like you and I are right now sitting in a video chat. We bring people on stage. They raise their hand, they’ll say, “Hey, I’m a new systems programmer. Does it get easier? How do I ever understand this behemoth of an operating system?” And the community just rises up and they say, “Don’t worry. You’re going to be okay. We were all there and we’re all still there.” So it’s just an amazing place. That’s how the community operates.
STEVEN DICKENS: I think this is maybe one of the most daunting technologies.
STEVEN PERVA: And I think that factors into how the community is probably the most welcoming. You look at something like Linux – it’s probably easier to get started, it’s probably easier to download something and put it on a Raspberry Pi or your desktop. So the barrier to getting in is easy, but I’d say the community is not as welcoming. I’d say the mainframe community is flipped. It’s harder to get onto this platform once you’ve declared that you’re interested, but the community is a lot more welcoming.
STEVEN DICKENS: So I’m kind of not surprised by the dynamic you describe.
STEVEN PERVA: Yeah. I look back on it all the time. And I would tell you that probably in the last three months, I’ve spoken to people like yourself and I’ve said, I’m very proud of this community. It is like a feather in my cap, something that I feel like I’ve done that I can reflect on and say, “Yeah, I’ve kind of made a difference here.” I get messages all the time, people saying this is such a cool component of my day. If I’m ever puzzled about something, I can come in, I can pop a question on there, I’m not going to get chastised for it, I’m going to get a lot of interesting feedback.
STEVEN DICKENS: Well, we’ll certainly put the link to the Discord in the show notes. I’ll speak to the producer. We’ll do that. If you ever want an analyst to come on to one of your shows, I’m more than happy to reciprocate. This is how I give back to the Open Mainframe Project and the community as a whole. But as we start to wrap up here, there’s always a couple of questions I ask the guests. We talked about your journey – what would you go back to Steven sort of 21, 22 graduating college? We have a lot of younger listeners to the show, people who are maybe at that age, maybe they’ve gone through whatever the new version of the Master the Mainframe program is. What would you go back to your younger self and give as advice?
STEVEN PERVA: That’s a great question, one that I’m partially prepared to answer. I think that I would say to myself, there’s the technical aptitude of a career, and then there’s the charismatic, personable aptitude of the career. And those two things can be just as important as one another. When I started, I was really focused on “I’m going to kind of just sit in my little corner, I’m going to be my technical genius and I’m going to hope people witness what I’m good at.” But if I could give myself advice, I would say no good product really sells based on merits alone. There is some marketing that has to exist. So use your voice, speak about what you’re good at, volunteer for opportunities that you think you can smash out of the park.
STEVEN DICKENS: I describe it as – and I was literally just having this conversation this morning – knowledge plus reach equals eminence. You can be really vocal on social media platforms and not say anything of any weight and you’ll get reach. You can be super knowledgeable and be an expert, but not speak to anybody. You put the two together – knowledge plus reach equals what I describe as eminence.
STEVEN DICKENS: Well, my final question that I’m asking – I’m genuinely interested to get your opinion here. We’re looking at the platform, it’s going to be a big year for the mainframe. Looking out – so not talking about the next product or the next release or the next thing, but taking maybe a five year time horizon. You’re looking into that crystal ball, the mist is starting to clear – where do you see the mainframe going forward?
STEVEN PERVA: Yeah, I think that we’re seeing this huge surgence of what I always say is just integration. I think the future of the platform is starting – we’ve all called it hybrid cloud for how long now? I’m starting to call it integration. And I think that’s a number of components. People are starting to realize the criticality of the data on the platform. They’re starting to realize how cohesive their IT strategy at large needs to be. And then they’re starting to say, “How do I solve this integration problem?” We’re seeing a lot of people talk about DevOps and there’s a lot of movement around DevOps. And then you’re seeing open source projects start to really fold into that integration story. So five years from now, I suspect the community will still be as strong as ever, if not stronger. We’ll be collaborating in different ways, we’ll be talking about new tools, we’ll be talking a lot more about open source tools. And I think the focus of the conversation is going to be on how do I integrate my mainframe with the overall IT ecosystem that I have at my enterprise. People won’t be seeing it as kind of like this monolith that they want to leave in the corner. They’re going to say, “This is critical to my strategy. Let’s integrate now.” It’s not going to be like, “Well, how do we integrate?” It’s going to be “Move, let’s move quicker. We got to get in there and get that data and do something meaningful with it.” I think a lot of people would want me to talk about AI and machine learning and all that. I think that all kind of falls after integration for us. And I think we’ll definitely get there. And that’s what I see – more open source, more integration, and the collaboration between systems programmers will be focused on those two things.
STEVEN DICKENS: Well, Steven, I think that’s – I tend to agree. I think we’re on that trajectory. This has been a fascinating conversation. You’ve been listening to Steven Perva from Ensono. My name is Steven Dickens, I’m your host as always. Please click and subscribe and do all the things that help us on the algorithm as we try and grow the show. And we’ll see you next time. Thank you very much for watching.
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