According to Bird, those currently managing and maintaining the mainframe environment have spent the majority of their careers in this area and are looking forward to retirement. "We've identified a skills bubble and our clients that have mainframe investments today are looking for ways to effectively train and introduce new blood into their organization," he said.

The way IT managers with mainframe skills approach the ability to provision and maintain a key business service determines their value, according to Bird. "Mainframe thinking is all about a robust computing environment," he said.

People who understand the mainframe architecture tend to bring more to the table in terms of systems discipline, system architecture and being able to maintain the service levels and critical business applications for that organization, said Bird.

Individuals working in the IT discipline that display what Bird refers to as "large systems thinking" might be moved from an Intel or UNIX architecture into the mainframe role. "That's how they typically develop skills in house," he said.

"Most organizations that run mainframes today take individuals that show promise," said Bird.