Surrey helps IBM reach Mainframe Computing milestone
Tuesday 26 February 2008
IBM recently announced a milestone in the number of colleges and universities globally that are actively teaching and developing mainframe courses and accredited certificates through its Academic Initiative for System z. The University of Surrey is one of the most recent universities, and the first in the UK, to run a mainframe-based curriculum, helping to push the number over 400.
IBM’s Academic Initiative, launched in 2004, offers a wide range of technology education related to IBM’s deep technology history.
System z roundtables on campus connect the mainframe community with academia – bringing IBM clients and Business Partners on campus together with IBM to talk about large systems thinking and the mainframe.
"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".
At current count, nearly 50,000 students world-wide 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.
“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 studentsfrom 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.”
The news coincides with IBM’s announcement of the world’s most powerful mainframe, the IBM System z10 Enterprise Class.
Notes for Editors:
For more information on the mainframe programme at the University of Surrey, please see the related story.
To see more information about how IBM is developing skills for the mainframe community and a sample of mainframe education programs in 28 schools world wide, please read EnergiZed at http://www.ibm.com/university/systemz.
For more information on IBM’s announcements, please visit http://www.ibm.com/press.