A posting on LinkedIn of a Network World piece described the Union Pacific Railroad’s long, painful, and still incomplete transition from mainframe-based computing to something new and sexy and maybe better and cheaper. It generated considerable discussion around whether the mainframe was a dinosaur verging on extinction.

Maybe your IT people say the same thing about the organization’s mainframe, usually in the context of wanting to get some slick new IT platform, something using Linux or blades and capable of SOA and Web 2.0 and mobile instead. Their basic argument is this: For what we spend on the mainframe, we could buy a ton of this other hot stuff and have money to spare.

A recent survey by CA (formerly Computer Associates) highlights the ongoing appeal of the mainframe. For example, 76 percent of respondents complained that managing a large number of distributed servers has become a cost issue. That’s a red flag.

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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about risk committees within organizations. However, when I Googled the term, the top two search results got me thinking about risk committees at the board level.

In fact, two of the links that cropped up in my search provided contrasting messages.

A Corporate Board Member article, “Thumbs-Down on a Separate Risk Committee,” indicates that only a small portion of Fortune 1000 company boards operate separate risk committees (instead, the majority of these boards place responsibility for risk oversight with their audit committees).

The other link delivered me directly to the charter of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation’s board-level risk committee. more

What keeps executive comp committee members awake at night?

The folks at Equilar helpfully categorized the subjects of the custom research requests the executive compensation data and benchmarking firm received in a recent 30-day period.

Here’s how the requests break down by topic:

1) (tie) Director Compensation and Benchmarking Pay (17.6 percent of all requests each);

2) Equity Practices (14.6 percent);

3) (tie) Ownership Practices and Retention Bonuses (8.8 percent each); and

4) (tie) Board Consultant Data, Governance Policies, Historical Executive Pay Data, and Option Exchange Trends (5.9 percent each); and

5) (tie) Benefits and Perquisites, Transition Agreements, and Treatment of Equity at Retirement (2.9 percent each). ###