The State of the Mainframe report from Syncsort revealed an increased focus on traditional data infrastructure optimization to control costs and help fund strategic organizational projects like AI, machine learning and predictive analytics in addition to widespread concern about meeting security and compliance requirements.
The study, which polled over 220 respondents from a wide range of IT disciplines including executives, architects, system programmers, application analysts, database administrators, operations managers and security professionals, identified five trends that reflect the vital role mainframe data plays in supporting business and operational intelligence initiatives:
1. Mainframe infrastructure optimization enables new strategic projects
The mainframe remains strategic to businesses, with 57% of respondents stating it will continue to be the main hub for business-critical applications this year, and where 43% will run revenue-generating services. Given the mainframe’s key role in so many organizations, cost control is a priority: 51% said they planned to cut IT costs by optimizing mainframe resources.
2. Cost reduction, security and compliance continue to be top challenges
Reducing general processor CPU usage and related costs (70%), meeting security and compliance requirements (63%) and meeting SLAs (55%) again ranked as the top three challenges organizations face in 2018. To improve performance and save money, 56% of respondents are leveraging their investment in zIIP engines while 44% are increasing their DB2 performance.
3. Integrating mainframe data with modern analytics tools enables enterprise-wide data views
44% of respondents chose integrating mainframe data with modern analytics tools as a top organizational priority, and 23% said they already use Big Data tools (like Splunk and Hadoop) to monitor mainframe and other enterprise data together in a single dashboard.
4. System Management Facilities (SMF) and z/OS log data will play an increased role in addressing security and compliance mandates
54% of respondents ranked monitoring SMF and log file data as most important for security on the mainframe, followed closely by having an audit trail of SMF data (53%) and regularly auditing and reviewing incident response (52%).
5. Mainframe data analysis and movement across platforms is a priority
Mainframe organizations continue to find tracking their data a challenge: 53% of organizations say they lack full visibility into their data movement, compared with 61% last year. While the downward trend is encouraging, this remains an area of risk that must be addressed to ensure security and compliance initiatives are met.
The study also showed that mainframe environments remain a place of robust investment. In fact, 32% of respondents report increased spending for developing new mainframe applications compared with just 24% last year, and another 32% reported increased investment in mainframe data analytics.
“It’s clear that traditional data environments, including mainframe and IBM i, remain central to large enterprises’ business,” said David Hodgson, Chief Product Officer, Syncsort. “Our annual State of the Mainframe research confirms what we are seeing across our more than 7,000 customers worldwide: while many are turning to Big Data analytics platforms to meet compliance and security requirements, they continue to successfully use the mainframe and IBM i to run revenue-generating services, requiring them to optimize their data infrastructure to improve performance and control costs.”
The Latest
If there's one thing we should tame in today's data-driven marketing landscape, this would be data debt, a silent menace threatening to undermine all the trust you've put in the data-driven decisions that guide your strategies. This blog aims to explore the true costs of data debt in marketing operations, offering four actionable strategies to mitigate them through enhanced marketing observability ...
Gartner has highlighted the top trends that will impact technology providers in 2024: Generative AI (GenAI) is dominating the technical and product agenda of nearly every tech provider ...
In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 4 - Part 1, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) discusses artificial intelligence and network management ...
The integration and maintenance of AI-enabled Software as a Service (SaaS) applications have emerged as pivotal points in enterprise AI implementation strategies, offering both significant challenges and promising benefits. Despite the enthusiasm surrounding AI's potential impact, the reality of its implementation presents hurdles. Currently, over 90% of enterprises are grappling with limitations in integrating AI into their tech stack ...
In the intricate landscape of IT infrastructure, one critical component often relegated to the back burner is Active Directory (AD) forest recovery — an oversight with costly consequences ...
eBPF is a technology that allows users to run custom programs inside the Linux kernel, which changes the behavior of the kernel and makes execution up to 10x faster(link is external) and more efficient for key parts of what makes our computing lives work. That includes observability, networking and security ...
Data mesh, an increasingly important decentralized approach to data architecture and organizational design, focuses on treating data as a product, emphasizing domain-oriented data ownership, self-service tools and federated governance. The 2024 State of the Data Lakehouse report from Dremio presents evidence of the growing adoption of data mesh architectures in enterprises ... The report highlights that the drive towards data mesh is increasingly becoming a business strategy to enhance agility and speed in problem-solving and innovation ...
Too much traffic can crash a website ... That stampede of traffic is even more horrifying when it's part of a malicious denial of service attack ... These attacks are becoming more common, more sophisticated and increasingly tied to ransomware-style demands. So it's no wonder that the threat of DDoS remains one of the many things that keep IT and marketing leaders up at night ...
Today, applications serve as the backbone of businesses, and therefore, ensuring optimal performance has never been more critical. This is where application performance monitoring (APM) emerges as an indispensable tool, empowering organizations to safeguard their applications proactively, match user expectations, and drive growth. But APM is not without its challenges. Choosing to implement APM is a path that's not easily realized, even if it offers great benefits. This blog deals with the potential hurdles that may manifest when you actualize your APM strategy in your IT application environment ...