When Giorgos Tsapepas started as an intern at IBM in 2002, he had never used a mainframe. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the university he attended in upstate New York, there was no instruction in handling the powerful machines that tackle complicated computing tasks for such industries as finance and health care. Now a mainframe expert, Tsapepas had to learn his specialty on the job.
Teaching mainframe skills is out of vogue at many universities with the advent of newer approaches to solving the biggest computing challenges. At the same time, many of the engineers capable of tinkering with the refrigerator-sized machines are nearing retirement. The average age of mainframe workers is 55 to 60, according to Dayton Semerjian, a senior vice-president at CA Technologies, the second-largest maker of software for mainframe computers after IBM. “The big challenge with the mainframe is that the group that has worked on it — the Baby Boomers — is retiring,” Semerjian says. “The demographics are inescapable. If this isn’t addressed, it will be trouble for the platform.”
The resulting worker shortage poses a threat to Armonk (N.Y.)-based IBM. The company commands 85 percent of the mainframe market and can’t afford to abandon a technology that despite its age, still underpins some 10,000 mainframes that are used by 4,000 to 5,000 customers around the globe. If unresolved, the lack of engineers adept at designing, programming, and repairing mainframes could curb demand for one of IBM’s most profitable products. The dearth of talent could also spur customers — from banks to hospitals — to consider adopting alternatives to mainframes. These include servers made by Hewlett-Packard and Dell to run networks, Web operations, and a growing range of the computing tasks once entrusted to mainframes.
CA, based in Islandia, N.Y., surveyed its customers last year and found that 70 percent…