Competition involves series of computing challenges with no prior experience required. Regional winners advance to 2016 Master the Mainframe World Championship
IBM announced that the competition is underway for the 2015 Master the Mainframe Middle East and Africa computer programming contest, giving students an opportunity to develop skills in a high-demand technical area and a chance to advance to a global competition next year.
Hosted at high schools and colleges around the world, Master the Mainframe – part of IBM’s Academic Initiative – serves as an introduction to programming and application development and requires no previous mainframe experience. Participants complete a series of challenges with increasing levels of difficulty. The 2015 Middle East and Africa competition is open to contestants through July 31.
The programming skills gained in Master the Mainframe are valued by organizations around the world. The mainframe is the core computing system for 92 of the top 100 banks worldwide, every one of the top 10 largest insurers and 23 of the largest 25 retailers.
These skills are becoming even more important with the explosive growth in mobile transactions that are creating greater demands on company IT systems to quickly and reliably interact with consumers. In March, IBM began shipping the z13, the most powerful and secure mainframe to date, designed to work at unprecedented scale to handle the growth in mobile transactions. One z13 can perform 2.5 billion transactions per day.
[quote type=”border_left”]Master the Mainframe is a key part of IBM’s efforts to develop the next generation of developers for one of the most important computing systems in the world said Nick Redshaw, Vice President, Hardware Sales, IBM Systems, Middle East and Africa. Participants are not only competing for top honors and prizes in the contest, they’re also developing skills that will open up more possibilities for job opportunities when they graduate.[/quote]
Prizes for the 2015 Master the Mainframe Middle East and Africa contest include Bluetooth speakers and headsets and smartphones. The regional winners also will receive an all-expense paid trip to IBM’s Dubai facility and the chance to advance to the 2016 Master the Mainframe World Championship. The Master the Mainframe Contest has expanded to almost 40 countries with more than 74,000 students participating since it began 10 years ago.
For more information on the Master the Mainframe Contest or to participate, click here.
