In this episode of I Am a Mainframer, host Steven Dickens talks with Hunter Johnson from Broadcom’s Mainframe Software Division about how a non‑technical marketer builds a successful career in the mainframe ecosystem. Hunter shares his journey from healthcare and analytics marketing into mainframe, his work leading Broadcom’s Beyond Code initiative, and why he believes mainframe marketing is as much about education as it is about promotion.
Hunter recently joined the Open Mainframe Project Marketing Committee.
Hunter explains how Beyond Code focuses on workforce resiliency, change management, and efficiency and cost optimization—areas where mainframe customers face recurring challenges beyond just software features. He also reflects on the perception gap around mainframe, describing how many people still see it as a “mystical black box,” and why repositioning it as a modern, first‑class citizen in a hybrid enterprise is central to his work.
Watch Full Episode here:
https://youtu.be/a1PRgFMaI64?si=q2O70cRs5h6uDOTj
or
https://open.spotify.com/show/6YF0vWKGmI6aTz4pcJZAa0
Transcript:
Steven:
“Hello and welcome to another episode of the I Am a Mainframer Podcast. I’m your host as always, Steven Dickens. And today I’m joined by Hunter Johnson from Broadcom. Hey Hunter, welcome to the show.”
Hunter:
“Hi Steven, glad to be here.”
Steven:
“So let’s dive straight in, Hunter. Tell me a little bit about what you do for Broadcom and then we’ll sort of go back, get your origin story and really sort of drive the podcast from there.”
Hunter:
“Great. Sounds great. So I work within Broadcom’s Mainframe Software Division and I’m responsible for the marketing efforts of our Beyond Code initiative, as well as the foundational and open mainframe value stream that we have there. Beyond Code is an interesting portion of that. We can certainly maybe double click into that.”
Steven:
“Yeah, so I mean, you guys have—Lauren Valente has briefed me over that over the last, I don’t know how many years. I think it’s probably worth spending a bit of time, because people think Broadcom, they think software portfolio, they think about all the wonderful tools—CA1, CA7, you know, WatchTower recently. They think about all of your sort of great tools and may or may not have heard of Beyond Code. So do you want to maybe just unpack what that is for the listeners and the viewers?”
Hunter:
“Yeah, absolutely.”
Steven:
“What you want is a spot to deliver the value prop on demand?”
Hunter:
“That’s okay. It’s a great one and it’s something that our customers truly do appreciate the value of. What Beyond Code is, as the name suggests a bit—Beyond Code looks outside of all the wonderful software solutions that we provide our customers and looks at ways that we can go beyond delivering that code to provide value for them. And what we’ve noticed is that there are a few recurring challenges in the market, and it’s not specific to just Broadcom customers. But there are challenges around enabling workforce resiliency. We’ve all heard about the notorious skills gaps within the mainframe environment. There are certain solutions in the Beyond Code portfolio that help address that. Another part of that is how to help our customers manage change without resulting in disruption. Anytime you introduce change or modernize in a new way, there’s always that risk of disruption. So we work as a team to walk our customers through these changes. And lastly, just a great way to put it is that we help our customers optimize overall for efficiency and cost. And those are the three main areas where we see recurring challenges across the industry. And Beyond Code really sets out to resolve those.”
Steven:
“So that’s a fantastic summary, and I think it’s a really interesting program. I think from my perspective, so much of the narrative is around code, but so much of the operational kind of environment that these customers sit in, they need help just beyond the software solution. So, you know, particularly the skills stuff and the sort of placing of talent has always resonated for me. I think as well the sort of breadth of what Broadcom does to help its clients. It’s not just on Broadcom solutions that you’ll get stuck in. So I think there’s a lot of value there. But let’s maybe pivot a little bit. This is the I Am a Mainframer show. Let’s pivot a little bit about you. How did you get into the mainframe space? We talked off camera that you’re not technical. You are amongst friends there, neither am I. But—and I think it’s always fascinating—people think this is a technical space and you have to have a technical background. But how did you get into Broadcom? How did you get onto the mainframe?”
Hunter:
“Yeah, yeah. It’s an interesting journey. I can kind of give you the cliff-notes version of it. So really it begins with a marketing career trajectory. Back in, believe it or not, high school, which is a distant memory at this point, I took a marketing course my junior year and was very inspired by the instructor at the time. And I think at the time, when you’re that age, you think of marketing and you think of pretty posters and PowerPoint decks. And I quickly learned that marketing is much more than that, and I kind of fell in love with the psychology of marketing and creating messaging and things of that nature. So I pursued a degree in marketing and graduated in 2012 with that degree. Upon that graduation, I took a 10‑week internship—at the time, the organization was Allscripts Healthcare Solutions. And so I got to start in the electronic medical record space—from, you know, from 2012 to 2021 or so, yeah, 2021. So I was responsible for marketing to acute care hospital facilities and messaging on population health benefits and things of that nature. And then from there, I went to SAS Institute where I was a product marketing manager. And I loved that role. It was a great place to be. And some folks at Broadcom, an opportunity arose and they told me about it, twisted my arm a bit, and I have never looked back. I found my way into mainframe June 2022, and it is single‑handedly the best career choice I’ve made—moving over to Team Broadcom. It’s been wonderful.”
Steven:
“So what is that—three, four years now in the mainframe space? What was that reaction coming in? Because we’ve had hundreds of people on the show and a bunch of them have been kind of younger early‑stage professionals, and they’ve kind of talked about their first exposure to the platform and their first exposure. From a sort of—you were probably a mid‑career professional coming into the mainframe space from a marketing point of view. What was that sort of initial kind of perception—maybe a perception deficit—of the platform, and then what did you find when you came in?”
Hunter:
“Yeah, yeah. So it really—I owe a lot of accolades to my colleagues who helped me quickly get up to speed on all things mainframe. But there is a perception, you know, as I— even informally, as I talked with friends about my move to Broadcom and working on mainframe, a lot of them kind of looked at me with…”
Steven:
“Actually, we both went through that ahead at the same time. People go, ‘Mainframe? Like, why would you do that?’, right?”
Hunter:
“And I think that perception is really unfortunate. Whenever you really learn the realities of the mainframe and how it really supports so much of our global economy today—even day‑to‑day transactions that we’re making—it really all goes through the mainframe. And when you zoom out and you see that big picture, you really see the value of the platform. The uptime, resiliency—unparalleled. And I think there’s really an education deficit on the general benefits of the mainframe, particularly among those individuals who may have more of a cloud or, you know, distributed background, who may not be as familiar, right?”
Steven:
“Yeah, that’s been great. That’s the challenge as a marketer. With so many other solutions, you kind of start with neutral and you build from there. I feel a lot of the times from a marketing point of view on the mainframe experience, we’re building from a sort of negative to get people to neutral first and then to get people… Would you agree? I mean, has that been the experience? We’ve obviously got our converts and we’ve got our sort of fanboys and fangirls for the platform. But I feel the general perception is less positive. So as a marketer, you’ve kind of got to get people to be neutral first. Would you agree with that? Is that kind of your thoughts?”
Hunter:
“I 100% would agree. And I think it’s really just understanding what the mainframe is and what it is not. I think a lot of folks kind of think of the movies and, you know, the funny lines of ‘hacking into the mainframe.’ They see that as this mystical black box that sits in the basement and they forget about it. And they don’t always realize the importance of it. And once they realize what it is doing for organizations and honestly for them in their personal lives—things like banking and airline bookings and you name it—they move to neutral.”
Steven:
“I think that’s the move, right? For me, it’s how do we kind of position this as a modern platform. Modernization is kind of weaponized as a word to get people off. For me, it’s around ‘this is a modern platform.’ Yes, I talk about resilience and, you know, those have long been foundational elements. For me, it’s a case of people don’t realize what—almost what the… it’s almost the educational marketing is how it feels. Would you subscribe to that? Would that sort of… is that a lot of the motion that you guys seem to be taking?”
Hunter:
“Yeah, you know, it’s quite different whenever you think about organizations. We are messaging to our valued customers and those partners in the ecosystem. They obviously have a bit more awareness of value. I think, you know, you mentioned modernization, which is sort of becoming a buzzword in a way. It means different things to different people, but it is in fact a modern platform. And, you know, we’re hearing less of folks wanting to ‘quote‑unquote modernize the mainframe’ and more about ‘modernizing the enterprise around the mainframe.’ Because really opening it up, allowing API connectivity and really treating it as a first‑class citizen in the IT environment is the goal. And I think folks are really starting to see that.”
Steven:
“So, Hunter, moving back to you a little bit—a fascinating conversation. I mean, we have a lot of technical conversations on this podcast. I think it’s fascinating to kind of double click on that marketing piece. So, one of the questions I ask—and it’s interesting, I think a lot of people listen to the show to kind of think about where their careers are going—you talked about kind of your genesis story of getting into marketing, kind of being inspired by a high school teacher in that space. If you could go back to your sort of 21, 22‑year‑old self as you were embarking on your career, now you’ve got a few years’ experience, what would that advice be? What would you say? As I say, a lot of younger professionals listen to this show. And I think it’d be fascinating—you know, you’ve kind of come through medical records, SAS, to the mainframe kind of…”
Hunter:
“Yeah, it’s, you know, if I had that crystal ball, I could go back in time. The real unfiltered answer is I would tell myself to buy Bitcoin with every spare dollar I have. I think it was worth about $5 back in 2012 and around $95,000 now. But in all seriousness, I think I would continue my path in marketing, and I would urge myself to stick with that. But the only change I would make really is to simultaneously gear up and start studying the mainframe at an earlier age. And, you know, that would entail taking some online education courses, just becoming more well‑versed, knowing that it would really bolster my career and knowledge base going forward. I would recommend that for myself if I could move back.”
Steven:
“So get technical earlier. Is that the takeaway?”
Hunter:
“That’s absolutely right. So rather than in the last three years trying to quickly learn, I would have taken my time and really let it absorb over a period of a decade or more. That would have been ideal.”
Steven:
“And I want to sort of—one final question. I ask this of everybody. I’m really interested to get your perspective. You get a crystal ball, you get the chance to sort of look in. Where do you see the mainframe maybe three, five years from now? So not the next generation, not the next release of code, but a bit further—not, you know, 20 years down the road because I think none of us can see what’s going to happen then. But maybe where do you see kind of the next three to five years of the platform? What’s your perspective there?”
Hunter:
“Yeah, yeah. That’s an interesting one. Let’s see. So I think a lot of this may be somewhat true today, but maybe not widespread. And I do think in the next five years, we will see the mainframe, as I mentioned, become that first‑class citizen in the hybrid enterprise—meaning that it’s not just a system that runs on COBOL. And I think organizations will start thinking about bringing up the rest of the enterprise around the mainframe rather than, you know, modernizing off of it. I think that will be a conversation of the past. And that’s really, I think, due to the value of it that will become more obvious. You know, if you think about regulations becoming stricter, budgets are becoming tighter, expectations for reliability are ever‑increasing. So I think it’s going to shine wonderfully in the next five years. And you think about the efficiency, the security, nine‑nines of availability, right? So that’s going to become harder to ignore. And I think we’ll see that ongoing in the next five years.”
Steven:
“Yeah, I think there’s a lot in that, especially the availability. We’ve had a rough year with cloud and, you know, mobile network outages. And I think it’s kind of moved into the public—almost front of mind for the public and IT decision‑makers—that they’re realizing, hey, my life gets increasingly difficult when this platform’s down. So I’m going to say this has been a fantastic conversation. It kind of proves you can build a career in the mainframe when you’ve got a host who’s not technical and a guest who’s not technical. So I think that’s a key takeaway for listeners. So, you’ve been watching another episode of the I Am a Mainframer Podcast. Just click like, share, send this to a friend. We’re trying to build the show and we’ll see you next time. Thank you very much for watching.”
OUTRO- Thank you for tuning in to the Mainframe Connect podcast. And this episode in the I Am a Mainframer series, sponsored by Phoenix Software International and by Vicom Infinity, a converged company. Like what you heard? Subscribe to get every episode. Or watch us online at openmainframeproject.org. Until next time, this is the Mainframe Connect podcast.
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