Martin Gorgazzi

Martin has always held a deep appreciation for the mission-critical reliability and industry-leading security of the mainframe. Today, Martin is passing on his passion and enthusiasm for IBM Z® technology to new mainframe professionals by mentoring interns, being active in the global mainframe community, advocating for the mainframe platform, and attending IBM Z events.

Paving the path

In 2023, a group of six interns joined Martin’s IT department and he became their mentor, sharing his expertise and passion for mainframe technology at HSBC. Martin viewed his role in coaching these interns as paving the path for the continuity of a highly skilled team. Two of the interns have already joined HSBC as full-time mainframe administrators.

Martin also enjoys actively engaging in the wider IBM Z mainframe community and events as a subject matter expert and sharing his knowledge to help others new to the platform. He is inspired by the “esprit du corps” or shared passion, support, and camaraderie among mainframers. Last year, he represented his company at an IBM Z Enterprise Computing Virtual Career Fair event held in Argentina to promote mainframe careers among students and prospective employees.

Advice to next generation of mainframers

For people interested in a mainframe career, Martin recommends the IBM Z Xplore learning platform. “The IBM Z Xplore platform makes learning about mainframe very accessible. You start your journey with a small challenge in a guided environment with a very precise objective, and you have the information you need to solve the challenge. At the end, you receive a badge that certifies your knowledge in that subject.” The badge is an industry-recognized digital skills achievement that is highly valued by current and prospective employers alike.

Martin’s number one reason for aspiring mainframers to start a journey with IBM Z is that they will be working with the most powerful, secure, and reliable IT platform in the world, at the cutting edge of technological innovation. In addition, new professionals will become part of the passionate and diverse global community of mainframers who love what they do, and love sharing knowledge with the people who want to learn about the mainframe.

A day in the life of a system administrator

Martin is one of eight employees working together as a closely integrated team. His main responsibility is administration of the bank’s IBM Z mainframe platform running on the z/OS® operating system. Martin’s day starts with monitoring to ensure systems are running as expected. Throughout the day, he may attend to tech support requests, engage with IBM support teams and vendors, and take part in architecting innovative solutions. He might try new features in the sandbox test environments or plan and then execute implementation in the production environment. And since mainframe technology is ever-evolving, Martin considers it essential to continuously advance his skills to stay on top of the latest IBM Z technology innovation and advancements, and views ongoing training courses and continuous learning to be a critical part of his job.

Innovating on a future-proof platform

Because IBM is always bringing out new hardware and software features, it’s up to Martin’s team to harness them for the benefit of his company and their clients. An example was their adoption of RESTful API technology through z/OS Connect Enterprise Edition to help accelerate innovation. The API technology allowed the bank to scale up without the need to procure additional central processors or processing power and facilitated the adoption of a new mobile and online app. Martin says it also enabled a leap in quality, going from asynchronous communication to synchronous while reducing the complexity of transaction processing. The bank also realized security gains by using PKI (public key infrastructure) with digital certificates both for server and client authentication.

Martin considers IBM Z to be a future-proof enterprise platform with industry-leading reliability, availability, and security with near zero downtime. “The mainframe will never let you down ... it has been an enterprise platform right from the start,” highlights Martin. “It’s not like other platforms that run an operating system that you can find on your desktop computer or on your laptop. The mainframe has been, and always is, cutting-edge innovation. Currently, we have quantum-safe cryptographic algorithms and AI technology in the processor. As far as I’m aware, it’s the only IT platform with AI inferencing capabilities in the processor.”