Enterprise Systems Media (ESM) is a vertical IT publishing company that was founded in 1981 by Bob Thomas in Dallas, Texas. The first magazine, Unisphere, was targeted to users of Sperry Univac computer systems. Because of the preeminence of IBM at the time, in 1986 we started the first magazine targeted solely to users of IBM mainframe computer systems. The title, 4300 Quarterly, was soon changed to Mainframe Journal. It was a how-to magazine that caught on very quickly with mainframers around the world.

When IBM abandoned the term “mainframe” in September 1990 with the introduction of the System/390—so did ESM. Mainframe Journal became Enterprise Systems Journal to coincide with IBM’s new ESA/390 architecture, MVS/ESA, VM/ESA, VSE/ESA operating systems and ESCON. In all cases, the ES stood for Enterprise Systems. (Note: IBM soon thereafter recanted when they realized that the word “mainframe” was far too entrenched into computer lexicon. After Enterprise Systems Journal, the magazine was once again renamed, this time to z/Journal in 2003.

Although pronounced dead many times over the years, the IBM mainframe is far from it. Today most of the world’s largest enterprises still rely on the mainframe for their mission-critical applications.

So now, more than 34 years later, we here at Enterprise Systems Media are still publishing magazines for mainframe users worldwide. The titles now are, Enterprise Executive and Enterprise Tech Journal.