The Arcati Mainframe Yearbook

In today’s guest podcast Trevor Eddolls shares about an exciting projects he’s been working on since 2005, the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook. A new edition is coming out in 2010.

The podcast lasts for 4:18 and you may listen to the podcast here: http://blogs.datadirect.com/media/TrevorEddolls_ArcatiMainframeYearbook.mp3

Trevor Eddolls:

OK, yeah, well, the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook is always publicized as being the de facto reference for IT professionals working with z/OS since 2005 when we first brought it up, and what it is -- it’s made up of a number of sort of chapters and a number of sections, so the most important part, the one that most people look for as soon as it comes out, is our annual user survey, and the 2010 edition is now available online for people to fill in, and from that we can then sort of find trends, see what’s going on with sites, whether they are actually investing and what’s happening, and that’s why people like it, because they can then compare their site with about 100 other sites out there and see what’s going on. So the annual survey is always very important, and we get that picked up and publicized in various other places, including z/Journal.

And then the second part that’s very important is we have an up to date directory of vendors and consultants, and again, this is something that will be going online fairly soon, so anyone who does have a company that’s anything to do with mainframes, there will be a page where, for you to either update your current listing, or if you’re not on there to actually get listed, and the reason this is so useful through the year is that any organization who’s looking either to software or whether they just need a consultant to come in and help them, they just look through the yearbook and there’ll be at least one person there who can help them.

We have a media guide, which originally was full of publications but now there’s very few printed publications, so it tends to focus on things like blogs and other web-based publications, and then there’s a strategy section, and each year we get various organizations and individuals to write papers on the latest kind of topics that are important to people, and you can read those when you get your copy of the Yearbook. And finally, there’s a glossary of terminology, so if all the acronyms in the strategy section, then you can just look them up in the glossary and say, “Oh yes, of course, that’s what that means.” And what we do each year we produce the yearbook, it’s usually produced as a PDF, and then that’s left on the website, on the Arcati Website, and people can download that. It’s completely free to use. We are thinking this year we might turn it into that sort of book format where you can just click on pages and it looks like they’re turning over, but I’m not sure. And each year the actual yearbook is downloaded by about 15,000 people all over the world. And if you are interested in doing any of the surveys or having an entry then the place to go to is www.arcati.com, and there’ll be a link on the front page there to the different surveys, so either the user survey or the vendor entry.

And finally, if I’m allowed, let me just say that we are looking for vendors who’d like to sponsor it. Each year a number of vendors kindly sponsor it. They get an advert in the yearbook and some other bits and pieces, and that’s what actually pays for it, but it’s always very well received and there’s always lots and lots of activity on the website when the new version comes up. So look out for the new edition to be on the Arcati Website sometime in early January 2010.