About four years ago, Grim said Bank of America saw in the number of new college graduates with any mainframe training. That prompted the bank to become involved in IBM's Academic Initiative, which to develop mainframe training programs.

IBM said this week that 600 colleges, universities and high schools around the world are participating in the mainframe training program, which began in 2004.

The training initiative provides interns and new hires to Bank of America, while some members of its IT staff audit the initiative's courses and provide feedback to help tune the training to business needs.

IBM says it's mainframe revenue has grown in eight of the last 13 quarters. It did note that by 39% in the second quarter, mirroring server revenue declines for most vendors.

Competing vendors have been arguing that have become a strong alternative to mainframes.