Mainframe computers and its importance narrated by an IBM Z Ambassador
I am gonna address two, million dollar, questions in this post :- “What are mainframes and what’s the importance of mainframes in the world” and ”What is MTM (Master the Mainframe) contest and how knowledge of mainframes will open up new career opportunities for you.”
But before I jump in to answer these questions, let me tell you a story about how I became a Z Ambassador (you are either free to skip this or enjoy it along with some nachos 😊, or any snack that suits your taste😄)
In the month of May of this pandemic year, while I was sitting at home with literally no academic pressure on me in my day to day life and with an uncertainty regarding when the next semester of university is going to start, I came to know about an appealing initiative by IBM on its website during my casual “time pass” web surfing activity.
This initiative by IBM is called the “IBM Z Ambassador program” which is sponsored by IBM ( as the name suggests!) and powered by Angel Hack. Under this program students above the age of 13 from around the world are recruited to advocate about IBM’s Mainframe technology and its “Master the Mainframe(MTM)” contest to their fellow university peers, school mates and to other acquaintances.
Since it sounded like a golden opportunity, and since I had participated in MTM 2019, I jumped onto filling up the application and registering for the program. After a week or so, I received an email from Angel Hack with an invitation to the interview process for further selection and confirmation to the program.
The interview was totally automated and consisted of 3 questions. It went by very smooth and in a couple of days I got the happy news that I was awaiting for. I got selected as a Z Ambassador! Yippee!
The program now has 132 confirmed Z Ambassadors from around 28 countries and 7 more are in the process of on boarding our great family. We all get to have bi-weekly meetings, which is hosted by @Anne Kircher who is a senior consultant at Angel Hack, where we discuss about the current progress of the program and brainstorm about what we can do as Z Ambassadors to spread awareness about MTM contest and the Mainframe technology. We also get fabulous guidance from the Program Manager herself, @Misty Decker.
Now that I am done with my story, its time to answer the first million dollar question.
What are Mainframes and what’s it’s importance?
Mainframe computers or mainframes ( also known as “Big Iron”) are computational machines having humongous amount of processing power capable of running the most crucial business data and transaction processing tasks of the world.
Believe it or not, Mainframes are the backbone of the entire IT industry and helps them to generate vital information from the raw data collected by them.
How do you think does ISRO or NASA process billions of data that they receive from various satellites and space probes efficiently?
Forget about ISRO and NASA, how do you think does vital industries such as Healthcare , Aviation, Banking ,etc that affect our day to day life are able to process such huge amount of data generated every day due to their business transactions?
The answer is…they use mainframes, because mainframes are equipped with an amount of processing power equivalent to 1500 X86 servers, which enables them to process 30 Billion transactions per day , $23 billion worth of ATM transactions and $6 trillion in credit and debit card transactions!!!(Click here to know about the source).They are indeed the monster machines that run the world.
And there’s one more interesting fact that adds a significant historical value to mainframes.
The IBM System 360 family of mainframe computers were the machines that made Moon Landing back in 1969 possible! Wow! Just Wow!
If you are still not convinced about the importance of mainframes, then here’s some more solid statistics that will help you to convince yourselves:-
- Every second, 1.1 million high-volume customer transactions occur on mainframes. To put this into perspective, Google experiences almost 60,000 searches per second.
- More than 70% of global Fortune 500 companies use the mainframe to run their core business functions.
- 96 of the world’s top 100 banks, 23 of the top 25 US retailers and 9 of the world’s 10 largest insurance companies, run System Z.
- In the FIFA 2014 World Cup, 14 cameras were set up to capture goal mouth action. The data from these cameras was sent to a mainframe computer that analyzed each goal, and in turn send a signal to a watch worn by the referee to confirm that a goal had been scored.
- Mainframes handle 87% of world’s credit card transactions amounting to $8 trillion annual payments!
I hope these stats helped you to gain some excitement about the prospects of what a mainframe is capable of doing.
Now I will go onto my next million dollar question.
What is MTM (Master the Mainframe) contest and how knowledge of mainframes will open up new career opportunities for you.
According to one IBM internal study, 62% of data center organizations recognize that they will have a skills shortage within the next five years.
One part of the reason as to why there’s a gap in hands-on Mainframe operating skills among those of us currently pursuing a college degree or those of us who are already graduates or simply tech hobbyists is the lack of awareness about the mainframes, and the other part is the invisibility of Mainframes in our day to day life.
Many of us have engulfed ourselves into the latest and more visually appealing technology such as app development, web development , tensor flow development etc, but what we fail to realize is that all these tech wouldn’t have a sustenance without mainframes, for e.g., a successful app will garner a huge user base and consequently a humongous amount of data, and thus the requirement of powerful processors to digest this data.
Hence, big corporate companies require people with expertise in operating mainframes to ensure smooth unhindered business operations 24/7, and the number of job roles for the same are going to increase in the coming years , and in the previous years IBM had predicted that approximately 37,200 new mainframe administration positions would emerge worldwide by 2020.
In order to address this skill and awareness gap in the mainframe industry IBM organizes an annual event called “Master the Mainframe” which is held from August to January ,and consists of three parts of increasing difficulty which is designed in a way to make you literally the master of these godly machines.
- For every Level One finisher , a donation will be made to Share The Meal, that means you will be able to provide food to two children for a day by just completing the first level of MTM!
- Upon clearing the second and third part, you will earn IBM certified badges for both the rounds respectively which validates you as a mainframer. The people who are able to clear the third round are highly valued in the IBM community and their prospects for a job role within IBM and several other organisations that use Mainframe increases. It’s a chance for you to get ahead of several other candidates as well as to make contributions to the wonderful Global Mainframe Community.
- One important note:- Everyone who wishes to gain Mainframe knowledge can take part in the competition but the prices are limited to only students, although everyone participating will surely get IBM certified badges on successful completion of levels two and three.
With both of the questions answered, we come to an end of this article and I really hope that although I wasn’t able to make you a millionaire(pun intended) I still was able to convince you about the need of mainframes and encouraged you to take up the MTM challenge to gift yourselves with new career opportunities in this thriving field of IT industry.
If you really got the essence of what I was trying to convey, then it’s time for you to take your first step in the world of Mainframes.
Head over to masterthemainframe.com and register yourself for the 2020 MTM contest which is going to be live in just 22 days!
For any queries regarding the contest you can reach out to me on Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn .
A short note for VIT students, especially the VIT AP ones:-
As a part of the Z Ambassador program I am gonna conduct a virtual meetup on Google Meet to help all of the willing students to get started with the contest. I will help you to walk through the first level and will also try to bring in an IBM India lead to talk to you about the IBM corporate culture as well as motivate you about Mainframes.
In case you don’t study in VIT, but still would like to attend the meetup or would like to get assistance on getting started with the contest, then you are most welcome to join in😊.
And if you don’t reside in India and would like to meet the IBM leads of your respective country,then I might be able to help you out, but I don’t guarantee,although I will try my best👍.
That’s all for this post, stay tuned to my Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn handles to know the date of the meetup and for further updates on the contest.
