Latest Articles
Inside EMMA: How a Mainframe Apprenticeship Scaled in Its First Year
Mainframe careers don’t suffer from a lack of interest, but a lack of pathways. EMMA was built to remove barriers to training, scaling, and hiring mainframe apprentices. This update revisits the program one year later, with results that tell a more nuanced workforce...
Mainframe Workforce Signals Are Shifting in 2026, Says Early Arcati Workforce Survey Data
Why the workforce conversation needs updating Workforce conversations in the mainframe community often default to a familiar concern: who will be left to run these systems in the future? While that question still surfaces, early signals from our 2026 Mainframe User...
Why Ongoing Education Matters for the Mainframe Skills Gap
I graduated virtually with my Master’s degree in 2020, about two months after COVID-19 shut down much of the world. Behind the scenes, I had been working for Enterprise Performance Strategies, Inc. (EPS) since 2017, so I had a supportive professional environment while...
Mainframe Professional Skills Trivia
Our last trivia quiz explored the legacy of mainframe pioneers, and this week we’re going to continue looking into the lineage of skills in mainframe professional practice, examining how early design and operational decisions shaped the way mainframe expertise is...
AI Development Tools on the Mainframe: What It Means for CIOs and Talent
AI-driven development tools have arrived on the mainframe. They analyze existing code, support refactoring efforts, structure decades-old applications, and promise productivity gains that many organizations urgently need. For CIOs, the key question is no longer...
Mainframe Careers Are Changing, Not Disappearing: What to Expect
Mainframe careers aren’t disappearing. They’re narrowing, deepening, and becoming more demanding. If you spend any time in tech conversations, you’ve heard the claim that mainframe careers are fading, the talent pool is aging, and the jobs tied to IBM Z won’t survive....
Agentic AI on the Mainframe, Greater Delivery Flexibility, and more
Agentic AI for Smarter Mainframe Modernization with IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Z The Open Mainframe Project's Zowe 3.4 PopUp Mainframe Announces Even Greater Delivery Flexibility For Mainframe Developers Precisely Achieves FedRAMP AuthorizationAgentic AI for...
Career Resilience Is the New Job Security in the Mainframe World, featuring Darren Surch
Career resilience in the mainframe world sounds like jargon—until change hits. Reorgs, new technologies, leadership shifts, or surprise opportunities don’t reward the fastest scramblers. They reward the people who were already ready. That’s the core idea Darren Surch,...
❓ Workforce and Training Trivia
Happy 2026—and welcome to a whole new year of Planet Mainframe Trivia! As our January theme focuses on Workforce and Training, this quiz looks at mainframe pioneers and the early decisions that shaped how mainframe skills are learned and passed on. Mainframe expertise...
Extending the Security Stack: Red Teaming, Scenarios, Risks, and Reality
Mainframes hold the heart of the most critical business processes in finance, healthcare, and government. Yet many security programmes still draw a neat line around them, treating z/OS as out of scope for red teaming, scenarios, and cyber risk quantification. This...
