IBM introduced the Mainframe Skills Council during its recent SHARE conference, to provide a forum where global organisations will foster a skilled, diverse, sustainable workforce for the mainframe platform.
In addition to IBM, the council includes organisations spanning IBM clients and partners, academia, user groups, non-profits, and open communities that will collaborate to implement mainframe skills development solutions.
Initial members include Academic Mainframe Consortium, Albany State University, Broadcom, DNB Bank, HOGENT, M&T Bank, Northern Illinois University, Rocket Software, SHARE, and 21CS.
“As the SHARE Premier Education and Technology Platform Provider in 2024, IBM is well-positioned to address today’s technology skills challenges, something that every organization is grappling with as new innovation is unveiled,” says Meredith Stowell, vice-president: IBM Z Ecosystem.
“The mainframe community has been working to close the mainframe generational skills gap and we’ve seen substantial progress. The Mainframe Skills Council represents an exciting opportunity to build on these advancements and ignite the community to share experiences and create mainframe talent solutions that can grow with the platform.”
As today’s businesses adapt to economic shifts in the market and new advances in technology, skills are a key part of success for every organisation.
According to a 2022 IBM Transformation Index: State of Cloud survey, 56% of companies surveyed have embraced a hybrid cloud operating model. IBM Z, as a key part of many clients’ hybrid cloud environments, provides a resilient, and agile IT platform to help drive clients’ digital transformations.
Mainframe skills will be particularly critical for the success of many businesses as they implement AI, modernize their applications, and focus on digital transformation.
New research from The Futurum Group, 2024 Global Mainframe Skills Report: Insights from Industry and Educational Experts, commissioned by IBM, Broadcom, and 21CS shows continued demand in mainframe talent as well as progress in growing the mainframe workforce as the mainframe community works together to build skills3.
The survey highlighted a generational gap in mainframe skilling with an influx of early career talent, while calling attention to the existing demand for experienced mainframe professionals with 79% of respondents recruiting for mid-career mainframe positions and 51% recruiting for entry-level positions.
In fact, in 2023, 32% of mainframe employers responding to the global survey hired 11-20 mainframe-related roles and 35% hired more than 20 mainframe roles. In addition, 91% of employer respondents said they are planning to hire talent for new mainframe positions in the next 1-2 years, investing in and growing their mainframe IT teams.
The survey results also underscored increased opportunities for mainframe job-seekers to learn and grow their skills regardless of where they are in their careers with 75% of responding university leaders indicating that their institution offers course curricula for students to learn mainframe skills and 83% of student respondents indicating they are learning mainframe skills through their university.
Companies are also taking advantage of the community resources available in the market to find, train and develop mainframe talent. Sixty percent of mainframe employers surveyed report that they rely on non-traditional skills resources as a mainframe hiring or recruitment strategy, such as working with industry vendors on bootcamp, training, or apprenticeship programs.
And mainframe employers who invest resources in the platform indicated they have less trouble finding skills, with 71% of companies, who invest at least $10-million in their mainframe environment, surveyed saying they sufficiently or fully met their hiring goals for mainframe system administrator roles in 2023.
To help encourage growth in the mainframe industry and improve access to skills, IBM and other industry vendors are working with universities, mainframe employers, online learning platforms, training providers, and workforce as well as community organisations to offer additional learning opportunities to help clients support their mainframe platform with a vibrant technical community.
The Mainframe Skills Council brings together organisations to share experiences and collaboratively implement solutions to build a strong global workforce for the mainframe platform. The council will include working groups focused on career awareness, competency frameworks, learning paths, as well as professional development.