Mark Twain once said, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Rumors about the demise of mainframe technology in the era of cloud computing have also been greatly exaggerated. Big iron is still going strong. Mainframe technology remains critical to large enterprises in the financial, insurance, government, and many other sectors, which use mainframes as the main hub for business-critical applications.
Key Trends
Mainframes are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Here are some key trends to watch:
- Increased spending: Companies are spending more money on their mainframe infrastructure. According to Syncort’s annual survey on the state of the mainframe, 42.7 percent of that spending in 2018 went towards increasing capacity, while 32.3 percent went to data analysis and 31.5 percent to cloud support. These were all significant increases over 2017 spending.
- Cost-cutting: At the same time, organizations are looking for ways to optimize their mainframe resources and cut the costs of processing the huge amount of data flowing in from numerous enterprise sources, including social media and the Internet of Things. More than 50 percent of companies considered cost control a major focus. Their goal is to reinvest that money in new technologies and resources. Cost-cutting measures include reducing general processor CPU usage and leveraging investments in zIIP engines.
- Improving performance: Enhancing mainframe performance is another way to cut costs and enhance operations. By reducing the elapsed time for BATCH workloads and tuning DB2, companies can save both money and time.
- Greater capacity: The explosive growth of data volumes is driving demand for more capacity. Companies need to support new applications, process and store massive quantiles of data and use advanced data analytics to improve their decision making.
- Cloud operations: Mainframes need to successfully integrate with cloud computing technologies to remain relevant. The advantages of mainframes for use in cloud computing include security, scalability, a flexible infrastructure, consolidated workloads, and more.
- Staffing shortages: The shortage of qualified mainframe operators is an ongoing problem that calls for creative solutions. There may be approximately 84,000 open positions in the field by 2020. This shortage is driven by the lack of educational courses and false impressions of the mainframe as legacy technology. Outsourcing will continue to be a successful approach to addressing these staffing shortages.
Meeting the Challenges
At New Iron Solutions, we understand the changing world of mainframes. We can help you meet your staffing challenges before they impact your business. Contact us online today or call 1-844-388-IRON (4766).
