Will MainFrame have more Opportunities?

Personal Opinion;

Career oportunities in the mainframe will hold steady for a few more years, then begin a slow decline.

There may be sporadic needs as groups of mainframe admins retire.

Mainframes are becoming increasingly redundant as thepower, speed, and storage capacity of PCs grows.

The mainframe is still on top for large multi-user databases. But the technology is not apt to be adopted by many 'new' users.

Chas

For my personal opinion, I would say the opportunties will sustain if not increase slightly.
The mainframe has its own nitch in the business which the Intel based servers have yet to touch. While the CPU speeds are equivalent, the mainframe's I/O capablilities have yet to be threatened. The second claim to fame of the mainframe is it is a true multi-tasking machine.
In a nut-shell, you can take a mainframe, run virtual machine, load up 100 instances of unix with applications and completely replace 100 servers.
Businesses will be looking for indivuals with IBM VM and Unix training/experience.

In the healthcare industry (both Payers and Providers)mainframe skills have been in demand (especially if they have EDI experience) for a few year now due to the HIPAA legislation. Even though the legislation goes into effect in 4Q of this year, theindustry is still playing catch up to it, so I see the demand for mainframes to last for a few years in the healthcare market.

I dont think a few years is long enough, just like the phone systems around the US there will always be the need to maintain whats out there and fewer and fewer people aer looking into that route. It may be absoleted by lack of skilled people who use it but the investment into it will keep it around long term. As much as I love and make a living with PC's I think the mainframe will be around for anyone skilled in its' uses for a long time. I.E future opportunities? How young is your mainframe staff? Most of ours were in their 50's 10 years ago before a parent company absorbed there jobs. So there is a gap of skilled people out there.

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