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Mainframe Remains Critical to Business Operations

Despite the allure of new technologies that promise to deliver on digital transformation, the mainframe continues to dominate IT infrastructure, according to 2022 Survey Report: The State of the Mainframe, a report from Rocket Software based on a survey of 500 US IT professionals.

More than half (56%) of respondents say the mainframe still makes up the most of their IT infrastructure, followed by private cloud (20%) and distributed (15%). This illustrates the effectiveness and reliability of the mainframe and its ongoing role as a critical element in IT environments.

Modernizing the mainframe plays a critical role in helping businesses overcome some of their most pressing challenges, including protecting their investments in technology, closing the skills gap and integrating new technology for a unified IT environment. The survey reveals that modernizing in place — not ripping and replacing the mainframe — is the preferred method to update IT infrastructure. Respondents described their organizations’ current mainframe application and operations IT strategy as "modernizing in place" (56%), "operating as is" (27%) and "re-platforming" (17%).

Other key findings include:

Modernizing the mainframe

Modernizing the mainframe can help close the skills gap. As companies continue to face skills gaps in their talent pool, modernizing systems is the most popular way respondents are working to maintain talent pipelines with 45% of respondents citing it as the top method. Forty three percent of respondents plan to offer mainframe-specific education to help address the skills gap.

Implementing DevOps functionalities

Implementing DevOps functionalities presents a valuable opportunity to modernize the mainframe’s capabilities and performance. Forty four percent of respondents say their organization uses multiple tools for DevOps functionality on mainframe applications, but it is not a complete DevOps platform while 24% have a comprehensive platform for mainframe DevOps.

Integrating mainframe with cloud

Integration of the mainframe with the cloud is key. Leveraging the diversity of solutions available from cloud to mainframe and optimizing each layer to operate together will create the most effective, unified environment. Eighty-two percent of respondents are migrating at least some of their workloads and operations from mainframe to cloud, however only 4% are going completely cloud native. This trend towards hybrid environments emphasizes the need for integration and optimization.

"During a time of great disruption, organizations need to leverage their years of technology investments alongside the latest tools available to drive business forward," said Jeff Cherrington, Vice President, Product Management, System Z, Rocket Software. "As the findings of this report show, the mainframe continues to be reliable, secure and efficient. Modernizing the mainframe must be a top priority for IT leaders working to ensure their IT infrastructure is future-proof and to help close the skills gap many organizations are facing."

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Mainframe Remains Critical to Business Operations

Despite the allure of new technologies that promise to deliver on digital transformation, the mainframe continues to dominate IT infrastructure, according to 2022 Survey Report: The State of the Mainframe, a report from Rocket Software based on a survey of 500 US IT professionals.

More than half (56%) of respondents say the mainframe still makes up the most of their IT infrastructure, followed by private cloud (20%) and distributed (15%). This illustrates the effectiveness and reliability of the mainframe and its ongoing role as a critical element in IT environments.

Modernizing the mainframe plays a critical role in helping businesses overcome some of their most pressing challenges, including protecting their investments in technology, closing the skills gap and integrating new technology for a unified IT environment. The survey reveals that modernizing in place — not ripping and replacing the mainframe — is the preferred method to update IT infrastructure. Respondents described their organizations’ current mainframe application and operations IT strategy as "modernizing in place" (56%), "operating as is" (27%) and "re-platforming" (17%).

Other key findings include:

Modernizing the mainframe

Modernizing the mainframe can help close the skills gap. As companies continue to face skills gaps in their talent pool, modernizing systems is the most popular way respondents are working to maintain talent pipelines with 45% of respondents citing it as the top method. Forty three percent of respondents plan to offer mainframe-specific education to help address the skills gap.

Implementing DevOps functionalities

Implementing DevOps functionalities presents a valuable opportunity to modernize the mainframe’s capabilities and performance. Forty four percent of respondents say their organization uses multiple tools for DevOps functionality on mainframe applications, but it is not a complete DevOps platform while 24% have a comprehensive platform for mainframe DevOps.

Integrating mainframe with cloud

Integration of the mainframe with the cloud is key. Leveraging the diversity of solutions available from cloud to mainframe and optimizing each layer to operate together will create the most effective, unified environment. Eighty-two percent of respondents are migrating at least some of their workloads and operations from mainframe to cloud, however only 4% are going completely cloud native. This trend towards hybrid environments emphasizes the need for integration and optimization.

"During a time of great disruption, organizations need to leverage their years of technology investments alongside the latest tools available to drive business forward," said Jeff Cherrington, Vice President, Product Management, System Z, Rocket Software. "As the findings of this report show, the mainframe continues to be reliable, secure and efficient. Modernizing the mainframe must be a top priority for IT leaders working to ensure their IT infrastructure is future-proof and to help close the skills gap many organizations are facing."

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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 ...

Despite the frustrations, every engineer we spoke with ultimately affirmed the value and power of OpenTelemetry. The "sucks" moments are often the flip side of its greatest strengths ... Part 2 of this blog covers the powerful advantages and breakthroughs — the "OTel Rocks" moments ...

OpenTelemetry (OTel) arrived with a grand promise: a unified, vendor-neutral standard for observability data (traces, metrics, logs) that would free engineers from vendor lock-in and provide deeper insights into complex systems ... No powerful technology comes without its challenges, and OpenTelemetry is no exception. The engineers we spoke with were frank about the friction points they've encountered ...

Enterprises are turning to AI-powered software platforms to make IT management more intelligent and ensure their systems and technology meet business needs for efficiency, lowers costs and innovation, according to new research from Information Services Group ...

The power of Kubernetes lies in its ability to orchestrate containerized applications with unparalleled efficiency. Yet, this power comes at a cost: the dynamic, distributed, and ephemeral nature of its architecture creates a monitoring challenge akin to tracking a constantly shifting, interconnected network of fleeting entities ... Due to the dynamic and complex nature of Kubernetes, monitoring poses a substantial challenge for DevOps and platform engineers. Here are the primary obstacles ...

The perception of IT has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. What was once viewed primarily as a cost center has transformed into a pivotal force driving business innovation and market leadership ... As someone who has witnessed and helped drive this evolution, it's become clear to me that the most successful organizations share a common thread: they've mastered the art of leveraging IT advancements to achieve measurable business outcomes ...