Ensono Nurtures the Next Generation of Mainframe Talent with Interskill Learning

Our aim is to build an always-on supply of mainframe talent to help our clients overcome their mainframe staffing challenges. It’s an ambitious undertaking but we’re committed to investing in the next generation of mainframers. The Mainframe Academy has been a great success and Interskill’s engaging training resources play a vital role.

Laura Sherwin, Senior Manager, Mainframe Systems Training and Development

Ensono is a leading hybrid IT managed services provider with deep expertise in mainframe, cloud, and complex infrastructure. Known as a relentless ally to enterprise clients, Ensono helps organizations modernize mission-critical systems and scale confidently—without disruption. With a long-standing legacy in mainframe and a commitment to innovation, Ensono invests in developing future-ready talent to ensure service continuity and client confidence. The Mainframe Academy, in partnership with Interskill Learning, is a cornerstone of that strategy.

Challenge: Creating a sustainable mainframe workforce

Ensono is renowned for its mission-critical mainframe management, optimization, and modernization capabilities—core to ensuring reliable enterprise operations. These skills are especially valuable today, when many of the “original” mainframe experts across the industry are approaching retirement age.

In order to ensure an ongoing and sustainable transfer of knowledge and skills between generations — and to ensure its mainframe teams remain ahead of the curve — the managed services provider developed the Ensono Mainframe Academy and implemented a mainframe upskilling program.

Methodology: A Two-Pronged Approach to Mainframe Training

To meet its workforce development goals, Ensono partnered with Interskill Learning, the world’s leading provider of mainframe-focused digital training.

Kudos to you Interskill, because your training has worked really, really, well for us! It’s just the whole package and it fits very neatly into what we’re trying to do. It has helped us scale the number of trainees we can accept and to expand the Mainframe Academy globally.

Laura Sherwin, Senior Manager, Mainframe Systems Training and Development

With Interskill, Ensono implemented a dual-solution approach to address its mainframe training needs:

• Ensono Mainframe Academy: An entry-level internship and apprenticeship program designed for new-to-mainframe personnel, providing a foundational understanding of mainframe technologies through hands-on activities and mentoring.
• Workforce-Scale Mainframe Upskilling: A comprehensive training program aimed at all levels of Ensono mainframe personnel, from junior to senior, to enhance skills and adapt to evolving demands.

Solutions: An Overview of Ensono’s Mainframe Academy & Workforce-Scale Mainframe Upskilling Programs

1. Ensono Mainframe Academy
   
   Ensono’s industry renowned Mainframe Academy is a 3-6 month internship
   and apprenticeship program that provides a foundational understanding of
   mainframe, hardware, networking, databases, storage, automation, scheduling,
   and more through hands-on activities and mentoring.
   
   Key Benefits:

• Structured training: Offers a structured program to help early-career professionals quickly gain essential mainframe knowledge.
• Reduced time-to-productivity: Accelerates onboarding with targeted learning paths, hands-on labs, and mentorship.
• Addresses skills gap: Proactively cultivates new professionals to address the aging workforce and supports succession planning.
• Scalable training: Combines live instruction with Interskill eLearning for consistent, scalable delivery across multiple cohorts, ensuring widespread competency across locations and teams.
• Increased engagement: Offers gamified learning experiences (badges, points, and progress tracking) to boost motivation and engagement while showing a clear pathway forward.
• Practical focus: Goes beyond theory and emphasizes real-world application through simulations and collaborative learning.
• Ensures service delivery: Enables Ensono to maintain mission-critical services without disruption by having well-trained, capable professionals ready to step in as needed.
• Enhances employer brand: Positions Ensono as a forward-thinking company that invests in its talent.

2. Workforce-Scale Mainframe Skilling
   
   This initiative focuses on training staff of all levels and benchmarking the skills of all Ensono mainframe personnel to ensure agility and resilience, so they are prepared for evolving demands.
   
   Key Benefits

• Reduces dependency: Training reduces depending on a few experienced individuals by broadening expertise across the team.
• Increases workforce agility: Upskilled personnel can adapt quickly to new technologies, tools, or client environments.
• Enhances service quality and reliability: Better-trained personnel make fewer errors, leading to more stable and secure mainframe operations.
• Improves employee engagement and retention: Employees at all levels see clear pathways for growth, which improves engagement and reduces turnover.
• Standardizes knowledge: Targeted training delivers a common language and baseline understanding of mainframe principles and tools across teams and geographies.
• Enhances collaboration between junior and senior staff: Shared training materials help newer staff communicate more effectively with seasoned experts and make mentoring and knowledge transfer more efficient.
• Reduces business risk: Broad-based training minimizes the impact of employee departures or absences.
• Drives client confidence and trust: Clients see Ensono as a provider with a consistently capable, up-to-date workforce.

Interskill helps me feel more confident in my ability to do my job and to actually learn and keep learning about the mainframe.

Kate Narain, Associate Mainframe Systems Programmer and Ensono Mainframe Academy Alumna

Outcomes

• Ensono personnel earned over 1,600 IBM digital badges, demonstrating the program’s success
• 90% of learners reported using what they learned at least once a week
• The training increased employee confidence and engagement

The training program enabled Ensono to:

• Address the mainframe skills gap and support succession planning
• Ensure business continuity and minimize operational risk
• Improve service quality and reliability
• Drive client confidence and trust

Looking Ahead

Ensono’s partnership with Interskill Learning has enabled the company to build a resilient, future-ready mainframe workforce. By leveraging scalable, global digital learning and aligning it with internal mentorship and career development programs, Ensono ensures that its teams are well-equipped to manage mission-critical systems for the next generation.

This level of workforce excellence enables Ensono to remain a relentless ally to its clients, and signal to budding and current mainframe technologists that Ensono is an ideal organization at which to build a mainframe career.

About Ensono

Ensono is an expert technology advisor, innovation partner and managed service provider. As a relentless ally, we specialize in helping enterprise clients transform their organization, innovate new and disruptive technologies, and optimize their IT operations to achieve better business outcomes. Our dedicated team works across hybrid environments with services that span consulting, mainframe and application modernization, public cloud migration and cloud-native development. With certified experts in Azure and recognized as Microsoft Datacenter Transformation Partner of the Year, Ensono has over 3,800 associates globally and is headquartered in greater Chicago. Visit www.ensono.com to learn more.

Laura Sherwin

Laura Sherwin is the Senior Manager of Mainframe Systems Training & Development at Ensono, where she oversees Mainframe Academy training programs. Through MFA, she has personally helped over 85 new mainframers start their careers at Ensono. As a former mainframer herself with 15 years of experience in the US defense and financial payments sectors, she appreciates having a vast range of virtual Interskill trainings available for today’s mainframe talent. Laura is located near Omaha, NE and is active on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurasherwin/.

Kate Narain

Kate joined Ensono in 2024 as a new graduate from Southern Connecticut State University with a BS in Math/Data Science.  She graduated from the Ensono MFA internship program in 2024 and currently is an Associate Mainframe Systems Programmer at Ensono in Global Operations on the Mainframe Network team. During her time at Ensono, Kate has accumulated 28 Interskill badges!

Kate is located in Madison, CT, and invites you to connect with her on LinkedIn at Kate Narain LinkedIn URL.

About Interskill

Interskill is the core mainframe workforce skilling resource of mainframe organizations around the world. Led by CEO and Lifetime IBM Champion, Darren Surch, Interskill delivers over a million hours of mainframe training annually and powers 80% of all IBM digital badges awarded by IBM for mainframe training. Strategic, data-driven, mainframe workforce training that produces real learning, real progress, real results, real ROI!

Visit www.staging.interskill.com to learn more.