I believe that a significant factor in what companies choose for their future IS needs is their perception on what skills the job market will have in the future.
Some skills appear to be self-taught. If the tools are cheap, such as HTML, BASH, and Java, kids in school are perceived as being experienced in those skills if they have used them for projects and hobby use. And that perception is probably at least as accurate as assuming someone who took a course in MVS is ready to be productive. Part of the problem is that companies don't expect their employees to stay around for their careers as much as they did in the past. Training them to work for their competitors is not attractive - just hire the competitors' workforce instead. (self-destructive behavior) So how does this perception get changed? How do (we) change the mind set of upper management into considering that mainframes still are a cost-effective long term solution? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
