Why #MainframeMatters? The voice of telecommunication: Orange

​With more than 148,000 employees and over 266 million customers worldwide, Orange is one of the largest operators of mobile and internet services in Europe and Africa and a global leader in corporate telecommunication services. And when it comes about automation, they know they can rely on our mainframe automation solution – WSz, formerly known as Tivoli Workload Scheduler - and its long reliability tradition.

​Counting on her 20+ years’ experience on the mainframe, Karine Le Boulanger – z/OS System Expert at Orange France – is definitely an expert of the product, and that’s why we thought that no one better than her could have said why Mainframe matters.

I had the chance to meet her at the latest User Group France, and asked her views on Workload Automation for Z.


1. We believe that #MainframeMatters and at Orange you do too, since you invested in it since years. So, what do you think that are the advantages of mainframe in today’s IT world? 
The mainframe brings reliability, security, it remains one of the safest environments on the market, and more is always competitive: with new developments and regular changes. The mainframe remains an extremely powerful machine and I am proud to work on this environment.

2. Could you tell us more about your experience with the WSz, how do you use it? WSz 9.3 is installed on our LPAR, I am the person who installed the latest version of WSz. I have been working on OPC now for 20 years, I work in the system team, so we are in charge of the upgrade of software systems, network, security, storage. WSz is part of the software that we maintain, so we intervene on the upgrade of WSz and in case of an incident, and we must admit that the problems with WSz are very few.

3. Are there some recent features that have helped you improve the way you work? Today we are strongly interested in Zowe and especially the connection between Zowe and WSz.

4. What do you like most from our product? ​​I like the reliability and the solidity of this product, and I wish I had more time to discover and test more new features. Also, I would be happy to use a friendly WSz interface, such as the Dynamic Workload Console.
 
Merci Karine!
 
Mainframe is definitely more alive than ever. As recently stated by an IBM executive, it “essentially keeps the world running”. No wonder then that we keep talking about mainframe modernization, while adding new features and releasing new major versions of WSz, such as the 9.5.

While the latest version confirms the characteristics which made WSz so great - reliability, stability and high performances – it moves one step further by enhancing capabilities such as predictive analysis, what-if, auditability and security. 
Plus, making the most out of a single point of access and monitoring, WSz allows hybrid workload automation and bring the mainframe in everybody’s hands, thanks to graphical interfaces, which significantly reduce the adoption curve for new users.
 
So, what about you? Why do you think that #MainframeMatters? 
Tell us your experience with the workload scheduler on mainframe and share it with our community. 
Just drop me a line at [email protected]: can’t wait to hear about it!

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Emanuela Zaccone, Workload Automation Product Manager

Emanuela Zaccone is the HCL Workload Automation Product Manager.
​She is an experienced digital marketer with strong product management skills and an addiction to innovation. As Digital Entrepreneur she founded TOK.tv in 2012, reaching more than 40 million sports fans in the world before selling the company to the Minerva Networks Group in 2019. In the same year, she granted the inventor title by patenting social TV. She completed a PhD between the universities of Bologna (Italy) and Nottingham (UK).