As you read this page, consider that my research is actually based on on-site visits to mainframe customers (see the "Case Studies" Web page for more details about these customers).
If you read research/analysis reports from companies such as Gartner (for instance, Garnter's "Impact of Generational IT Skill Shift on Legacy Applications") you may come to believe that there is a major, forthcoming, disasterous shortage of IT professional skills that will tumble the mainframe. In fact, in this research note, Gartner actually suggests that moving off of the mainframe might be necessary due to this forthcoming, alleged skills shortage. Clabby Analytics is apalled by this advice (see our counter opinion here). Does Gartner not know that most of the world's banking and financial systems (and many of the world's retail systems) run on mainframes? Do they really think that these institutions that are running technologically superior mainframes in an age where power, cooling, footprint, and processing efficiency is becoming paramount are really going to ditch out of mainframes because of an alleged skills shortage? (The mainframe customers that I talk to are finding creative ways to fill mainframe skills gaps; and vendors such as IBM and CA are agressively working to simplify mainframe management. Gartner's mainframe skills shortage theory is "OVERBLOWN").
After talking with many mainframe users, mainframe hardware/software vendors, college professors, IT professional skills placement firms, and outsourcers, Clabby Analytics believes that there are some challenges ahead in the mainframe skills arena -- but those challenges are being aggresively addressed. Some of our mainframe skill set observations (in totally random order) include:
Users all over the world are telling me that they are able to find mainframe managers -- or organically grow mainframe skills within their own organizations. Read: Baldor Electric, Banco del Credito, Corner Bank, and Colacem case studies for proof of this point. Incidentally, Baldor is in Ft. Smith, Arkansas; Banco del Credito is in Peru; Corner Bank is in Lugano, Switzerland; and Colacem is in Gubbio, Italy -- all might be considered "off-the-beaten-path" and yet all are able to staff their mainframe environments quite readily.
Two large outsourcing providers in India told me that they have thousands of mainframe skilled individuals available to help develop mainframe programs or manage mainframe environments;
Chinal also has a rapidly growing population of mainframe skilled individuals;
Many mainframe executives are more than willing to outsource the care and feeding of their aging COBOL applications to outsourcing organizations;
The slowdown in growth in North America and Western Europe in mainframe skills development is partially due to university-level politics. Universities are still emphasizing distributed computing and resisting the shift back to centralized mainframe-oriented computing. Clabby Analytics talked to many professors from large universities at a gathering at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY this past June -- and some professors see the development of mainframe skills as a potential major growth area for their universities. This situation will receive greater coverage by Clabby Analytics over the forthcoming year;
Older mainframe managers are slow to embrace the new graphically driven mainframe management tools -- while younger mainframers love them (expect a series of case studies on this topic in 2010). Our observation is that the older folks are slower to adopt change -- especially when they can do the same kind of work that they done for years using character driven interfaces. (Vendors are going to have to demonstrate major time savings using the new graphically driven mainframe managment products in order to encourage older mainframers to use these products); and,
It is constantly surprising to find out how few mainframe managers are needed to drive multi-billion dollar corporations as opposed to the armies of distributed systems managers.
