Mike Fontanetta is well known in the mainframe community. He’s had a rich career spanning multiple decades, experiences, roles, technologies, and organizations. Mike is recognized as a Distinguished Technologist at Ensono, where he currently works in the Product and Technology Organization leading mainframe innovation engineering.
Q: Tell us about your career journey so far.
I started with the mainframe before PCs were invented. I first worked the third shift in computer operations. I moved through jobs often, averaging two years at any given place. I’d work hard, rise quickly through the ranks, get one or two promotions, and then move to another organization. Back then, much like today, there were lots of opportunities in the marketplace.
During this early period, I did DASD (direct access storage device) management and got introduced to SMF (System Management Facilities) data. I also started teaching myself to program in various languages, including COBOL and Assembler. In those days, hardware and systems broke frequently, so system programmers would come in at night and on the weekends to fix them. I spent time with them and learned how the equipment worked, both programmatically and physically.
I eventually became a system programmer, but I decided to pursue a role that didn’t require me to work nights and weekends, so I took a hands-on technology role in capacity planning. Later, I led global capacity management at a company that got bought by Ensono. The new owners wanted Ensono to grow. And indeed, they doubled their revenues in the first year. Since then, they've grown to about 800 million USD in revenue per year. I jumped in early and started helping them sell services, but also volunteered to help during other sales opportunities; I wanted to make sure that we left the best impression on clients from a technology point of view.
While running capacity management at Ensono, I was asked to help assist their Advisory and Consulting practice. My role was to advise clients on their mainframe needs, including sizing and upgrade strategies, so I became the person that talked about new and leading-edge technologies. This led me to get involved with growing communities, like the Ansible Guild.
Soon after, I started running Engineering and got my own engineering mainframe, which is what I’ve been working toward my entire life. I started working on Python, ZOAU, and automation with Ansible. I soon needed a team member, so I hired Steven Perva, and together we hold down the fort on the innovation side of Ensono. As an organization we focused more on the non-mainframe platform with Ansible than the mainframe platform. We've had a lot of success, and we’re starting to get traction on the mainframe side. We also present at all the conferences, are involved in all the guilds, and make sure to stay in tune with IBM and all the major vendors, regardless of their stature in the industry.
“We’ve proven that we can save thousands of hours by leveraging Python and ZOAU and driving automation through Ansible.”
Q: What is your perception of the mainframe and overall IT today?
I've been saying for years that the mainframe is another server in the hybrid IT ecosystem, so we should promote equality and lower the barriers between platforms. Instead of dedicated mainframe system programmers or Linux system admins, we should have system administrators who can administer both mainframe and Linux systems. Linux on Z and UNIX System Services within z/OS are often not core competencies of z/OS system programmers, so we should get mainframe sysprogs and Linux sysadmins working together.
I envision a time in the future where the silos between mainframe sysprogs and Linux sysadmins will be a historical footnote. As an example, while I’m assigned to the mainframe line of business in the Product and Technology organization, my work developing automation is no longer an activity that is focused exclusively on the mainframe.
Q: How does your approach compare to that of others in similar roles?
I'm an outlier. What you’ve heard about system programmers being set in their ways and resistant to change is rather prevalent. For example, we often hear that they don’t want to use Python when they can use REXX. My response is that we must be ready for the future. We must make sure that the next generation of system programmers is prepared. They're learning Ansible and Python in school, not REXX. We need to pivot to these new languages.
Q: You've been named an IBM Champion for 2023. What does that mean to you?It's unbelievably flattering. I’ve invested a lot of my time professionally to get to where I'm at today. This recognition, as well as having received the Challenge Coin Award—one of only two coins to be awarded outside of IBM—has been a humbling experience.
Q: What exciting things are you working on lately?
I’m actively working on several significant projects, and I’ll share a high-level on a couple that you might find interesting.
Envision is Ensono-developed IP that provides a single pane of glass view for all platforms we support for clients. We’ve recently introduced Envision Advisor to this stack, which provides actionable insights for clients on supported systems. My team has active projects to introduce the mainframe-focused insights to Envision Advisor.
My group, Innovation Engineering, is developing a mainframe auto discovery solution that keeps our CMDB (Configuration management database) accurate and up-to-date for the large number of assets that we manage. We’re leveraging my team’s IP in conjunction with a vendor’s automated discovery offering to cover the areas where the vendor’s product has gaps. I’m also providing recommendations to the vendor on how to improve their product as well.
Q: How did you get started with Ansible?
Ansible wasn't something I went looking for on my own. At the time, Python had just been introduced on the mainframe and ZOAU had just been released. I saw Python as an opportunity to bring back a level of programming for us as technologists, so we were really focused on those solutions. An IBM team introduced me to Ansible. After I saw how Ansible can help make things happen quickly, automate things effectively, simplify complicated problems, and make things work better overall, I started to view Ansible as our most viable solution.
Q: You discovered that Ensono was already using Ansible, but not in the mainframe space. How did you leverage your company’s prior experience with Ansible?
Discovering that Ensono used Ansible on other platforms quickly had me engaged with our internal team, and I’ve remained connected and tracked with their projects ever since. Our team is doing interesting things with Ansible and it has continued to be of high interest to me.
Ansible and Python being platform-agnostic made connecting with other Ansible users and teams easier. By sharing experiences of how Ansible could be leveraged, we found commonalities between the outcomes we’re each driving forward. We’re currently leveraging my innovation mainframe as the Ensono Ansible mainframe lab environment, which provides a common environment for us to gain experiences.
“The capability to scale and run things in parallel is something that we never would have achieved without something like Ansible.”
Q: Ansible can unite the distributed, networking, and mainframe areas of the business. Did that interest you?
Having the capability to initiate and update common processes across our supported environment was high on the list of desired outcomes. While my focus was the mainframe platform, other teams have a similar interest in the distributed and networking environments. One of the unexpected outcomes was our alignment and partnering with the other platform teams.
Like most organizations over time, we’ve deployed scripted processes to LPARs to complete common activities. These processes are a key component to our support capability, and in many cases are similar across clients. What Ansible provides is the ability to maintain and deploy updates at a greater velocity. We’ve also found that more complexity can be developed using Python and ZOAU scripting. This really takes us to the next level of capabilities.
Using Ansible, we developed complex scripts that give us an automated way to engage with multiple LPARs and analyze dozens of subsystems at the same time. The capability to scale and run things in parallel is something that we never would have achieved without an Ansible solution.