Today is International Women’s Day all over the world to celebrate the economic, political and social achievements of women. In honor of International Women’s Day IDG (International Data Groups) published interviews with fourteen women working with IT on interesting positions in their newspaper Computer Sweden and this morning they published the same interviews on their web page. I’m one of the interviewed women in this article and I find this a great way to encourage young women thinking about an IT education to take the step and actually do it.

My main question about women in IT industry is: Where did they all go?! In the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s when mainframe computers where the only computers that existed almost ONLY women worked with computers. This was back in the time where a mainframe computer covered a whole room and the personnel worked in white robes. All of these skilled women must be out there somewhere in the IT industry, but where are they? Well, of course this was a while back and some of them is old enough to get their pension today, but at least some of them must be working for the IT industry still in these days. Why do we never see any interviews with these ladies that were a part of building the IT infrastructure we have today?

To all women in IT industry i want to say one thing: Never forget that in the old days we were a majority in the IT industry and that we today are a row model for young women to encourage them to seek the knowledge and enjoyments of working with IT.

Interviews with all women: “Gå din egen väg i it-branchen” (swedish)
Only my interview: “Självlärd Linuxevangelist” (swedish)

Old interview with me referred to in the new interview: “Vi kan lära oss av Microsoft” (swedish)

In the end of last year Sun was in the end of a one and a half year long project together with IBM. The challenge was to get OpenSolaris certified for IBM System z hardware. This solution will be interesting for customers that seek the enterprise environment from Solaris and the stability from IBM’s mainframe computers.

There are a lot of old Sun machines out there in the server parks that need to be switched out in the near future. According to Boyle CTO at the consulting company Sine Nomine Associate in Ashburn many companies are looking into IBM’s mainframe computers, but they don’t want to retrain all of their IT personnel to administrate an all new environment. Boyle also says he knows about 30-40 companies that are awaiting this solution to be finished and certified.

For IBM this is a great opportunity to save and rebuild the market for mainframe computers. Sun has been going strong on marketing Solaris on other platforms than their own lately. Sun’s last business settlement in favor of Solaris on other platforms was with Dell that now provides Dell PowerEdge servers with Solaris.

Source: http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.133639 (swedish)