"The Crisis of Computing's Dying Breed"
Financial Times (05/21/03) P. 11; Foremski, Tom

IT workers knowledgeable in mainframe operations are a dying
breed, although the hardware they run has proven surprisingly
resilient to extinction. IT pundits had predicted server systems
would make the mainframe obsolete, but many companies are loath to
abandon the security, reliability, and relatively low maintenance
costs of their mainframes. Today, however, university graduates
are much more likely to educate themselves in skills such as Web
services and other, more flexible programming languages than
mainframe Cobol code. Experts say organizations are facing
pressure to find adequately trained staff to maintain their
mainframes, but IBM computer hardware group head Bill Zeitler says
his company's improvements to the mainframe add viability to the
platform. The recently released and most powerful IBM mainframe
yet, dubbed T-Rex, is capable of handling entire e-business
operations. T-Rex can replace multiple mainframe machines and help
consolidate dwindling ranks of mainframe administrators. In
addition, IBM is pushing the Linux operating system, which gives
newer IT workers a foot in the door in terms of mainframe
operation, according to Sageza Group research director Charles
King. Still, professionals with mainframe experience are much
older than the norm, a situation that's a growing concern for
companies. Over half of IT workers with mainframe experience were
over 50 in a Meta Group survey last year, while less than 10
percent of workers with Windows NT and Unix skills were that age.
Gartner's Diane Morello warns that few companies have planned for
the day when they are forced to change their technology platform
due to a lack of skilled workers. Zeitler notes that an estimated
60 percent of corporate data is on mainframes, and expects that
companies will move very slowly in their shift away from the
platform.

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