In this episode of the “I Am a Mainframer” podcast, Steven Dickens is joined by Patrick Stanard, Chief Mainframe Architect at Kyndryl US, from the show floor at the SHARE Conference in Columbus, Ohio. Patrick shares his career journey that started in data input (using punch cards!) at Michigan Bell Telephone and moved into data center operations working with Unisys mainframes, and then 35 years with IBM before joining the Kyndryl team.
Their conversation also touches on the massive changes in the industry over the last several years, what customers are looking for from their mainframe, and the rise of hybrid mainframe computing and disruptive technologies. Don’t miss this entertaining and informative conversation!
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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 you are joining us here live for the I’m A Mainframer Podcast brought you by the Linux Foundation. I’ve got the pleasure of having Pat Stanard from Kyndryl. Hey Pat, welcome to the show.
Patrick Stanard:
Hey, thanks a lot. It’s great to be here
Steven Dickens:
And we’re live. So if there’s some background noise, we’re on a booth at a show. So it’s great to be back in person.
Patrick Stanard:
Hopefully no one comes up and starts asking questions while we’re here.
Steven Dickens:
We can but hope. So let’s get our listeners and our viewers orientated. Tell us a little bit about what you do for Kyndryl and then we’ll use that as a jumping off point.
Patrick Stanard:
Sure, you bet. Yeah. I’m the chief mainframe architect for Kyndryl US. And I’m responsible for strategy as well as a number of other projects that we do. But I also have the mainframe architect team as well.
Steven Dickens:
There’s lots in that we’re going to come back to. But the show’s called I’m A Mainframer. Tell us a little bit about your journey. Tell us how you got started on the platform. Obviously to get that type of senior role, you’ve done a bunch of things before. We were chatting a little bit before the show. Tell us a little bit about your journey through the mainframe platform.
Patrick Stanard:
Sure. It’s funny, Steve, because I started out really as working for Michigan Bell Telephone at the time. Which became Ameritech, which became Ameritech Applied Technologies and then eventually AT&T. But at that time I got hired into Michigan Bell Telephone actually as a man that could type of all things. And so I was putting-
Steven Dickens:
That’s a job description you don’t see very often.
Patrick Stanard:
Exactly. A man that could type because they were trying to hire more men to put them into a unit to do data input. And so I did that.
Steven Dickens:
Are we talking punch cards back in the day?
Patrick Stanard:
Yes. Yes.
Steven Dickens:
Sorry to age you.
Patrick Stanard:
No, no, exactly. 80 column Herman Hollerith punch cards. We were doing a lot of that as well too. But the funny thing about it was I had one month to prove myself. And you had to type 45 words a minute. Otherwise they were firing people. So at the last day, they tested me. And I came in at … the manager called me up front to let me know my test, I’d passed my test. And she said, yes, Pat, you passed your test, 45 words a minute. And she winked at me. And so I really don’t know if that was really true.
Steven Dickens:
Whether it was a true 45 or just close.
Patrick Stanard:
That’s right. Probably close enough. They needed me there. And I was a man that could type. And so from there, anyway, I ended up getting into the data center operations area. Which at the time was Unisys mainframes. So I really became-
Steven Dickens:
Don’t hear much of those.
Patrick Stanard:
No, you really don’t. I actually ran four large scale Unisys A15 mainframes. And prior to that, it was the Burrows B7900 mainframes.
Steven Dickens:
Tell me about how you go from there. So that sounds like pretty hands on, pretty in the data center. What was next?
Patrick Stanard:
The next part of this was I actually became a support person for the Unisys mainframes at the time. And so I was actually doing support. When the systems would go down. They would call us in the middle of the night. And we’d have to try to figure out how to bring them back up.
And shortly thereafter, I started coding in Cobol on the mainframes because I could get all my batch work done in the middle of the night on third shift. And I would use the world’s largest PC at the time basically to write Cobol. As I was taking Cobol classes at the time.
Steven Dickens:
Fantastic.
Patrick Stanard:
So there further on down the line, I ended up moving over to Amdal, then IBM mainframes at the time.
Steven Dickens:
So paint me that picture. How did you ultimately end up in IBM? Because I know we’ve got some, I looked on LinkedIn, we worked both for IBM. So tell me a bit, how you end up making that transition into IBM.
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah, basically they had an operations position that had opened up on the Amdal and also the IBM side and they needed an operator. And they knew I had experience with Unisys which when you get down to it, yeah, they’re very different. The Unisys mainframe is much more English oriented. But they knew I could run mainframes. So they gave me that position. And I started running basically the IBM systems at that point.
Steven Dickens:
So when did you join IBM?
Patrick Stanard:
Oh my gosh. I joined IBM, I’ve actually been with IBM for 35 years to be honest with you.
Steven Dickens:
Fantastic.
Patrick Stanard:
It’s a crazy question because I’ve been with the company 35 years, but I’ve never even applied for a job here. I’ve been outsourced and purchased and that type of thing.
Steven Dickens:
You’ve come in and you’ve come out.
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah, exactly.
Steven Dickens:
So maybe let’s jump all the way to now. Tell me about what the day in the life looks like for a chief architect for Kyndryl in the mainframe space. Probably I would argue in the biggest market, in the US. Yeah. What does that look like? What are you doing every day with clients?
Patrick Stanard:
Exactly. Kyndryl in itself is 90,000 people.
Steven Dickens:
I call you the world’s largest startup.
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah, exactly. We’re the largest funded startup, I guess I would say. And so we are very busy with building the company from a step one kind of a thing. And so each day we’re actively working towards that. And we’re in the right direction. We’re doing all the right things.
But actually what I do from an architect point of view, I’m kind of a player coach. I’m an architect, I’m also a manager of the architects for Kyndryl US. So we do a lot of work with customers. We speak to customers pretty much on a day to day basis. And we’re trying to find out what they need from the topics. So things like mainframe optimization we like to say, we don’t like to say modernization because the mainframe is already modern.
And then so our whole mantra is basically from an architecture point of view is the right platform for the right type of work. And so each of our architects try to work in that direction.
Steven Dickens:
So there’s a lot in what you say there, the optimization and then architecting it. I’ve known Kyndryl and worked in what was previously the GTS business. That whole domain as a space has changed massively just over the last three years. What customers are looking for from their mainframe. What it’s supporting in their business. What are you seeing as some of those trends? What are some of the things you’re hearing that you maybe weren’t hearing even as short a period of time ago as say three years ago?
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah. That’s a good point. And really what I’m seeing is that there’s really a drive from, hey, I want to keep all my work on the mainframe to, I want to do some kind of a hybrid arrangement using hyperscalers that are out there like AWS, Google or Azure. So some of my work, some of my data, some of my applications could arrive in those environments. And then the third thing is, I want to get totally off the mainframe. But I think really what we’re seeing right now from a trend point of view is a trend towards hybrid mainframe computing.
Steven Dickens:
I think I’m hearing the same thing. I think hybrid is where everybody’s at. I think there’s some noise and hype around get off. But I think for me, it’s more what I’m seeing is that hybrid story. It’s both and not either or. Are you seeing the same thing?
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I’m seeing a lot of that actually. And the customers that are saying, hey, we want to get off the mainframe. You can go talk to them three/four/five years later, and they’re still in the mainframe in some capacity.
Steven Dickens:
So it’s that more. And you touched on it when you mentioned it there, the strategy from Kyndryl, I’ve heard this from other of your peers, that fit for purpose. What’s the best workload for the best platform. Without some of that bias. So it’s not, oh, this is the new shiny object we should all gravitate to that. It’s really that case of, what is the best platform for this workload and looking at it objectively. How are you doing that? How are you having some of those conversations, you as an architect team, how are you architecting some of that?
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah, what we’ve done is we’ve really developed a strategy to have those conversations.
Steven Dickens:
A framework basically?
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah, exactly. There’s basically 10, we figured there’s 10 mainframe capabilities, and there’s probably more, but 10 very important mainframe capabilities. And there are things that all mainframe customers would have questions about or issues with or want to get better at. So there are things like performance, for instance. There are things like the enterprise environment, cyber security, storage, application modernization, and there’s others. So what we like to do is go in and talk to our customers about these kinds of things from a strategy point of view. And then use that to drive our work with the customers.
Steven Dickens:
And it’s through the lens of those 10 that you come to, this should sit here, this should be refactored, this should be re-platformed, this should be updated and modernized and take forward. Is that the right way?
Patrick Stanard:
Exactly. That’s exactly right. And so some customers may only want one of those 10 capabilities implemented. Others may want all of them. It just depends on really where the customer currently sits and where they want to go with our strategy.
Steven Dickens:
I think that type of thoughtful approach rather than, oh, let’s get into the politics and let’s move here, I think that’s really balanced. So I’m excited to hear. And I’m picking that up from Kyndryl that you’re starting to be a bit more nuanced about how you think about it, which is unusual I think.
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah, it’s a good approach we feel because it really gives the customer the position to be in the driver’s seat. We let the customer know exactly the types of things that we’d like to do with them and the capabilities that we have. And then what we try to do is let them know what’s there and what they can march forward with to make their environment better, more cost effective, that type of thing.
Steven Dickens:
So we’ve got people starting to walk into the show. Might as well make that my next question. What are you starting to, you’ve been here for what is it, a day and a half now at Share in Columbus, what are you seeing? What are some of those interactions? Because I think, I did the event in Dallas, but I think this is the first one we’re back as a community. So what has been some of those conversations?
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah, it’s been interesting because to be honest with you, this is the first time I’ve been back to Share in about five years. And so I used to come to Share every year, I would present every year, and now I’m back. So now I’m running into all kinds of people that I would see. And what I found out is that the mainframe environment is really pretty small.
Steven Dickens:
It’s a small community.
Patrick Stanard:
I’m getting bear hugged constantly by people walking up, which is a beautiful thing. I really like that.
Steven Dickens:
It’s good to be back in person.
Patrick Stanard:
But there’s a lot of new technologies. There’s a lot of just disruptive technologies that are out there that we’re working with every day to try to see how that fits in our mainframe strategy. Because it’s all about what the customer really wants and the direction they want to go.
Steven Dickens:
So I’ve just finished writing a report that I published just before we came out to Share. And the interesting thing for me is just the sheer volume of announcements. The mainframe space is normally bubbling along. People are announcing things. Obviously we’ve just had Z16. But this summer just every vendor’s got some new announcements, some new product. I feel a vibrancy in this space I haven’t seen before.
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah, for sure. There are a lot of disruptive technologies. If you look at things like quantum computing and how that’s going to affect the mainframe processing in the future.
Steven Dickens:
We’ve got Das Dechan transforming with the guys at Model Nine. I know you work with them.
Patrick Stanard:
That’s right.
Steven Dickens:
Some of that type of technology. And that’s like a startup in the mainframe space. What are they, three or four years old?
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah. They’re small, they’re 50 people. But the technology is solid. And that’s something that we’re active with is working with them. Other technologies like Adaptogen for instance, has a lot of very good things they are bringing to the table as well too.
Steven Dickens:
Yeah, chatted to them only yesterday. I think I see a level of vibrancy in this space that I haven’t seen. I’ve been with the mainframe since the mid nineties. I think there’s just so much technology. And I think it’s that kind of modernization, we’re seeing the best of what the platform’s known for, but we’re also seeing new development coming through.
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. If you look at what the Z16 brings to the table, and even prior to that, the Z15 brings to the table, there’s a lot of tremendous technology that’s there. You look at things like the system recovery boost option, for instance, which allows the zip engines, which are really in position to process DB2 type transactions. That processing capability is now able to be shifted so that it can be used on bringing the systems up and taking the systems down. Things like that again are exciting. They’re a neat part of the platform. But there’s all kinds of that with the new systems.
Steven Dickens:
So one of the questions I always ask, and it’s been fantastic to get your story arc, you have the opportunity to go back to the younger Pat, age 22, 21, coming out of college, through the experience you’ve had, those over 30 years on the platform, what would you be saying to your younger self?
Patrick Stanard:
Well, it’s funny, I think what I would, number one, that was back when I had hair, long hair, and that was from the time of the Herman Hollerith punch card as I said up to now. And you look at things like the quantum technologies, quantum computing specifically, it’s come a long way. So I would say to my younger self back then, study the mainframe, study Cobol, study these kinds of things that are going to give you a career in the future. Because the mainframe’s going to be around a long time. It’s not going anywhere. And if I had known that when I was younger, I probably would’ve plotted my career maybe a little different.
Steven Dickens:
I think that’s good advice. I ask this question, I’ve been doing this now for about four years, this podcast, everybody is, go learn, be curious, invest. One of the other questions I like to ask as we start to wrap here. We’ve talked a little bit about your history. We’ve talked a little bit about things like quantum. Where do you see the platform, three, five, 10 years out from there?
Patrick Stanard:
Yeah. The platform continues to shrink in size, be more efficient from an electricity cooling point of view, faster and smaller. But I think what we’re going to see in the very near future is the continued use of quantum computing as I mentioned before. To really use it as a subsidiary way to process specific transaction sets.
If you look at some of the newest software that’s coming out, I know from IBM for instance, they’re now making that quantum safe. They have to make that quantum safe because in the future, the possibility would exist that data downloaded now could be used with a quantum computer to crack current security algorithms. So you’re going to see a lot more quantum, I think, in the future than you are now.
Steven Dickens:
Yeah. I think that’s an exciting space. I think we’re starting to see early previews of it with Z16. I think that’s going to explode. So Pat, that’s fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
My name’s Steven Dickens. You’ve been listening to the I’m A Mainframer Podcast. Please click and subscribe. And we’ll see you next time. Thank you very much.
Voiceover
Thank you for tuning in to “I am a Mainframer.” Liked what you heard? Subscribe to get every episode or watch us online at openmainframeproject.org. Until next time, this is the “I am a Mainframer” podcast, insights for today’s mainframe professionals.
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.
