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Enterprises Moving Fast to Adopt AI to Accelerate Mainframe Modernization

The survey also reaffirmed that while modernization projects are delivering significant financial benefits, many organizations continue to face skills shortages, preventing the transformation of complex, mission-critical systems.

Image
Kyndryl

As business leaders face economic, competitive, technological and regulatory challenges, they are increasingly seeking to transform and derive new value from their IT estate, including the mainframe. The survey among 500 business and IT leaders reveals that 86% of respondents are quickly adopting AI and generative AI to accelerate their mainframe modernization initiatives.

A third of respondents indicated that the platform has become a foundation for running AI-enabled workloads.

Additionally, almost half aim to use generative AI to unlock and transform critical mainframe data into actionable insights.

According to the survey, IT modernization projects and patterns are yielding substantial business results, including triple-digit one-year return on investment (ROI) of 114% to 225% and collective savings of $11.9 billion annually.

Almost all organizations have opted for a hybrid IT strategy — a combination of modernizing on the mainframe, integrating with public/private cloud, and moving applications and data off the platform. Furthermore, 96% of respondents are migrating some workloads — on average 36% — to the cloud.

Respondents identified enterprise-wide observability as critical to effectively leveraging all data across their hybrid IT environment. In fact, 92% of respondents indicated that a single dashboard is important for monitoring their operations, but 85% stated they find it difficult to do this properly.

The survey also confirmed that many respondents are still grappling with a skills shortage, especially in new areas such as generative AI that can facilitate mainframe transformation and help alleviate the skills gap.

In addition, security skills are in high demand due to increasing regulatory compliance requirements, with almost all respondents flagging security as the key factor driving modernization decisions. With this increased pressure, the survey revealed that 77% of organizations are using external providers to deliver mainframe modernization projects.

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IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...

Enterprises Moving Fast to Adopt AI to Accelerate Mainframe Modernization

The survey also reaffirmed that while modernization projects are delivering significant financial benefits, many organizations continue to face skills shortages, preventing the transformation of complex, mission-critical systems.

Image
Kyndryl

As business leaders face economic, competitive, technological and regulatory challenges, they are increasingly seeking to transform and derive new value from their IT estate, including the mainframe. The survey among 500 business and IT leaders reveals that 86% of respondents are quickly adopting AI and generative AI to accelerate their mainframe modernization initiatives.

A third of respondents indicated that the platform has become a foundation for running AI-enabled workloads.

Additionally, almost half aim to use generative AI to unlock and transform critical mainframe data into actionable insights.

According to the survey, IT modernization projects and patterns are yielding substantial business results, including triple-digit one-year return on investment (ROI) of 114% to 225% and collective savings of $11.9 billion annually.

Almost all organizations have opted for a hybrid IT strategy — a combination of modernizing on the mainframe, integrating with public/private cloud, and moving applications and data off the platform. Furthermore, 96% of respondents are migrating some workloads — on average 36% — to the cloud.

Respondents identified enterprise-wide observability as critical to effectively leveraging all data across their hybrid IT environment. In fact, 92% of respondents indicated that a single dashboard is important for monitoring their operations, but 85% stated they find it difficult to do this properly.

The survey also confirmed that many respondents are still grappling with a skills shortage, especially in new areas such as generative AI that can facilitate mainframe transformation and help alleviate the skills gap.

In addition, security skills are in high demand due to increasing regulatory compliance requirements, with almost all respondents flagging security as the key factor driving modernization decisions. With this increased pressure, the survey revealed that 77% of organizations are using external providers to deliver mainframe modernization projects.

Hot Topics

The Latest

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom

From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...