Kenya and South African Students have taken the first four positions in the global finals of IBM’s Master the Mainframe competition.
The competition, which is part of company’s System z Academic Initiative, allows students around the world take charge of world-class zEnterprise computing platforms and showcase their talents, while learning sought-after enterprise computing skills.
For the first time, it was open to students from Kenyan universities, attracting over 250 entries.
“We are impressed by the unprecedented amount of interest in this competition from students in both Kenya and South Africa, which speaks to the growing innovative culture in the continent. These students will now have the opportunity to test their skills on the global stage and compete with their peers as well as identify potential employment opportunities on a global stage,” says Andy Hoiles, IBM Server Solutions sales division.
Two Kenyans, Raphael Kiminya Laibuni from Strathmore University, and Margaret Adhiambo Ondeng from Kenyatta University, emerged overall winners of the Kenyan competition and will join 43 other top students in the global finals of the competition.
In South Africa, Johannes Siecker from FNB Hogan Academy and Rijnard van Tonder from Stellenboch University will represent the country at the global World Cup in New York City on 7 April 2014.
From 10th March, the students started to work tenuously, receiving training from qualified zEnterprise instructors. Competitors will learn how to sharpen their enterprise computing skills, learn about advanced development tools, and find out how the platform supports cloud, big data & analytics, mobile and security initiatives.
The competitor will embark on building a business application on the mainframe. Competitors will then travel to New York City to showcase their application to a panel of judges from across the IT industry in New York City on 7 April.
Students who enter the competition also have the opportunity to identify job opportunities supporting mainframe environments. To help in this process, IBM has created Systemzjobs.com. The job board is a resource to link IBM System z clients and partners with students and professionals seeking System z job opportunities and regularly features more than 1 000 mainframe-related jobs.