IBM continues to produce and support mainframe computers. Who still works with them and where to find specialists?
Physical. One of the tasks assigned to mainframes (and this was built into the very concept of the systems) is the ability to withstand various incidents and even natural disasters. Of course, if the mainframe is flooded to the top with water, it is unlikely to survive. But it is able to cope with serious external factors that would be critical for a regular server.
Cybersecurity. Experts say that hacking a mainframe is quite difficult, both because of the specific software and the way it works. Nobody says it's impossible, but few people are capable of it.
The demand for these systems, despite all their advantages, is falling. For example, the Japanese company Fujitsu, which is one of the largest mainframe manufacturers along with IBM, plans to release the latest system in 2029. Support will be provided until 2035. IBM has not yet announced its intention to end production of mainframes, but this is likely to happen in the near future.
Nevertheless, specialists are needed, since, according to the same IBM, about 90% of companies that still work with mainframes are going to hire new specialists in the next few years. But there are very few of them, even if not thousands are required.
Of course, most professionals will not go into this industry, even if it pays well. Simply because the prospects are vague – almost all companies are moving to the “clouds”, not many organizations want to stay with mainframes, and the majority do so out of necessity.
But the programs that IBM is launching will help keep the entire mainframe business afloat until the moment it is needed.
What else?
IBM is also involved in supporting other older technology. Or rather, the programming language mentioned in the announcement is COBOL. The fact is that the American employment system in 2020 was still dependent on COBOL (now the situation has changed somewhat). And after the number of unemployed increased due to the pandemic, the infrastructure could not withstand the increased load. As a result, everything had to be repaired hastily, inviting existing COBOL specialists and preparing new ones.
Yes, IBM organized training courses in this language, which helped solve the problem with the insurance system, as well as with the infrastructure of other organizations. As a result, thanks to the efforts of IBM and other companies, the number of lines of code written in COBOL in 2022 was already 800 billion. True, it is quite possible that not everything was simply counted in 2017, but the fact remains that the number of lines of code in COBOL is huge.
IBM has also developed a special set of tools for automatically converting COBOL code into Java code. And this is not a theoretical development, not a proof of concept, but a commercial tool that is offered to the company’s partners. It's called Watsonx Code Assistant. It is intended precisely to help organizations switch to modern language programs, with which specialists have no problems.
