Mainframes are a critical element for new technologies like AI and blockchain
The death of the mainframe is something that's been widely predicted since the 1990s, but these big guns of the computing world stubbornly refuse to succumb.
New research carried out by Forrester for hybrid services provider Ensono and IT consultancy Wipro shows that 50 percent of organizations will continue with and increase mainframe use in the next two years versus just five percent planning to decrease or remove mainframe activity.
Interestingly the mainframe is seen as an important element of modern technologies like AI and Blockchain. While traditional applications and workloads -- ERP (48 percent), finance and accounting (45 percent), HR management (44 percent) and ECM (43 percent) -- remain the mainstay, 25 percent of those surveyed say that mobile sites and applications are being put into the mainframe, while 27 percent are running new blockchain initiatives and containerized applications.
"We believe this research challenges popular opinion that mainframe is for legacy," says Brian Klingbeil, executive vice president, technology and strategy at Ensono. "Everything that made mainframe great in the past -- security, reliability, versatility, performance -- is still true today, and the latest generation of mainframe technology will now run the same cutting-edge applications and services as cloud infrastructure. Mainframe modernization is giving enterprises not only the ability to continue to run their legacy applications, but also allows them to embrace new technologies such as containerized microservices, blockchain and mobile applications."
"Mainframe modernization is central to a long-term holistic hybrid IT strategy for enterprises leveraging mainframes," says Kiran Desai, senior vice president and global head, Cloud and Infrastructure Services at Wipro Limited. "This research provides two very apt strategies for enterprises that allow them to take full advantage of mainframes -- the first being to refactor applications to take advantage of cloud; and the second, to modernize mainframes by adopting DevOps. The research also shows that more than a quarter of firms see mainframes running emerging workloads like blockchain and containerized applications. We believe modern mainframes will have a significant role to play in the hybrid future of infrastructure. We are confident that Ensono's decades of hosting and managed-mainframe experience, coupled with Wipro's deep expertise in mainframe applications support, cloud migrations and DevOps will help deliver improved services with increased efficiencies to clients."
The full report can be found on the Ensono website.
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