Ezriel Gross: Bridging the Gap Between Mainframe Education and Real-World Experience

This piece is part of the 2026 Planet Mainframe Influential Mainframers series.

Ezriel Gross, a Senior Technical Staff Member and Product Evangelist at Rocket Software and a 2026 Influential Mainframer, is not just a CICS expert. He is a translator. As an IBM Champion for 10 years running, plus a key leader for two SHARE tracks, Ezriel occupies a unique space between high-level product development and boots-on-the-ground education. His expertise guides new programmers and senior system teams as they navigate the complexity of Customer Information Control System (CICS).

Multiple Ways to Educate

Ezriel currently mentors seven emerging mainframers, helping them navigate technical hurdles and—perhaps more importantly—career anxieties. Ezriel believes that the greatest threat to the mainframe’s longevity is the gap between modern education and the practical needs of a CICS environment.

While mainframe education is plentiful, it is often one-dimensional. “The problem is that the education available today is mostly online via video instruction,” Ezriel explains. “There is almost no place for these new mainframers to ask questions or get specific help with the topics most important to them.”

The “Human API”: Bridging the Connection Gap 

In the world of mainframe modernization, we often focus on the technical API—the RESTful services and middleware that allow legacy systems to “talk” to cloud applications. However, Ezriel argues that the most critical interface in the data center isn’t made of code; it’s the “Human API.”

For a new generation of developers raised on the collaborative, high-velocity world of GitHub and Slack, the traditional mainframe environment can feel like a walled garden. Ezriel’s work as a mentor is designed to break down these walls, acting as a real-time “knowledge interface.” 

His teaching focuses on:

• Demystifying the Culture: He doesn’t just teach the syntax of a CICS command; he explains the why behind the architecture, providing the context of 99.999% uptime that a textbook cannot convey.
• Active Knowledge Routing: Like a well-designed system, Ezriel routes questions to the right logic. He helps new talent navigate the institutional knowledge that often resides only in veterans’ heads.
• Standardizing the Experience: By advocating modern interfaces, he makes the mainframe look and feel like the rest of the enterprise, enabling developers to move between a Java microservice and a CICS transaction without a mental context switch.

From “Black Box” to “Glass Box”: Technical Visualization

If the “Human API” opens the door, visualization is the tool that keeps it open. Ezriel is a vocal advocate for transforming mainframe data into visual insights. By converting performance data to JSON, he enables it to be ingested by modern observability tools such as Splunk, Datadog, and the ELK Stack. 

This turns the “Black Box” of CICS into a “Glass Box,” allowing a new, 22-year-old SRE to monitor mainframe health on the same dashboard they use for cloud services.

Theory to Practical Knowledge

As a primary contributor to the New to IBM Z program, Ezriel acts as a bridge between theoretical knowledge and the practical experience required to support a complex CICS environment. 

For example, in a presentation for the Planet Mainframe Virtual CICS User Group, Ezriel demonstrated how modern tools like CICS Performance Analyzer (CICS PA) are bringing mainframe data into the 21st century.

Whether it’s a customer engagement or a conference presentation, his goal remains the same: to turn “video-taught” trainees into confident mainframe experts.

Ezriel’s work proves that the mainframe platform is alive and thriving. By participating in multiple global events and conducting over 25 customer engagements annually, he ensures that the technology remains actionable and the mainframers of the future remain skilled.

You can connect with Ezriel Gross on LinkedIn.

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