Putting the z in College Degrees

Published: March 13, 2007

by Dan Burger

The importance of a pipeline that continually delivers a well-trained, resourceful, and talented workforce is absolutely necessary to propel IBM's mainframe customers into the future. That fact cannot be understated. Interruptions in the flow should be expected over the course of many years. They can be tolerated, when brief. In the long run, however, when the supply diminishes, a concern about the sources for new talent becomes a crisis. Right now, there is a measured concern about new workers filling mainframe jobs.

Sometimes the difference between a concern and a crisis is a fine line. Even in the desert, there's no shortage of water when you are the one with a well on your property. However, if you run a company that has lost mainframe skills through retirement (the most frequently cited drain on mainframe-savvy personnel) or some other reason, you know how easy it is for the well to go dry. One company's concern may be another company's crisis, but overall there is nothing about the current situation that qualifies as a crisis in March 2007.

For obvious reasons, organizations with investments in mainframe systems want assurances that the talent pool of professionals is not evaporating. Those with the most pressing concerns about how well the mainframe environment will be able to support their businesses in the future are watchful of IBM's Academic Initiative program, particularly the efforts pertaining to training and educational aspects concerning System z.

Mike Bliss, director of System z technical marketing and strategy at IBM, refers to the goal of 20,000 additional mainframe-educated students into the marketplace by 2010 as a long-term commitment. Bliss chooses his words wisely. There's a Rock of Gibraltar feeling imparted whenever long-term commitments are spoken of.

But the Academic Initiative program has been under way for two and a half years since it replaced the zSeries Scholars Program. People are looking for a progress report and some evidence that the commitment is paying some dividends.

A year ago, Bliss told us the Academic Initiative efforts relating to mainframes were engaged at more than 200 schools. It's hard to gauge progress with numbers that are vaguely rounded off to the nearest one hundred, but Bliss now references the total number of schools that offer some sort of mainframe/enterprise computing courses as almost 300.

Rather than establishing milestones based on the number of schools participating in the program, Bliss emphasizes that more time is being spent with the schools that are true believers in the importance of adding large scale computing, large system thinking, and mainframe types of courses into their curriculum.

"We've been working on going really deep in those schools," Bliss says. "We are connecting schools with businesses and ensuring that professors have the right educational training and tools. That includes courseware and curriculum materials that need to be created and provided to them, access to systems, and partnerships with customers.

The connection to businesses that have investments in large scale computing is critical to the progress in curriculum changes and pointing out the need for students to develop the skills that will fill the demand for personnel who understand large systems.

Bliss also points to a large number of students that are gaining awareness of enterprise computing.

"We have the ability to measure how many students are taking the mainframe courses," Bliss says. "We have a pretty accurate read that in the period of time that the Academic Initiative has been in place, about 23,000 students have been taking our System z courses. That doesn't mean 23,000 are out in the marketplace. Some are, and some are still in school."

That's an impressive figure, extrapolated from student reports collected from schools involved in the Academic Initiative program, but hardly one which would cause any mission accomplished declarations. (Those are always dangerous.)

"A lot of schools will take the course materials from us and put them in place as they are," Bliss says. "Some will use them as their starting point and evolve the course as they see fit. And some will take pieces of what we provide and use them as pieces or modules in their curriculum."

In other words, it's easy to say these students are getting a greater indoctrination into enterprise computing than before, but it remains difficult to establish how useful this is in providing the skills that will put these students into mainframe jobs. From Bliss' perspective, there are "a good number of schools that we work with are very active and doing things very specific to enterprise computing environment. We have been very successful in helping community colleges and smaller schools do really quick turnarounds, in terms of curriculum. We are also having success with larger schools, but this typically takes more time."

Students on their way to a computer science degree at "a decent number of schools" are likely to have the choice of enrolling in "a class or two or three or four that includes the notion of enterprise computing," says Bliss. "There are a good number that have implementing this in a way with a concentration on large scale computing. A lot of schools are putting together certification programs that involve specialization around the mainframe. So the student may come out of school with a major in computer science, but with a specialization that involved a group of courses concentrated on the mainframe."

A partial list of "the most active" schools--grouped geographically as the U.S. and Canada; Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; Asia Pacific; and Latin America can be viewed here. The list is also divided based on schools with majors, specialization tracks and certificate programs in enterprise computing; schools offering at least one class in enterprise computing; and schools actively developing enterprise computing programs.

Bliss says this is a subset of the almost 300 schools he referenced when providing an Academic Initiative progress report on participating schools. (According to information provided on this Web page, some of the "more than 250 schools" that are identified as being part of the Academic Initiative program are "investigating" the idea of teaching mainframe technologies as opposed to being "actively involved.")

Many college professors and instructors may be surprised to find an unexpected level of new technology and capabilities when they examine the modern mainframe. The fact that Java and Linux can run in a multi-tiered architecture on one box and the Perl scripting language is supported on mainframes are not widely known outside of the schools with active mainframe educational opportunities and the mainframe professional community.

Outside of the academic institutions that offer degrees in computer science, one of the important sources of education and training is the enterprise-level, IT-oriented user group known as viewed propel SHARE. It has been in existence longer than any other IT peer group and most of its members are intimately familiar with the IBM mainframe.

SHARE has become an important partner alongside IBM in its academic efforts. The two organizations have a joint project known as zNextGen that focuses on people who are new to the industry. Essentially, it steers the uninitiated to the networking and training opportunities provided by SHARE. You might say "it picks up where the college education ends by hooking up those who are new to the industry with those who can share knowledge, tips and tricks--things you wouldn't learn in college." You might say that if you are Jim Michaels, the secretary of SHARE and a person dedicated to education and training, and he did indeed say that.

"I think the programs we have will make a significant difference by 2010," Michaels says. "Not just because SHARE continues doing what it has been doing with zNextGen and IBM continues to do what it has been doing with the Academic Initiative. We continue to explore the questions of what more we can we do. We are listening and acting on the continuing dialogue and IBM is doing something to help this people/job issue."

One of the important aspects of zNextGen is the increasing involvement of college educators in SHARE. Not only are they attending and broadening their knowledge, they are also involved in curriculum selection and teaching classes at the SHARE conferences.

"SHARE and IBM are working on the supply side, but at the same time IBM and the vendor community are making great progress on the demand side. They are making it less expensive in terms of the number of people you need to manage the platform. Those two things together, when you look at it from the year 2010, will make it a viable platform and there will be enough people to manage it."

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