Why Modernize the Mainframe?

The mainframe has served the business community for decades and is known for its performance, reliability and security. However, many companies are finding that the mainframe does not provide the business technology advantages they need to succeed. A 2008 study of mainframe users found that almost 60% of those surveyed planned to eliminate their mainframe completely over the next three years.

Business goals

Companies want to eliminate, reduce or cap their mainframe environments for several reasons. Some of the most important goals are to:

• Reduce costs - Many companies are finding that the mainframe platform is simply too expensive to maintain. IBM has made great strides in reducing comparative hardware costs on a performance basis. However, confusing and opaque pricing policies have resulted in huge price variations between individual customers.
  
  Despite lower hardware costs, maintenance and software costs continue to rise. With only a few top mainframe software vendors in the market, many customers are left with little choice. On average, software costs consume about 40% of mainframe budgets. This leaves little money for new projects and initiatives aimed at improving the business.
  
  
• Increase agility - The information stored on your mainframe is a valuable business asset. Exposing these legacy assets for use within your organization can be very difficult, if not impossible. The inability to leverage this information can put your company at a severe competitive disadvantage. As companies generate more and more data, it becomes critical to create usable information through business intelligence and service oriented architecture. In many cases the mainframe can stand in the way of accomplishing these goals.
  
  
• Reduce skill set shortage - COBOL is the language of the mainframe and good COBOL programmers are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Many companies are facing the real dilemma of how to manage their mainframe environments as their best administrators and programmers begin to retire. This is especially critical in the public sector where many IT professionals are reaching mandatory retirement age. As the shortage of experienced programmers becomes worse, the cost of these resources will inevitably rise.

Mainframe Technical challenges

Mainframe users also face technical challenges that may drive them to consider modernization. You should seriously consider mainframe modernization when:

• Increasing mainframe software and maintenance costs are consuming ever larger portions of your IT budget.
  
  
• Exposing existing applications and data to more modern technologies is difficult or impossible. Information needed in other parts of the business is "trapped" on the mainframe.
  
  
• You are running out of MIPS on your mainframe and you want to offload some of the processing to a lower cost platform, while maintaining 100% of the current functionality.
  
  
• You have a long-term plan to replace existing COBOL applications with newer technology, but high mainframe costs make it difficult to fund these new initiatives.
  
  
• End-of-life issues for hardware or software are forcing short-term decisions. These problems typically require a quick solution that does not compromise performance or reliability.

There are many more issues that can drive you to question your investment in the mainframe. Many of these issues can be addressed by proactively managing your mainframe resources. The first step is to decide which mainframe modernization approach is best for you.

Learn more about the different approaches to mainframe modernization.