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Top 10 Ways to Meet Your Mainframe Skills Needs
How to develop and support the people that bring mainframe technology to life
By: Lauren Valenti, Director, Mainframe Education and Customer Engagement, Broadcom Mainframe Software
The mainframe is a modern marvel with state-of-the-art hardware and software that drive successful businesses on a global scale. Enterprises trust it and consumers transact on it every day with complete confidence.
Beyond the platform’s impressive technological credentials, however, are the people—the community of developers, engineers, data scientists and system programmers—whose expertise, dedication and ingenuity bring this technology to life. The question—and too often the challenge—for businesses is how to ensure they have access to the mainframe talent they need to stay on top. Likewise, professionals are looking for opportunities to develop and improve their mainframe skills.
Broadcom provides paths to meet all these needs, offering outstanding mainframe education and training for our customers as well as direct access to professionals with deep expertise on the platform.
Here are ten exciting offerings for mainframers of all experience levels to supercharge your skills and advance your career:
1. Web-Based Training
Broadcom offers hundreds of courses for individuals of all skill levels. Our web-based training is available at no cost to customers on active maintenance and is designed to help you quickly and easily refresh your skills. You'll also have the opportunity to earn accredited digital badges that you can proudly display on social platforms.
2. Mainframe eLearning Library
Take your mainframe skills to the next level with this resource that offers vendor-agnostic training, combining Broadcom’s web-based training product offerings with Interskill's IBM content. By completing these courses, you'll earn both Broadcom and IBM skills credentials—a valuable addition to your career path.
3. Virtual Instructor-Led Training
These courses led by Broadcom subject matter experts offer an interactive training experience and are available at little to no cost. Our schedule features classes on Endevor, OPS/MVS, Python, ACF2 for z/OS and a wide range of other products. We are continually adding classes to the schedule so bookmark the site and check back often.
4. Mainframe Academy
This is a six-week virtual program designed for people new to mainframe who are looking for comprehensive training. The program combines both instructor-led and web-based training to provide you with a multimodal learning experience that covers everything from core systems programming skills to earning a digital badge and certificate as a certified mainframe professional through Pearson Vue.
5. Mainframe Foundations Program
A seven-week program consisting of hands-on workshops taught by mainframe experts, giving you practical experience developing your technical skills in a supportive learning environment.
6. Vitality Residency Program
Through this highly successful and innovative skills development program, Broadcom partners with organizations to hire, train and mentor the next generation of mainframers. Since its inception in 2019, Broadcom’s Vitality Residency Program has trained, certified and placed hundreds of new mainframe employees with leading companies around the world. The program includes up to six months of instructor-led training, followed by an additional six months of residency at a customer organization.
7. Expert Residency Program
This new program embeds professionals with deep mainframe and Broadcom product experience into your existing ecosystem, allowing you to realize the full value of your technology investments more quickly, support core business strategies and remedy mainframe skills gaps. Your organization gets access to best-in-class talent—trained, certified and employed by Broadcom—working at your direction as members of your team.
8. Mainframe Insights
This program provides you with the mainframe and enterprise architecture content you care about in a short video format that you can easily watch and share. Quickly and easily stay up to date on the latest mainframe topics that will help you grow your business and maximize your ROI.
9. Mainframe Technical Exchanges
The Mainframe Technical Exchanges are technical events that give you direct access to Broadcom Mainframe experts and your peers. These three-day events include how-to sessions, product roadmaps, demos and hands-on labs. You’ll have the opportunity to provide feedback into the future of Broadcom solutions and share your best practices and challenges.
10. Mainframe Product Communities
The Broadcom Mainframe Software Communities provide a forum where you can learn, connect and share with other users as well as Broadcom’s own product experts. You can also join Broadcom’s Product Roadmap Sessions to get a clear view of what’s coming down the road for the products, including details on upcoming product functionality, features and architectural enhancements. You can find a schedule of product roadmap webcasts here.