13 Apr 2010
Organisations dependent on mainframes should plan now how they will maintain the necessary skills to keep their operations running over the next 10 years, warns industry advisory firm Gartner.
Mainframe skills will be in short supply soon as current staff and contractors with deep application and business knowledge retire, says Gartner’s report entitled Ensuring You Have Mainframe Skills Through 2020.
Further reading
While IBM is investing heavily in its mainframe training programme, the total number of graduates with z/OS mastery is still small and competition for them will be fierce, says Gartner vice president and report author Mike Chuba. IBM’s competitors, such as HP and Microsoft, software vendors such as CA, consultancies, systems integrators, outsourcers and end user organisations will all be fishing in the same small pool.
Organisations that use older mainframes or machines from other vendors possibly face an even bigger skills shortfall, warns Chuba.
Consequently, mainframe-dependent organisations need to put in place a comprehensive plan to train existing staff, transfer knowledge from specialists approaching retirement, recruit new graduates from mainframe courses and purchase products that automate mainframe operations.
“Many organisations have specialists with years of deep knowledge – a formal plan to capture and pass on that knowledge via cross-training or mentoring of existing personnel is critical,” says the report.
Chuba recommends that IT leaders work closely with HR to map when the organisation will be most vulnerable to a shortfall in mainframe skills and plan how to mitigate the potential crisis with cross-training of existing staff and internships for graduates of college training programmes.
“We’ve found HR can often be detached and not fully understand the risks involved,” Chuba told Computing.
How severe the mainframe skills shortfall will be depends on how early the organisation addresses the problem, said Chuba. “We’ve seen some financial services organisations that have recognised this issue early and engaged with IBM to funnel in graduates and young hires. But the hiring freeze over the past 15 to 18 months has put others in a difficult position.”
Interesting read, and interesting comments.. I do NOT agree with John however. I am asked daily how my company can help our customers to find/train young people to help overcome a staffing issue that is recognized by most companies. It IS a problem.
The Mainframe is definitely recognized as a vital platform (again) by a lot of our customers and for good reasons.
But I also understand the frustration of many laid-off mainframers. When I talk of this to customers, even they agree, but will tell me: "We KNOW there are mainframers, but we want to take care of the issue for the next 15 years, and not for the next five. Hiring an older person means we will not be able to hire a young trainee, and we will just postpone the problem. We need to SOLVE it!".
Mainframers are confronted with the problem that, thanks to the same analysts who now tell us there is a problem, our management was told there was no future in the Mainframe. So very few people were hired and the average age of the MF-Team is high... Too high. We all know that ANY team needs to have the right mix of age, experience and enthusiasm. We NEED young people and THESE are the people Mainframe companies don't seem to find.
Posted by: Marcel den Hartog 28 Apr 2010
Cloud computing and virtualisation have arrived and will be the future for 90% of industry IT. However, key applications across all industry sectors continue to run on mainframe applications. Indeed, there are many legacy systems performing business-critical tasks for large blue-chip organisations across the UK.
For example, many telecoms organisations in the UK run critical billing systems using technology up to 10 years old. These systems are highly fault tolerant and provide more than adequate power and functionality, but pressure is put on these organisations to replace them purely because of the support skills shortage.
There is also a core element of organisations for which moving to insecure, un-tested hardware/software platforms is simply not viable or worth the operational risk.
For example, to refresh the mainframe systems in a nuclear power station
would create huge risk and cost in development and testing for this safety-conscious industry.
As knowledge and experience of maintaining such systems is dwindling, many organisations are turning to skilled third party support providers to bridge the skills gap. This provides access to a breadth of experience in handling complex problems on systems of varied ages, resulting in well-maintained equipment and peace of mind.
Top tier third party providers have picked up a number of highly qualified staff from the vendors and put them to good use in problem solving and training provision to our engineers and customers.
If you want to know how to help plug the skills gap then look to the industry that has been sweeping up after the vendors for the last 30 years - third party support.
Paul Timms
Operations Director
Maindec
www.maindec.com
Posted by: Paul Timms 26 Apr 2010
I think John is spot-on actually.
Don't know what web site you were on but searching this web site for mainframe jobs came up with seven results, whereas searching for Java came up with 155. The same search on Monster revealed 28 for mainframe and 696 for Java.
Your comment seems a lot whiffier than John's. ;)
Posted by: Daniel D 21 Apr 2010
I have had over a year to study it and 30 years in it. Google made $7bn in the first three months of 2010. $2.5bn of that was profit. Think they run a mainframe? No. Whatever the cloud is it is here. Reread the above numbers if you have any questions.
Posted by: Richard Smith 20 Apr 2010
For the thousends of IBM mainframe staff on the dole thanks to downsizing and offshoring, this article will come as a joke.
We see little evidence of a return to the mainframe. For the reality paints a very different picture of companies spending thousands on converting mainframe applications to client server applications and if the bills too much. Then they have no quarms in offshoring it to Chennai or Mumbai to look after their legacy systems.
So these valued mainframers,
far from being lost to normal retirement are in reality lost to redundancy and being forced into early retirement.
Posted by: John Williams 14 Apr 2010
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