Mainframe Literacy TargetedMainframe Literacy Targeted

Vendors and user groups are banding together to attack the tech-industry brain drain.

IBM, along with its largest user group, Share, has launched zNextGen, an effort aimed at getting 20,000 students and younger IT pros mainframe literate by 2010. "Hiring freezes of the late '90s and '80s" compounded with retiring baby boomers "left gaps in age ranges in IT," says Robert Rosen, president of Share and CIO at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, which is part of the National Institutes of Health.

Meanwhile, Microsoft and the Society for Information Management in September launched the Accelerate IT program, which aims to connect students with IT professionals and SIM members during half-day seminars at major universities.