Stream: Hungaroring
Time: 16:30 - 17:15
AI is fundamentally changing what working with CICS looks like — and the professionals who understand how to work with AI agents, not just alongside them, will define the next generation of mainframe expertise. In this session we want to have practical conversation for CICS practitioners at every career stage: developers, systems programmers, architects, and operations specialists. We'll cut through the hype to examine how AI is already reshaping day-to-day work in CICS environments — from diagnosing transaction failures and getting Subject Matter Expertise, to onboarding new team members and preserving the institutional knowledge that keeps your systems running. Drawing on real deployments with IBM Z customers and internal IBM teams, we'll explore: • The productivity shift that's already happening — how AI agents integrated with CICS TS 6.3 are reducing time-to-resolution for incidents, improving productivity, and giving junior engineers a fast path to Z expertise • The "sysprog in a box" effect — how AI agents grounded in your organisation's own operational knowledge can answer the questions that used to require escalating to a senior specialist • What the skills gap actually looks like in 2026 — with 66% of the mainframe workforce now Gen Z or Millennial, and experienced SMEs retiring at pace, the pressure to transfer knowledge faster has never been greater • The career opportunity — why CICS practitioners who embrace AI tooling are becoming more valuable, not less; and what skills to build now to stay ahead Whether you're a 20-year CICS veteran wondering what AI means for your expertise, or a newer engineer trying to ramp up faster on a complex estate, this session will give you a grounded, honest picture of how AI is changing the work — and what to do about it.
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Tom Baskerville leads integration for the CICS AI team, delivering enhancements such as the CICS MCP Server in CICS TS 6.3 and driving AI innovation across the platform. He previously spent eight years advancing CICS modernisation, delivering key capabilities including JCICSX, a Red Hat‑certified Ansible collection for CMCI‑based and standalone CICS region provisioning, enhancements to CICS Explorer, and the CICS GraphQL API Server. His work focuses on modernising CICS through automation, APIs, and AI. Tom is an active member of the WAVEZ GS UK Working Group and helps organise WAVEZ events throughout the year, including the WAVEZ Spring Event conference.
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