It is a great time to be part of the IBM zSystems EcosystemDid you use an ATM today? Did you eat at a fast food restaurant? Perhaps you visited a grocery store or did mobile banking.
What do all of these things have in common? They all use IBM zSystems to process the transaction. IBM zSystems is a large computer that can handle large volumes of data and transaction!
With the advent of smaller powerful machines, you would wonder why our institutions and corporations rely on these large computers?
Let me explain. Think for a minute what banks, other financial institutions, insurance industry, retailers, government agencies and universities have in common?
They all have a need for security and reliability. They must have every single one of their transactions be 100% secure, every single time!
That is what mainframes are - extremely reliable and fault tolerant computers that have the highest levels of security. They are powerful, quick to process and able to store huge amounts of data, along with an ability to do numerous transactions at lightning fast speeds - as much as 30 billion transactions per day or more.
This processing accuracy has made them irreplaceable. Some interesting facts about mainframes:
- Almost 96 of the world’s largest 100 banks, nine out of 10 of the world’s largest insurance companies, 23 of the 25 largest retailers in the United States, and 71 percent of the Fortune 500 use IBM zSystems mainframes.
- COBOL is still incredibly popular even 63 years after its initial development. It’s still widely used by the federal government. More than 48 percent of businesses and government organizations report using COBOL “a lot,” more than any other programming language.
- Mainframes host more transactions daily than Google (1.3 million/second on CICS vs. 68,542/second on Google), including 55 percent of all enterprise transactions, hold 80 percent of the world’s business data and handle 90 percent of all credit card transactions. CICS is a general-purpose transaction processing subsystem for the z/OS operating system.
- Mainframes consume only 6.2 percent of worldwide IT spend. Yet, they run 68 percent of production workloads and an estimated 220Bn lines of code.
- Average mainframe programmer and administrator’s salary is 15-20% higher than computer programmers and administrators in general.
- IBM is a great place to work for women who want the flexibility of taking care of their families.
Do you still need more reasons to want to become a mainframe programmer or administrator? I don’t believe so!
At
Mom Relaunch, a workforce development non-profit for women, we nurture both moms looking to restart their careers after being on career breaks, and also women looking to upskill and find more sustainable, fulfilling and well-paying careers. We love to promote diversity because having more women in the workplace raises productivity and economic gains, not just for them but also the organizations they work at.
Did you know
women constitute only 26% of the IT workforce? One of our goals at
Mom Relaunch is to
level the playing field for women by helping create more diverse and inclusive workplaces by educating not just women but also all men to be upstanders and champions for women.
Come join our
information session on July 20th (link to signup below) to find out how you can upskill and work as an
IBM zSystems/mainframe professional in as little as 5-6 months. You don’t need a background in informational technology, just willingness and a strong desire to learn.
Our number one goal at Mom Relaunch is to help every woman become financially independent! So what are you waiting for?
Sign up for our session by going to this link Launch to Enterprise Computing.
Please share this post with your friends and loved ones and ask them to sign up!
References:https://www.precisely.com/blog/mainframe/9-mainframe-statistics#:~:text=1.,percent%20of%20Fortune%20500%20companies.
https://www.sacatech.com/2019/08/15/top-five-most-impactful-legacy-technologies/
https://blog.share.org/Article/mainframe-matters-how-mainframes-keep-the-financial-industry-up-and-running
https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Mainframe_Programmer/Salary
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ibm/2014/04/08/from-shopping-to-space-travel-how-the-mainframe-changed-our-world/?sh=54182cdd4a5f
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/12/economic-gains-from-gender-inclusion-even-greater-than-you-thought/