Students from Kenya and South Africa have become the first four Africans to reach the global finals of IBM’s Master the Mainframe competition, which this year saw some of the highest levels of participation globally.
The IBM Master the Mainframe Contest, part of the company’s System z Academic Initiative, allows students around the world take charge of world-class zEnterprise computing platforms and showcase their talents, while learning sought-after enterprise computing skills.
For the first time, it was open to students from Kenyan universities, attracting over 250 entries.
“We are impressed by the unprecedented amount of interest in this competition from students in both Kenya and South Africa, which speaks to the growing innovative culture in the continent. These students will now have the opportunity to test their skills on the global stage and compete with their peers as well as identify potential employment opportunities on a global stage,” says Andy Hoiles, IBM Server Solutions sales division.
Two Kenyans, Raphael Kiminya Laibuni from Strathmore University, and Margaret Adhiambo Ondeng from Kenyatta University, emerged overall winners of the Kenyan competition and will join 43 other top students in the global finals of the competition.
In South Africa, Johannes Siecker from FNB Hogan Academy and Rijnard van Tonder from Stellenboch University will represent the country at the global World Cup in New York City on 7 April 2014.
Out of over 20 000 IBM Master the Mainframe student contestants, just 43 regional contest winners that have demonstrated superior programming skills on the mainframe have been selected to compete on the world stage.
Beginning 10 March, the elite group of students started to work remotely, receiving training from qualified zEnterprise instructors. Competitors will learn how to sharpen their enterprise computing skills, learn about advanced development tools, and find out how the platform supports cloud, big data & analytics, mobile and security initiatives.
Using that knowledge, the competitors will be tasked to build a business application on the mainframe. Competitors will then travel to New York City to showcase their application to a panel of judges from across the IT industry in New York City on 7 April.
As a three-part contest which is taking place in a number of countries, Master the Mainframe serves as an introduction to programming and application development and students require no initial mainframe experience to participate.
Through the contest, students learn everything from how to log onto mainframe environments to developing code and problem solving.
Students who enter the competition also have the opportunity to identify job opportunities supporting mainframe environments. To help in this process, IBM has created Systemzjobs.com. The job board is a resource to link IBM System z clients and partners with students and professionals seeking System z job opportunities and regularly features more than 1 000 mainframe-related jobs.