ARMONK, N.Y., Oct. 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM)
announced today an expansion of its developer skills training
program that will reach a record number of students worldwide this
year with the Master the Mainframe programming contest. In
addition, for the first time, the company and academic partners
will provide aspiring developers access to the world's fastest
Linux system via the cloud at no cost.
Open to secondary and university level schools around the globe,
the Master the Mainframe contest will take place this year in a
record 47 countries, including 18 new markets. The contest, being
held in most countries October through December, asks students to
complete a series of challenges from gaining a basic understanding
of an enterprise operating system to coding a program that
addresses a real-world IT problem. More than 13,000 students are
expected to compete this year with regional winners advancing to
the 2016 World Championship.
IBM is also working with Marist College, Syracuse University's
School of Information Studies and Leipzig University in Germany to launch the LinuxONE Developer Cloud
this fall. The new program will provide developers around the world
access at no charge through the cloud to a LinuxONE system that can
be used for creating and testing applications. The developer cloud
will be hosted on IBM LinuxONE systems at the academic partners.
The Marist LinuxONE Developer Cloud will go live in late October
with Syracuse and Leipzig to follow.
Launched in August, LinuxONE is a new family of systems,
software and services that includes the industry's fastest, most
advanced system for the Linux environment. LinuxONE is enabled for
a range of open-source and popular tools from independent software
vendors, including Docker, Apache Spark, MongoDB, MariaDB and
PostgreSQL.1
"Attracting and training the next generation of developers is
critical to continue advancing technology to make our world work
better," said Ross Mauri, General
Manager, IBM z Systems. "We are inspiring students to get more
involved in technology by providing them access to the latest
technology through programs such as Master the Mainframe and the
IBM LinuxONE Developer Cloud, so they can explore opportunities,
gain new skills and create new innovations."
The Master the Mainframe contest and LinuxONE Developer Cloud
are part of a broader IBM z Systems Academic Initiative. The
program has grown to more than 1,400 partner academic institutions
in 70 countries worldwide working with IBM and its clients on
developer skills training programs.
The expansion of the Academic Initiative comes as job prospects
remain strong for the next generation of developers. According to
the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment opportunities for
software developers are expected to grow 22 percent from 2012 to
2022, double the rate for all occupations. The IBM z Systems Job
Connector website, designed to support employers and candidates
interested in filling or finding enterprise computing jobs
connected to IBM z Systems technology, has seen participation from
over 700 companies and 7,000 job seekers in recent years. In 2015,
job seeker activity at the site is up 176 percent year over year
and employer enrollments are up 20 percent.
"Global institutions of all kinds rely on mainframes to process,
manage and store ever-increasing amounts of data, creating a rising
demand for professionals with the skills to support these systems,"
said Bryan Smith, CTO at Rocket
Software, an IBM Business Partner that recently helped develop
mainframe-focused programs at Framingham State University and
Wentworth Institute of Technology. "By
supporting the Academic Initiative, we can help ensure that
students have the opportunity to acquire the skills necessary to
qualify for these employment opportunities."
The 2015 Master the Mainframe contest will expand the reach of
the competition to a projected 88,000 students since it started 11
years ago. The contest, which requires no prior programming
experience, is expected to set a participation record this year as
it expands to18 new markets, including Japan, Ireland, Czech
Republic, Hungary,
Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, United
Arab Emirates, Bahrain,
Angola, Nigeria, Kuwait, Senegal, Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Oman, Pakistan, and Qatar.
While contest prizes vary by country, examples of prizes planned
in the Fall include tablet computers, smart watches, Raspberry
Pi's, Bluetooth speakers, Internet of Things kits, and an
all-expense-paid trip to the International IBM Center of Competence
at Montpellier to meet with IBM executives and learn more about
careers working in enterprise computing. All Master the Mainframe
participants who complete the contest receive a Certificate of
Completion.
For more information or to register for a Master the Mainframe
contest, visit http://ibm.biz/masterthemainframe.
For more information on LinuxONE, visit
http://www.ibm.com/linuxone.
Contact: Hannah Slocum
IBM Media Relations
Tel: 978-877-0105
hslocum@us.ibm.com
Partner Quotes
"Dating all the way back to the 1970s, the Computer Information
Systems Department has a long rich history of teaching mainframe
enterprise systems (E/S) courses. Approximately four years
ago, the faculty became members of the Academic Initiative (AI).
Thus, the AI allowed us to deliver our undergraduate and graduate
Enterprise Systems programs and degrees on an IBM mainframe.
This arrangement has afforded us the opportunity to expand our
curricular offerings beyond typical distributed systems, but to
include the IBM mainframe as well. For our students, the immediate
results have been increased placement rates with salaries
approximately 38-44 percent higher than those graduates without the
IBM mainframe enterprise systems coursework. Not only has
this led to increased student enrollments, but it has greatly
enhanced our relationships with our corporate partners in the
Pittsburgh, Pa area and brought us
new corporate partners from around the country. — Prof.
John C. Turchek, Professor and
Department Head, Computer Information Systems, Robert Morris University
"With Frankfurt's position as a financial center, developing the
next generation of computer scientists is important as we seek to
support businesses and economic growth in the region. Introducing
students to the mainframe is particularly important because it
continues to be at the heart of the banking and insurance IT
systems. In the past year, we have added a master's course on the
mainframe and are investing in a z Systems mainframe for the
university to ensure students are introduced to the latest
technology as they enter the workforce." — Prof. Dr. Professor
Dr. Philipp Brune, Goethe University Frankfurt
"The IT field remains an attractive option for our students, and
global companies based in our region continue to express strong
demand for new hires that have knowledge of the mainframe. By
partnering with IBM and other companies through the Academic
Initiative, we're able to provide our students the insights and
real-world skills they need to fill these jobs and begin a
successful career." — Prof. Dr. Arndt
Balzer, University of Applied
Sciences Wuerzburg-Schweinfurt
1 Based on IBM tests that showed LinuxONE can perform
30 billion RESTful web interactions/day with Dockerized Node.js and
MongoDB, driving over 470K database read and writes per second.
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SOURCE IBM