Are We in a Mainframe Renaissance?

Posted by Rick Fowler, TCC Director of Mainframe

I read an interesting interview on zTalk Business with Reg Harbeck. He interviewed Allan Zander, CEO of DataKinetics about the evolution of mainframe applications. Harbeck, R. (2017, March). The Mainframe’s Renaissance – A Conversation with Allan Zander. Retrieved January 02, 2018, from http://ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/trends/ztalk/allan-zander-on-helping-businesses-find-solutions/

Mr. Zander brought up some very interesting points during the interview. He stated that there is that the Fortune 500 are doing right now to make the mainframe play a larger role in the revenue-generating component than in the past. He stated “Applications that are on the mainframe tend to be applications that create revenue for fundamental large Fortune 500 companies so you know by nature now, they tend to be complex. They tend to be a little bit more evolved in what they are doing. They tend to have a little bit more associated with them so when you start talking about technologies like block chain, big data, or analytics and things like that, naturally, what is driving innovation in those areas is how do we increase our wallet share with our customers. How do we become more competitive? How do we use IUT as you know a competitive weapon to help us differentiate ourselves from the past?”

Mr. Zander discussed his vision of what is going to happen next in the mainframe space and referred to it as a “mainframe renaissance.” Here are some of his ideas regarding the future of mainframe computing:

• Transactional networks are going to grow more sophisticated
• To add more analytics and to do something with big data, you need attach that metadata to your transactions to start to mine for data intelligence
• Often the distributed world intersects and pulls data from the mainframe side of the house. This needs to be more easily accessible and those applications become more alive because maybe a disruptive technology enters the field, such as block chain
• “We want to make it easier from our customers to not worry about how you integrate some of the complex code that they’ve had and that they have running that is so core to their business to make it more accessible for them to actually access the data that they need.”
• “I really would kind of wish the world would stop at times thinking about the mainframe as a “legacy applications.” It is really not legacy. The fact that the mainframe has been around for a long time does not make it a legacy platform. The fact that the mainframe has been around for a long time makes it a tried, true, trusted, reliable, scalable platform and if you are a business that has a high transactional volume for what you need, you’ve got the most flexibility, the best price performance for what you have and the best options available to you is a platform like that. You know pick the best platform for the job that you have in mind and that is really where I think the mainframe comes into play.”

You can read the full interview here: http://ibmsystemsmag.com/mainframe/trends/ztalk/allan-zander-on-helping-businesses-find-solutions/.

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