DoC Students come 1st and 2nd in IBM's Mainframe Challenge Competition

Two DoC students Tim Kimber and Andy Gurden have come 1st and 2nd in IBM's very popular Mainframe Challenge Competition. The Competition attracts many applicants
from around the world and is designed to help students become more familiar with IBM's mainframes systems and to give them real world skills for later employment in the mainframe market. The top 3 winners received a Sony PlayStation and were also given the opportunity to visit IBM's Development Laboratory at Hursley near Winchester to see mainframes and other innovative technologies in action.

All three stages of the contest were linked so that competitors build on their skills and competencies on the Mainframe as they complete each section. Students were guided by an experienced member of the IBM programming team and asked to complete a series of tasks, each with increasing difficulty.

The final section of the competition was very challenging, and required extensive work where students had to use the skills they had learnt in the previous stages of the contest to implement a new solution based on new technology within MQ Series.

Our congratulations go out to Tim and Andy on this excellent achievement.

Written by: rsi