IBM program targets mainframe skills shortage

While IBM has continued to evolve the mainframe to stay relevant in an AI and cloud computing world, IT organizations have continued to struggle with a shrinking pool of skilled workers who know how to keep Big Iron platforms humming.

Over the years, IBM and its business partners have addressed the mainframe workforce shortage with education and training programs targeted at areas such as COBOL programming. IBM’s new efforts are an extension of those packages.

One new effort is the Mainframe Skills Council, which is aimed at developing a skilled, diverse, sustainable workforce for the mainframe platform, according to IBM. The Council features IBM clients and partners, academia, user groups, non-profits, and open communities working together to offer and implement mainframe skills development packages. Initial Council members include Academic Mainframe Consortium, Albany State University, Broadcom, DNB Bank, HOGENT, M&T Bank, Northern Illinois University, SHARE, and 21CS.

IBM unveiled the Mainframe Skills Council at the SHARE Conference in Orlando. In an official announcement, IBM said that the demand for mainframe skills remains strong, and despite some progress in filling mainframe-related roles in IT departments, a generational skills gap has grown.

The Council will offer working groups focused on career awareness, competency frameworks, learning paths, and professional development, with goals that include:

• Sharing ideas and practices to enhance professional development.
• Sharing education, training tools, and related resources to optimize overall mainframe career experience for professionals and leaders.
• Increasing mainframe employer adoption of proven skill initiatives and practices.

A second new effort is the IBM Z Mainframe Skills Depot. Potential professionals can choose from specialized mainframe-training tracks tailored to roles such as mainframe system administrator, mainframe application developer, and modernization architect. More than a thousand of hours of self-paced, no-charge, hands-on learning is available, and participants can earn industry-recognized digital badges, IBM stated.

Existing mainframe skills initiatives from IBM include the IBM Z Global Skills Accelerator and Apprenticeship program, which has enabled 83 global employers to skill up more than 440 mainframe system administrators and application developers across 13 countries. In addition, the IBM Z Student Ambassador program provides leadership opportunities for students and supports mainframe student clubs on campuses at more than 95 universities worldwide, according to IBM.

Such programs have been successful in bringing new mainframers into the IT workforce, according to a forthcoming study, “2024 Global Mainframe Skills Report,” conducted by the Futurum Group and commissioned by IBM, Broadcom, and 21CS.

The study found that highly experienced mainframe experts are still working in the field, and that there has been an “influx” in early career talent, but that mid-career professionals are a bit thinner on the ground.

That gap is helping to drive overall demand for mainframe-skilled workers, according to RedMonk senior analyst Kate Holterhoff. “There is a significant and growing demand for skills training, apprenticeships, and networking opportunities in the tech space,” she said, in IBM’s statement.

Futurum has found that companies are taking advantage of community resources to find, train and develop mainframe talent. In its research, 61% of mainframe employers surveyed ranked non-traditional skills resources – such as working with industry vendors on bootcamp, training, or apprenticeship programs – as their most successful mainframe hiring and recruitment strategy.

“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,” according to Futurum. 

Futurum Group vice president and practice leader Steven Dickens said that particular skills under the mainframe umbrella – most notably familiarity with COBOL – are especially in demand.

“[S]kills like system programming is crucial especially from an Ops and reliability perspective,” he said, when reached via email. “We also see performance tuning and optimization as a crucial space, and vendors are investing to make this easier and more intuitive for operations teams.”

Despite its unquestioned status as the 800-pound gorilla of the mainframe world, Dickens said that a vendor-agnostic group like the Mainframe Skills Council will allow IBM to accomplish more than it could hope to on its own. “Having a vendor-neutral council will enable innovation and investment in skills to grow,” he said.

Some other findings from the Futurum study include:

• 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 team.
• 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.
• 66% of organizations surveyed use third-party learning programs or platforms to support mainframe learning and talent development.