Is no-one aware of Master the Mainframe competition for students? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_the_Mainframe_Contest
And the Academic Initiative, under which the classes mentioned by Wayne are run (Wayne and I worked on these together back in the day): https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/z/education These have been running for more than a decade now and provide a completely cost free access for students to mainframes. In the case of the MtM contest, you don't even really need to be enrolled in an IT related course at a fee paying institute - my 18 year old son can now write COBOL, JCL and REXX after completing last years contest. And in respect of the OP, the 'modernisation' moniker - disclaimer, I also currently work for one of those mainframe modernisation companies. Yes, they do mean replacing your mainframe with x86, and generally they also focus on the C word - Cloud and in many cases some kind of language transposition, i.e. COBOL to Java. Interestingly my employer also sponsored a survey, and while we didn't get the hyped 100% 'want off the platform' result, it does seem there are significant pressures within many companies to see the mainframe replaced or at the very least drastically reduced in cost. The real problem is nothing to do with technology, and all to do with cost. While a single vendor owns the hardware and software stack (think Apple), they can charge whatever they want regardless of the value. There are several technological approaches to the replacement push, some are smarter than others. Like most things in IT, it comes down to factors such as time and money more than technology. Cheers - Mike ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
