Future of Mainframe Career Good or Bad? Mainframe skill shortage is getting grim every passing year.

. As per an estimate, in next five to ten years, Mainframe world would need 20,000 specialists worldwide on mainframe environments. To bridge the gap, IBM has partnered with more than 200 schools and universities participating in this operation, called zNextGen. IBM has already established agreements with the ESIAL, Epita and Infosup, and negotiating with other schools, offering final year students, a curriculum which includes 80 hours of fundamentals - operating system z / OS batch, SNA network history. The Big Blue is not alone in suffering from this state of shortage. CIOs across the globe keep their skilled resources on mainframes critical business applications, but outsource the rest of the operations tasks Mainframe Operations Support, Mainframe System Support, Mainframe Timeshare and Mainframe Graveyard Shift Support to expert Mainframe outsourcing vendor. This not only allows them to lower their Total Cost of ownership (TCO) in this disturbed global economy but also permits freeing existing staff for more business-critical work. Due to lack of skilled resources, many companies recruit computer beginners, unemployed, or young graduates and they convert them by imparting specific trainings. Mainframe Staffing Facts 1. COBOL is increased to 500 billion lines, with yearly 5% increase rate. So, in coming years it is going to be more complicated to find a skilled COBOL expert. 2. Particularly in BFSI sector, organizations are hiring young generations and training them. 3. Many companies in mainframe world, including IBM, rely on mainframe IT Training and remote IT staffing companies. 4. Large organizations continue to make extensive use of mainframes. IBM regularly sets records for its mainframe sales (not in terms of machines but in terms of the capacity). Mainframes are used with Java, Perl, C, C++, Apache, HTML, and many other web tools. IBM has started both educational and industry initiatives to convince more people to study and use mainframe technologies. Committing millions of dollars to these mainframe initiatives is indicative of IBM's estimation of the "skill shortage" in the mainframe world. 5. In the next ten years, large companies launch major projects of migration. This implies for them to have a double competence mainframes and new technologies. But unlike the regulatory sites, which had terrified the job market, there is no urgent deadline. The situation is grim but with no match to mainframe technology, enterprises will have no choice but adapt to the situation and develop skills to fill the gap. With the steps taken, Mainframes future looks bright and the Legacy is going to rule the technology world for decades to come.