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Renewing the Mainframe

April Hickel
BMC

Many have assumed that the mainframe is a dying entity, but instead, a mainframe renaissance is underway. Despite this notion, we are ushering in a future of more strategic investments, increased capacity, and leading innovations. Fast-growing organizations are meeting this progression with new approaches to improve their agility and speed while entirely integrating the mainframe within their enterprise systems and mechanisms.

According to the 2022 BMC Mainframe Survey, a study conducted of more than 1,000 mainframe and IT professionals globally, over 60% of respondents reported that their investment in the platform is increasing. These increases tie directly to changing workloads on the platform as transaction and data volumes and the number of databases increase more rapidly — and unpredictably — than ever before. This only further illustrates that capacity is growing across all sizes of mainframe shops.

To set the pace, strong organizations have strategically integrated their mainframe with their enterprise processes. Enterprises are prioritizing their efforts on developing software more quickly and more often. They are also achieving higher quality releases with DevOps and AIOps to improve performance, availability, security, and compliance to effectively secure mainframe environments. Mainframes play a valuable role in enterprise innovation to deliver real-world results. The survey shows that adopters of AIOps and DevOps are seeing clear value from their investments, and the adoption of new tools and processes in key areas like DevOps, DevSecOps, and AIOps all increased from the previous year.

Additional survey findings include:

■ 65% of respondents report the combined use of AIOps in their mainframe and distributed environments. With the increase in AIOps adoption, more enterprises include mainframes in their enterprise wide AIOps initiatives, reinforcing the mainframe as a valuable platform for innovation.

■ 70% of large organizations reported DevOps use within their mainframe environment.

■ For the third year, security and compliance lead the list of priorities for mainframe organizations, with 67% of respondents citing both as top issues, a 6% increase over last year.

In AIOps, adoption is growing as implementation barriers decline. The mainframe is moving firmly into enterprise AIOps, as witnessed by the decreased use in non-mainframe environments and increased use in combined environments. The adoption of DevOps on the mainframe also continues to be a trend, as DevOps and collaboration deliver real-world results.

Finally, there is a growing awareness of the need to effectively secure mainframe environments, especially as the mainframe becomes a more integral part of enterprise security initiatives.

A Familiar Interface for Mainframe Development

Timely responses are a must when meeting the expectations of large companies. The survey shows that four out of five organizations look to update applications more often, with 14% updating their mainframe applications each day. However, attracting, onboarding, and retaining talent can be a challenge. Older mainframe code can be complicated and a majority of colleges and universities have abandoned the "green screen" teaching method in modern integrated development environments (IDEs) like Visual Studio Code (VS Code). As a matter of fact, the 2022 Stack Overflow Developer Survey found that almost 75% of respondents said they used VS Code in the past year and plan on continuing to work with it in the future.

In order to meet expectations for faster software delivery life cycles and beat staffing challenges, companies are integrating tools that get rid of obstructions that prevent a wider array of developers from accessing the mainframe. It holds true that developers should be able to leverage interfaces that are easy to comprehend and utilize while having the ability to troubleshoot code on even the most advanced systems.

An improved developer experience not only helps attract new talent to the mainframe; it also gives both new and seasoned developers a familiar environment to work in, decreasing onboarding time and enabling them to be more productive, faster.

The Renaissance Prevails

The mainframe platform is evolving at a rapid pace as more organizations apply an open-borders approach that utilizes mainframe, distributed, and cloud systems across applications. It is essential to fully integrate the mainframe with enterprise development and operations practices to ensure agility, resilience, and security while making work on the mainframe seamless.

April Hickel is VP, Intelligent Z Optimization and Transformation, at BMC

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Renewing the Mainframe

April Hickel
BMC

Many have assumed that the mainframe is a dying entity, but instead, a mainframe renaissance is underway. Despite this notion, we are ushering in a future of more strategic investments, increased capacity, and leading innovations. Fast-growing organizations are meeting this progression with new approaches to improve their agility and speed while entirely integrating the mainframe within their enterprise systems and mechanisms.

According to the 2022 BMC Mainframe Survey, a study conducted of more than 1,000 mainframe and IT professionals globally, over 60% of respondents reported that their investment in the platform is increasing. These increases tie directly to changing workloads on the platform as transaction and data volumes and the number of databases increase more rapidly — and unpredictably — than ever before. This only further illustrates that capacity is growing across all sizes of mainframe shops.

To set the pace, strong organizations have strategically integrated their mainframe with their enterprise processes. Enterprises are prioritizing their efforts on developing software more quickly and more often. They are also achieving higher quality releases with DevOps and AIOps to improve performance, availability, security, and compliance to effectively secure mainframe environments. Mainframes play a valuable role in enterprise innovation to deliver real-world results. The survey shows that adopters of AIOps and DevOps are seeing clear value from their investments, and the adoption of new tools and processes in key areas like DevOps, DevSecOps, and AIOps all increased from the previous year.

Additional survey findings include:

■ 65% of respondents report the combined use of AIOps in their mainframe and distributed environments. With the increase in AIOps adoption, more enterprises include mainframes in their enterprise wide AIOps initiatives, reinforcing the mainframe as a valuable platform for innovation.

■ 70% of large organizations reported DevOps use within their mainframe environment.

■ For the third year, security and compliance lead the list of priorities for mainframe organizations, with 67% of respondents citing both as top issues, a 6% increase over last year.

In AIOps, adoption is growing as implementation barriers decline. The mainframe is moving firmly into enterprise AIOps, as witnessed by the decreased use in non-mainframe environments and increased use in combined environments. The adoption of DevOps on the mainframe also continues to be a trend, as DevOps and collaboration deliver real-world results.

Finally, there is a growing awareness of the need to effectively secure mainframe environments, especially as the mainframe becomes a more integral part of enterprise security initiatives.

A Familiar Interface for Mainframe Development

Timely responses are a must when meeting the expectations of large companies. The survey shows that four out of five organizations look to update applications more often, with 14% updating their mainframe applications each day. However, attracting, onboarding, and retaining talent can be a challenge. Older mainframe code can be complicated and a majority of colleges and universities have abandoned the "green screen" teaching method in modern integrated development environments (IDEs) like Visual Studio Code (VS Code). As a matter of fact, the 2022 Stack Overflow Developer Survey found that almost 75% of respondents said they used VS Code in the past year and plan on continuing to work with it in the future.

In order to meet expectations for faster software delivery life cycles and beat staffing challenges, companies are integrating tools that get rid of obstructions that prevent a wider array of developers from accessing the mainframe. It holds true that developers should be able to leverage interfaces that are easy to comprehend and utilize while having the ability to troubleshoot code on even the most advanced systems.

An improved developer experience not only helps attract new talent to the mainframe; it also gives both new and seasoned developers a familiar environment to work in, decreasing onboarding time and enabling them to be more productive, faster.

The Renaissance Prevails

The mainframe platform is evolving at a rapid pace as more organizations apply an open-borders approach that utilizes mainframe, distributed, and cloud systems across applications. It is essential to fully integrate the mainframe with enterprise development and operations practices to ensure agility, resilience, and security while making work on the mainframe seamless.

April Hickel is VP, Intelligent Z Optimization and Transformation, at BMC

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 ...

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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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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 ...