Interesting article http://www.ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/januaryfebruary08/features/18963p3 .as px
In Search of Mainframe Engineers New technologies point to the future of mainframe computing January | February 2008 | by Ivan Wallis and Byron Rashed It may seem as if few people want to become mainframe engineers in today' s glorified Web 2.0+ world, as newer platforms have become the focal point for the next generation of young engineers. The result is a graying population of mainframe engineers, and unless more is done, when this generation of engineers retires there may not be enough qualified, skille d and motivated professionals to maintain the still significant and relevan t universe of mainframes systems. Compounding this engineer shortfall is that access to mainframe data has multiplied in recent years. Previously, when these mainframes resided in "glass houses" and only a handful of 3270 terminals were connected, th ey were relatively easy to administer and secure. The typical organization might have one technician for every two or three users. Times have change d. Today with applications shifting to UNIX* or Linux* on the mainframe, lar ge enterprises or financial institutions might have hundreds of thousands of users accessing data from the mainframe. This means one mainframe enginee r might be responsible for supporting thousands of users, which is a much larger and more challenging situation from a security perspective. As the older mainframe engineers leave the workforce, they take with them decades of specialized knowledge about legacy applications and specialize d systems. Without qualified replacements to train before they depart, this knowledge could be lost forever, potentially compromising the security of key corporate applications that still rely on mainframe systems. ---------------------- snip ------------------------- I particularly like this part: Expanding the Mainframe's Role Bob
