SOURCE: IBM
February 26, 2008 10:15 ET
IBM Reaches Milestone in Number of Colleges and Universities Participating in Mainframe Skills Program
IBM's Academic Initiative for System z Program Surpasses 400 Schools Globally; Nearly 50,000 Students Trained on Mainframe; Program Grows as Demand for Mainframe Skills Rises Dramatically
MUMBAI, INDIA and MUNICH, GERMANY and NEW YORK and TOKYO--(Marketwire - February 26, 2008) - At
an event in New York City today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced that it has
surpassed 400 colleges and universities globally that are now actively
teaching and developing mainframe courses and accredited certificates
through its global Academic Initiative for System z program. This has
jumped from just 24 colleges and universities in 2004 with now nearly
50,000 students completing mainframe training. The news comes as IBM today
announced the world's most powerful computer, the IBM System z10 Enterprise
Class (see separate press release on today's z10 news).
West Texas A&M and the University of Surrey (United Kingdom) are two of the
most recent universities to start mainframe-based curriculum, pushing the
number over 400.
"Interest in the mainframe computing platform continues to grow amongst our
students, which has prompted us to redesign our curriculum in computer
science with a renewed focus on enterprise computing and mainframes," said
H. Paul Haiduk, Professor and Computer Science Program Coordinator, West
Texas A&M University. "Working with IBM, our students are learning about
the open standards and open source mainframe applications, how using tools
such as Rational give the mainframe ease-of-use, and the tremendous job
opportunities that will be out in the market for our students as
developers, programmers or innovators around the mainframe. The mainframe
is the foundation for their careers."
Unmatched in its ability to manage the billions of transactions that
constitute the backbone of the top enterprise customers in the world today,
the mainframe's ability to reduce infrastructure complexity, improve the
data center footprint, ensure security of information, and lower energy and
power costs in the data center, is the ideal engine for today's new
enterprise data center.
"As enterprise customers are looking to reduce costs associated with their
massive infrastructure footprint and ensure five nines of security -- the
mainframe is the only single technology that can be implemented now that
can have an immediate impact," said Michael Bliss, Director, System z
Technical Support and Academic Initiative for System z. "We're seeing
strong demand for mainframe-skilled students -- from businesses,
governments, and other institutions and through the Academic Initiative for
System z program -- having a global pool of students and experts skilled on
the mainframe is locked in for decades to come."
Companies such as BMO Financial Group, Progressive, Charles Schwab and Neon
Enterprise Software have benefited with interns or new hires, partnering
with the IBM Academic Initiative for System z.
"Building on the strong capabilities of our employees, we have been
collaborating with local universities, colleges and IBM to enhance our
exceptional skills and experience on our mainframe platforms -- a vital
component of our data centre strategy," said Steve Garner, Manager,
Hardware & Software Services, Technology & Operations, BMO Financial Group.
"As a leading Canadian financial institution that is committed to
continuous learning and personal development, we place a very high value on
any initiative that provides graduate students with opportunities to learn
the mission-critical mainframe skills we need to build a steady pipeline of
professionals to meet our business and infrastructure needs."
Launched in 2004, the overall IBM Academic Initiative is a program offering
a wide range of technology education benefits through IBM's deep technology
history -- from IBM supplied instruction to technology -- that can scale to
meet the goals of most colleges and universities. The mainframe-specific
part of the Academic Initiative works with schools to enable courses, labs,
senior design projects, and research in large systems thinking. A recent
initiative -- System z roundtables on campus -- connects the mainframe
community with academia -- bringing IBM clients and Business Partners on
campus together with IBM to talk with educators about large systems
thinking and the mainframe.
Academia's increased interest in the mainframe dovetails with IBM's
five-year, $100 million investment to enable technology administrators and
computer programmers to more easily program, manage and administer a
mainframe system -- as well as to increasingly automate the development and
deployment of applications for the mainframe environment. Momentum behind
the IBM mainframe is clear -- with IBM moving from 17 percent market share
in 2000 to 34 percent market share(1) in 2007.
At current count, nearly 50,000 students worldwide have taken large
enterprise or mainframe specific courses since 2004 at colleges and
universities. The students have either graduated with degrees in
Information Systems or Computer Science with a concentration on large
enterprise or mainframe, or completed mainframe-specific courses at the
school, in order to prepare for careers with Fortune 1000 companies.
"The University of Surrey's new large enterprise systems curriculum has
generated a great deal of interest from our students. The innovations IBM
have introduced to the mainframe platform are the key reason for this
immense popularity," said Steve Schneider, Professor of Computing and Head
of Department at the UK's University of Surrey. "Our students are telling
us two things: they are highly enthusiastic about mainframe-related career
opportunities, and they believe the mainframe platform has a tremendous
future as it continues to evolve."
The Mainframe is Next Generation Technology
Corporate clients continue to cite hiring young talent as an excellent way
to bring fresh ideas and investigate innovative concepts, such as green
computing. Recent modern enhancements to the mainframe -- including
specialty engines, JAVA, Solaris on the mainframe, virtualization, capacity
on demand, and Linux -- have proven that its flagship capabilities are
ideal for combating rising electricity, real estate and labor costs. In
2007, IBM announced its own plans to shrink approximately 3,900 computer
servers to about 30 System z mainframes running the Linux operating system.
The company anticipates that the new server environment will consume
approximately 80 percent less energy than the current set up. IBM expects
significant savings over five years in energy, software and system support
costs.
Interest in the mainframe does not stop at the college and university
level. Just last month, IBM announced the winners of the 2007 IBM Student
Mainframe Contest -- and marked the first year high school students entered
the contest and competed with college students. More than 8,000 students
from more than 1,000 colleges across the globe have competed in IBM's
Student Mainframe Contest over the past three years. The contest runs each
fall semester in North America and has run in eight additional countries.
To see more information about how IBM is developing skills for the
mainframe community and a sample of mainframe education programs in 28
schools worldwide, please read EnergiZed at
http://www.ibm.com/university/systemz.
For more information on the mainframe programs at West Texas A&M and the
University of Surrey, please visit:
West Texas A&M: http://www.wtamu.edu/news/releases/5-2-07/ibm.htm
University of Surrey in the UK:
https://sits.surrey.ac.uk/live/ipo/COMM021-0002.htm
For more information on IBM's System z Enterprise Class announcement today,
please visit http://www.ibm.com/press/z10.
(1) source: according to IDC's high end +$250K servers quarterly tracker
results from 3Q'00 to 3Q'07