Mainframe - Crucial Role in Modern Enterprise Computing

Course
  • Cloud and Operating Systems

Mainframe - Crucial Role in Modern Enterprise Computing

Whether you withdraw money at a cashpoint, pay with a credit card, book a flight or buy a train ticket—mainframes are always at work in the background. They do the crucial work and ensure that everything runs securely and without data loss. More than 70 percent of the Global 500s work with mainframes.

The digital transformation poses a big challenge for enterprises today, and the modern mainframe plays a crucial role in addressing this challenge. As the typical platform for the "systems of record" of most large organizations, its unique features support today's requirements regarding performance, flexibility and security and enable companies to successfully manage the challenges of an online world. This course will give an overview of the modern mainframe, its concepts and features and their role in enterprise computing. Topics addressed range from mainframe architecture, hardware and operating systems (z/OS, z/VM, Linux), Mainframe application development and transaction processing to state-of-the-art workloads such as blockchain and analytics. In addition, industry success stories will be presented.

Offered by Prof. Andreas Polze, Wolfram Greis, Prof. Dr. Philipp Brune | Last updated on Jan 16, 2025 | 3738 enrollments

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Course information

Whether you withdraw money at a cashpoint, pay with a credit card, book a flight or buy a train ticket—mainframes are always at work in the background. They do the crucial work and ensure that everything runs securely and without data loss. More than 70 percent of the Global 500s work with mainframes.

The digital transformation poses a big challenge for enterprises today, and the modern mainframe plays a crucial role in addressing this challenge. As the typical platform for the "systems of record" of most large organizations, its unique features support today's requirements regarding performance, flexibility and security and enable companies to successfully manage the challenges of an online world. This course will give an overview of the modern mainframe, its concepts and features and their role in enterprise computing. Topics addressed range from mainframe architecture, hardware and operating systems (z/OS, z/VM, Linux), Mainframe application development and transaction processing to state-of-the-art workloads such as blockchain and analytics. In addition, industry success stories will be presented.

Prof. Andreas Polze will present this topic together with experts from the Academic Mainframe Consortium (AMC) and the European Mainframe Academy. The AMC supports academic education on mainframes and aims to advance the research and the development in this field. This course provides an introduction to the topic and will particularly address mainframe architecture and application development.

The workload of this course equals 2 ECTS credits.

Course characteristics:

  • Language: English
  • Starting from: November 5, 2018
  • Course end: December 17, 2018
  • Duration: 6 weeks (3-6 hours per week)
  • Target group: Anyone who is interested in the topic of mainframes
  • Course requirements: Basic knowledge in computer science and algorithms

Attention: This course is currently in self-study mode, in which you do not have access to graded assignments/exams. Therefore, we can only issue you a certificate of participation.

Requirements for Proofs of Achievement
  • Confirmation of Participation: You will automatically receive a free Confirmation of Participation once you have completed at least 50% of the content.
  • Certificate: You will receive your official openHPI Certificate by earning at least 50% of the maximum number of points from all graded assignments.

Find out more on our page for Proofs of Achievement and Guidelines.

Our teachers

Prof. Dr. Andreas Polze

Prof. Andreas Polze's group Operating Systems and Middleware develops programming paradigms, design patterns and description methods for large, distributed component systems. The group’s work focuses on the integration of middleware with embedded systems and the predictability of their behavior with respect to real-time capability, fault tolerance and safety.

Wolfram Greis

Wolfram Greis started working in IBM mainframes more than 40 years ago. In 2008 he co-founded the European Mainframe Academy in Germany and Switzerland to educate new mainframe talent and to reduce the proverbial skill gap. He is author of the German book „Die IBM Mainframe Architektur” and did many presentations at national and international conferences all over the world. He is initiator and president of the Academic Mainframe Consortium, a not-for-profit organization to foster and support mainframe education at academic institutions.

Contact: wolfram.greis@mainframe-academy.eu

Prof. Dr. Philipp Brune

Philipp Brune has been Professor for Business Information Systems Engineering at Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences (HNU) since 2008.

Before joining HNU he worked for many years in software development, business analysis, project management and IT consulting in the financial services and automotive industries, namely for HypoVereinsbank (Germany’s second-largest bank at that time) and the BMW Group.

He holds a PhD in physics and studied Physics and Computer Science at the University of Karlsruhe (now Karlsruhe Institute of Technology - KIT). His research interests include diverse topics (/ a wide variety of topics), ranging from information security and business information systems engineering to mainframe computing, web and mobile development and software engineering education. He is a board member of the non-profit Academic Mainframe Consortium (AMC) and for many years has been teaching mainframe topics as an adjunct professor at the University of Applied Sciences Kempten and the J. W. Goethe University Frankfurt/Main.