The mainframe may have recently celebrated its 60th birthday, but it’s showing no signs of slowing down. According to Forrester, over two-thirds of IT hardware decision-makers currently rely on mainframes, and half of them plan to continue doing so over the long term.

Indeed, the future of the mainframe is looking bright. IBM recently reported that the z16 is outperforming previous generations, and with the explosion of machine learning and generative AI use cases accelerating the evolution of the next generation of the IBM mainframe, AI will continue to be central to the company’s overall revenue growth.

But a diamond anniversary doesn’t come without its share of challenges. Mainframes are still costly to run if not optimized and many need modernization. Expert mainframe skills in managing the platform and the mission-critical applications running on it remain challenging to find and retain.

It's time for a mindset change

As mainframes continue to deliver increasingly advanced features, the organizations that will get the most value from them will be those that are best positioned to take advantage of the new capabilities on offer. This means that mainframe teams need to undergo an evolution of their own.

Many of the processes, tools, and ways of working that were once so effective are now hindering efficiency, agility, and speed. Siloed mainframe and cloud development teams, coding languages, and DevOps processes are preventing the collaboration required to unleash the true value of the mainframe and the new generations of multi-lingual developer teams.

Five ways to ensure you get maximum value from your mainframe

1. Ensure the right workloads are running in the right place: A good place to start is by conducting an audit of the applications currently running on your mainframe. You might find that some would be better suited to the cloud, especially systems of engagement. You should prioritize which applications to migrate first by assessing the business impact and skills implications of moving them versus keeping them on the mainframe.
2. Modernize your mainframe and the applications running on it: Organizations that have unintentionally neglected their mainframes, and the applications on them, might find that these systems have become nightmarishly complex, costly to maintain, and risky to the business. Adopting an iterative approach to modernization and aligning initiatives to strategic business goals will make it much easier to prioritize, get buy-in for, and maximize value from modernization projects. An experienced partner can significantly accelerate and de-risk your modernization process while upskilling your staff and enabling them to focus on their critical day-to-day tasks. They will also be able to maintain the applications they have modernized to ensure their stability, and performance, and to support new feature development.
3. Build your mainframe talent pool: Recruiting mainframe talent isn’t easy, but if your organization is truly committed to modernizing the mainframe and treating it as a first-class citizen, you’ll find it a lot easier to attract people with the right skills. You can also grow your mainframe talent pool by thinking outside the box and widening your search parameters to include graduates, career switchers, retired professionals who want to have part-time work- a growing pool over the past years - and your existing team of cloud developers. Apprenticeship programs are another great way to build your pipeline.
4. Unify mainframe and distributed teams and standardize toolsets: Today’s mainframes support a wide range of modern programming languages and frameworks. These include popular languages like Python, Java, and JavaScript, open developer tools, as well as open-source frameworks for AI and machine learning. Translating COBOL (computer programming language) into modern languages is one approach, but with AI-assistive tooling, making COBOL more accessible would make recruitment easier and help unite mainframe and cloud developer skills by osmosis. There are many integrated DevOps tools and processes available to integrate mainframe and distributed teams and standardize the way they work. The result can be greater efficiency and agility, accelerated release timelines, reduced risk when legacy mainframe staff leave the business, and ultimately, better outcomes for your customers.
5. Consider moving your mainframe out of your data center and closer to the cloud: Application latency and data egress costs can complicate IT transformation and innovation efforts. Moving your mainframe to a data center near your chosen cloud services provider to enable a direct connection can unlock new paths to value. This “cloud-connected” mainframe approach sets you up for accelerated digital transformation.

If your team can keep pace with the evolution of the mainframe, it will be well-positioned to maximize ROI and take advantage of the capabilities designed to unlock new opportunities to differentiate and grow. The proof is in the pudding: IBM reports that the companies that get it right achieve over three times higher returns from their digital transformation efforts. That’s a goal worth working toward.