Tag Archive for: mainframe community

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IBM Techxchange 2023

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Greg DeBo presented 2 sessions at Techxchange 2023.

 

Fall 2023 Mainframe Education Events

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TeamSWAMI continues the tradition of bringing awareness of the mainframe platform to Illinois Universities! We have several different companies attending the events with us. If you aren’t familiar with the platform that still runs the majority of the world’s workload, please attend one of these sessions!

 

 

 

 

Come see Greg DeBo present at the IDUG EMEA 2022 Conference

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Greg DeBo, TeamSWAMI Principal Consultant and IBM Champion presents ‘Mainframe Modernization: What about the Data?’ during the IDUG EMEA conference in Edinburgh, Scotland in October 2022. Register here: EMEA Conference 2022 – IDUG

Raise your hand if you’re hiring

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Recently I had the pleasure of attending my first ever SHARE Conference, and not only attend but led a panel discussion on how companies can find the mainframe skills to keep your company running for the next several decades as baby-boomers that built the critical infrastructure and applications are retiring.  It turned out to be quite the hot topic, as there were several other sessions addressing the same mainframe skills gap, and how companies can get a leg up on attracting and retaining talent.  As many companies are still limiting travel to conferences, I thought I would try to summarize what I heard to share with companies that were not able to attend and share some of the programs that might help. 

What Education is necessary? 

One of the common discussion items was what are you looking for in a mainframe employee?  Is a four-year degree a requirement?  A four-year degree specifically in an IT major?  Do they need to have mainframe training as part of that four-year degree?  COBOL?  I’m a huge advocate for universities teaching mainframe, that’s still where most companies recruit, but not every company has a university in their backyard teaching mainframe, and not every person has the desire or opportunity to get a four-year degree.  Many companies now use online profiling tools that weed out candidates before even having a chance to talk with a human.  In the environment that we are in, that practice seems to really eliminate some great candidates.  I talk about some options below where you can look for candidates if you are open to considering non-traditional routes. 

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3 Observations from IDUG NA 2022, a Db2 Tech Conference

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Last week I had the opportunity to attend IDUG North America. For those who aren’t familiar, IDUG stands for International Db2 Users Group. It’s a non-profit focused on education and services around Db2. There were many informative sessions, keynotes, and evening events throughout the week, and much of what I learned aligned with TeamSWAMI’s existing strategies and vision for the field. As I reflect on my experiences at IDUG North America, I wanted to share a few observations:

Innovation continues on Db2

All vendors associated with mainframe technologies continue to invest and innovate in Db2 (for z/OS, LUW and Cloud). For many organizations, Db2 is the system of record for core processing and business functionality. If you work for or with such an organization, and you’re thinking about moving your processing and data to the cloud, make sure to do your due diligence.  Almost all modernization efforts surpass their budget and timeline projections. Many times this is due to data dependencies and environmental complexities.

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