The financial services industry has long relied on mainframes as the backbone of operations. These powerful systems manage vast amounts of data and facilitate millions of transactions every day. However, one emerging concern is the imminent retirement of a significant portion of mainframe experts. This looming talent drain poses a serious threat to the stability and security of financial institutions worldwide. And it’s already happening.

Financial institutions face a growing challenge as they seek to bridge the skills gap in mainframe technology. With many experienced professionals nearing retirement, the need to recruit and train younger users of IBM Z is becoming increasingly urgent. These institutions rely heavily on mainframes for their unmatched reliability and security, making it essential to ensure a steady influx of skilled talent is available to manage it.

Jennifer Nelson, CEO of Izzi Software, makes the case for cautious skepticism when using new approaches to debug.

On May 12  Izzi Software will host The Z Knowledge Cliff: Preparing for the Next Generation of Mainframe Talent, a virtual roundtable discussion featuring senior mainframe technology leaders from ColeSoft exploring critical themes related to the transition of knowledge in IBM Z environments. With esteemed speaker Ray Mullins from Broadcom leading the charge, attendees can expect an engaging conversation focused on capturing deep expertise and cultivating the developers of tomorrow.

Izzi Software Signs Key Agreements with Bluehouse and Capricorn to Grow Development Capabilities and Expand Presence in US Government Market.

How many times have you read your own code and completely missed something that was right in front of you? If the answer is "more than I'd like to admit," you're in good company. This post explores the cognitive biases that cause developers to overlook bugs in their own code, why those blind spots exist, and what you can do to work around them.

New Z/XDC software expansion improves accessibility and integrates into existing workflows while welcoming a new generation of programmers into mainframing

Izzi Software just took a significant step forward in expanding its market presence by signing reseller agreements with two industry leaders: VIRTUTEM and IT Service Alliance (ITSA). These partnerships mark a strategic move to bring enterprise software solutions to a broader base of IBM Z and IBM i users worldwide. The partnership structure is straightforward but powerful. VIRTUTEM will sell IBM i products through Izzi's subsidiary CNX, while ITSA will offer the ColeSoft IBM Z solutions. Both companies will bundle these software platforms with their existing service offerings, creating comprehensive packages for enterprise clients facing complex technical challenges.

Picture this scenario: Your critical CICS region has been running for three weeks, processing millions of transactions. Suddenly, a specific transaction path starts behaving erratically. Traditional debugging would require bringing down the region, adding debugging hooks, and restarting. That means potentially hours of downtime and lost state information. Cross-memory debugging with Z/XDC eliminates this disruption entirely, allowing you to hook into running programs, set breakpoints, and trace execution without any restarts.

Production mainframe environments run on batch jobs and started tasks, the workhorses that keep your enterprise systems humming. When these programs encounter issues, you need debugging capabilities that integrate into your existing JCL workflows without disrupting production operations. CDF (Command Debug Facility) sessions in Z/XDC provide exactly that: a powerful way to debug batch jobs and started tasks while maintaining full control over the debugging scope and session management.