Managing the mainframe skills gap

The age of big iron is far from over, but as baby boomers retire the skills gap is becoming a problem

Computing's recent research found that companies ‘are using cloud as an add-on rather than a replacement, mixing on-site and public cloud technology.'

While the cloud is steadily gaining ground as the infrastructure of choice it is far from being the answer to every problem, with there being ‘many factors that still mitigate against its deployment, from a lack of maturity in some areas, to cultural difficulties and skills requirements, to pricing issues and sunk costs, to performance, latency and compliance'. With only 19 per cent of businesses identifying themselves as "cloud first", there is widespread recognition that cloud is not the answer to everything.

Mainframe makes the world go round

Mainframe was condemned to history decades ago by IT journalist Stewart Alsop who predicted that the last mainframe would be unplugged on 15 March 1996. And yet, today, mainframe runs business critical services in over 90 per cent of the global Fortune 500 companies, and in a recent report from IBM, it was reported that the mainframe supports over $23bn in ATM transactions per year. With mobile transactions increasing, mainframe captures, analyses and crunches data that impacts businesses and their consumers' lives positively every day.

Why? Mainframe computing is built to handle these consumer-driven transaction loads reliably and securely. And that's the point. It's not about the infrastructure, it is about the application and ensuring it is hosted in a secure environment with high availability that best supports it, whether that's public cloud, private cloud or mainframe and everything in between.

While cloud adoption is rising, you could be forgiven for thinking that mainframe was becoming redundant. Quite the opposite: many enterprises are finding mainframes useful in the switch to cloud computing—turning them into giant data servers that provide cloud applications with the information they need.

Mainframe celebrated its 52nd birthday this year and with Big Data, analytics, and ever-increasing transaction volumes across the globe, it is not going away. If you need proof, just look to IBM's recent announcement that it will bring machine learning to traditional mainframe customers.

The core systems of thousands of banks, insurers, manufacturers - and hundreds of thousands of lines of COBOL code - are supporting the world economy, meaning that mainframe is as relevant today as it was in 1996 and long before. Yet now we face an unprecedented skills crisis that will impact the operations of enterprises as well as mainframe service providers across the globe if not addressed.

The mainframe talent drain

The Baby Boomer generation makes up a vast majority of the current mainframe demographic and with their retirements looming, IT departments face a serious challenge. This is far from just an IT problem. If mission critical applications cannot be supported, the entire business is exposed and at risk. What do you do when your mainframe talent leaves the building, taking everything they know about your systems?

The IT skills gap has been much talked about in recent years, usually in relation to new technologies. However, as people have frantically worried about being able to support the cloud and other new kids on the tech block, old technologies have been side-swiped and ignored. Despite mainframe's continued significance to the operations of business across the globe, university courses have dropped teaching coding languages like COBOL and other critical mainframe skills. In addition, organisations reducing investment in their mainframe environemnts increased mainframe apathy, which has dimished these operations and increased the risk to the businesses.

Businesses need to take action now to ensure their continued operation. Those that can't bridge the talent gap risk losing their ability to keep critical mainframe operations up and running. This begs the question, how?

Enterprises are left with limited options: recruiting, training, and attempting to retain skills that are a scarce and costly resource; or taking the risky, time-consuming and expensive option to transition from mainframe before the business is ready. Both present a myriad of issues for today's enterprise.

Managing the mainframe skills gap

The age of big iron is far from over, but as baby boomers retire the skills gap is becoming a problem

Training

If enterprise chooses this route, who will train, and retain, the younger mainframe workforce? How will the younger generation learn about today's mainframes, while also preparing for what is to come?

Businesses choosing this option need to develop a mainframe on-boarding programme to train interns and seasoned hires, steering the trainees through the programme in a way that allows junior-level interns to quickly gain hands-on mainframe experience, while seasoned hires can skip topics they already know and focus on the organisation's standard practices. These businesses will also need to invest and commit to developing a succession programme with a lab or testing environment, a solid recruiting plan for hiring next-gen mainframers and provide hands-on training for efficiency and productivity. Mainframe's future cannot be secured without taking well-planned actions to attract, train and retain the next generation of its stewards today.

Change the technology

Changing technology is risky, time-consuming and expensive. Many operating with mainframe want to see a return on their costly investment and therefore want to keep the technology going until end of life.

Additionally, applications running on mainframe may not be suitable for the cloud and therefore require development to make them cloud-ready - this is expensive and takes time.

As Computing's research points out, ‘compliance and control are also strong motivators behind the retention of the traditional data centre'. Compliance is a critical issue for IT, especially as we move towards May 2018 when GDPR kicks in. Arguably, GDPR makes mainframe even more relevant today, helping big organisations meet the requirements.

The third way - how to plug the gap

Remote Infrastructure Management for mainframe adds a third option. It provides a secure managed service layer to the existing mainframe environment, allowing third party experts to manage the mainframe remotely, reducing migration work efforts and risks. This also frees up employees to focus on their core business, delivering a better service to their own customers and focusing on other crucial IT digital dransfornmation initiatives.

The widening mainframe skills gap is fast becoming a fact of life for IT leaders across all sectors that rely on it for critical day-today business operations. It is clear that the end certainly isn't here yet for ‘big iron', in spite of all the column inches that have been dedicated to the contrary. The most astute IT leaders will be planning for tomorrow and a future away from mainframe, whilst ensuring the skills are in place to operate today in the full knowledge that that future is some distance away. With the right strategy in place, companies can continue to extract value from the mainframe for years to come, but those who are poorly prepared risk being unable to operate the technology which forms the bedrock of some of the world's most vital IT systems.

Ken Harper is director, mainframe product leader at Ensono