BUFFALO, N.Y. —  Mainframe may be an unfamiliar concept to many people, but leaders at M&T Bank and IBM say it's the computer that powers the majority of the worlds transactions.

"This is the computer that took NASA to the moon and is still taking NASA many places today. We use it in banking. It's sort of like the beating heart of our organism if the bank was a human body," said Sonny Sonnenstein, M&T's senior vice president and chief information officer of consumer, business & digital banking.

z/OS is the operating system that powers IBM Z mainframe computers but there is a significant gap between the number of people familiar with it and the jobs available. Three and a half years ago, IBM launched a Z skills initiative, which it has now expanded with a brand-new Z infrastructure apprenticeship accelerator. Its first local program of this nationwide effort is the new partnership with M&T for the Z Development Program.

"M&T is able to use our curriculum and our learning and skills maps and able to train their own apprentices for new collar jobs," said IBM director for career and skills Kelli Jordan.

ZDP focuses on finding people who have not traditionally had opportunities for good paying technology jobs. The companies' focus on inclusion, equity, and diversity and the apprenticeship does not require a four-year college degree.

"We know that there's more than 11 million Americans that are unemployed," Jordan said. "We also know that more than 67 percent of the working age population doesn't have a four-year degree. That's why this idea of new collar roles, jobs that require skills but not necessarily a degree is so important."

M&T is current recruiting for the three-month virtual program and plans to select roughly 10 people for a two-year apprenticeship from that pool. Sonnestein said even people who are not selected will be gaining valuable skills from the 12-week program.

"We need people who can program on this machine and make it sing for us and we're excited about the ZDP program and infusing some new talent into this environment to help us get better," he said.

IBM said it's hired more than 500 apprentices and M&T hopes its first ten are just the beginning. The companies say these types of apprenticeship programs, which had typically been reserved for the trades in the past, are all the more important during a pandemic.

"With these types of investments underway, all of the momentum around bringing people back to work, especially after the pandemic, this is a great way to show how innovation leads to path of economic recovery," Jordan said.

Sonnenstein said the initiative will go well with the tech hub M&T is working on in Buffalo's Seneca One tower.