Get to Know the Z Center of Excellence: Saghi Amirsoleymani

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Mainframe technology is a foundational piece of businesses everywhere, powering the transactions that make day-to-day life possible. Driven in part by the prospects of a serious skills shortage on the mainframe and systems like IBM Z, Rocket Software created a z Center of Excellence (zCOE) comprised of our foremost mainframe experts to share insights and guidance to our customers as they navigate the complexities that come with mainframe modernization.

But who are those experts, and what kind of experience and expertise do they have to share? We’re sitting down with the members of our newly founded Center of Excellence to get to know them and learn more about how they are supporting the IBM Z community.

First up, Saghi Amirsoleymani. Saghi is Vice President of Worldwide Sales and leads the Z Center of Excellence at Rocket Software.

Tell us about your role at Rocket Software.

I’m currently the Vice President of Worldwide Sales and lead the Z Center of Excellence here at Rocket Software. I lead our global sales and retention efforts and enable our sales teams to deliver superior experiences for our customers. I am also the lead of our team of IBM Z experts to help support customers by highlighting new tools, techniques, and best practices to help them better manage their mainframe needs and maximize efficiency and reduce costs.

Can you tell us about yourself and your career path leading up to Rocket Software?

I was a business major in college, but I had taken a class on SQL and eventually found my way into the world of Db2. From there I was hired by IBM, becoming one of the youngest people on the team by nearly 20 years. My time with IBM is where I really learned the ropes of the mainframe world, starting out working on support for products. After over 16 years at IBM, I found my way to Rocket Software where I went from building IBM products to selling them. My experiences over the years have helped me gain a deep understanding of our customers’ mainframe modernization needs and pain points.

What are you most passionate about when it comes to IBM Z?

For me, it’s all about the community. The IBM Z community is special in my opinion—partly because I’ve learned so much from the people involved in it. It’s a very tight-knit community of professionals and we’ve all been interconnected throughout our careers. Another exciting component of IBM Z and the zCOE is that I can help give back to the people who taught me so much throughout the years. Many of the people involved in the zCOE at Rocket Software are former customers or even come from IBM. There’s a huge volume of collective knowledge that we all have to offer and being able to do so in a way that helps solve real problems is very exciting. Another part of the space that I love is that there’s always more to learn—even today I’m still learning and educating myself. There’s such a wealth of knowledge that exists in the space that it can easily take over five years to learn the mainframe, and even then, you still won’t know everything.

Find out how Rocket Software is helping businesses modernize without disruption.