The great mainframe resource drain: Threat or opportunity?
Mainframe was the first enterprise-class IT platform, powering business growth and success since the 1960s. Today, many mainframe experts are nearing retirement – and taking with them years of knowledge and experience. In addition, new digital technologies have taken center stage, putting mainframe training and certification programs on the back burner and making the mainframe skills shortage more severe.
How can this be? Nearly 70% of Fortune 500 companies rely on mainframe for its reliability, security and efficiency. Research by Deloitte found that 79% of business and IT leaders said their top mainframe-related challenge is acquiring the right resources and skills to get work done.
If your enterprise depends on mainframe, what can you do? How do you turn this threat into an opportunity?
Nurturing new mainframe talent
One way to address the challenge is to nurture and attract new talent into mainframe strategy and operations. For enterprises reconsidering their commitment to mainframe, it is critically important to face the threat that this human resource drain represents.
As a legacy system, mainframe may have fallen out of fashion with some of the youngest entrants into the IT workplace, but it can be a great platform to start any IT career journey. Processing millions of critical transactions daily, mainframe is the heartbeat of the global economy. Mainframes are in use at 92 of the top 100 banks, and collectively they manage an estimated 30 billion transactions daily.
Despite its age, mainframe is also a green technology. By rationalizing a Linux estate of around 100 servers into a modern mainframe environment, we can actually reduce power consumption by around 75%.
As environmental credentials become even more of a factor for young professionals, mainframe’s ability to contribute to decarbonization can be an important way to attract new talent. At Atos, we train younger IT experts in new methodologies that require a digital mindset — while developing new ways to utilize mainframe in the most efficient and innovative manner possible.
Despite a history dating back to the 1960s, mainframe is here to stay. Smart companies can address talent shortages while modernizing mainframe as part of an integrated technology environment.
Opening up mainframe
In the Digital Age, mainframe computing is just one part of a broader IT landscape. A range of modern tools and techniques have emerged to address the mainframe resourcing challenge while also modernizing mainframe within an integrated technology and data environment. Using these tools, mainframe can operate seamlessly with other systems and methodologies.
For example, mainframe APIs (application programming interfaces) can facilitate interoperability, enabling organizations to leverage the strengths of their mainframe systems while integrating them with cloud technologies and web-based applications. They allow mainframe to be used as a back-end server to quickly and efficiently process data, with an app running in the cloud to provide a rich, modern user interface.
Another tool to simplify these interactions is Zowe, an open-source technology and framework that provides a modern, interoperable interface for mainframe systems. Designed to be agile and flexible, it enables developers, system administrators and end users to interact with mainframe platforms in a more intuitive way — one that reflects today’s cloud-based methodologies and mindsets.
New generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT can leverage large language models to convert huge volumes of technical documentation into real-time, chat-based support to resolve mainframe user requests and incidents. It can also analyze your existing mainframe code to extract business rules, identify errors, or provide a summary of functionality. GenAI provides a faster, easier user experience while freeing-up your most experienced mainframe engineers for more strategic or higher-value activities.
Future-proofing mainframe
There are two key components of any strategy to keeping mainframe viable in the long term. First, it’s critical to develop a broad capability base in ensuring stable, reliable mainframe operations. Second, you must be able to add an innovation layer on top of mainframe’s legendary scalability and reliability.
Tools like we have mentioned above promote innovation, flexibility and agility by bridging the gap between traditional mainframe environments and today's evolving digital ecosystems. They also open up mainframe to a whole new generation of digital natives. As mainframe tools and methodologies evolve, we believe it’s important to have an agnostic mindset in order to take advantage of the latest and best solutions for mainframe.
Although technology and business are constantly advancing, mainframe is clearly here to stay. As always, people make the difference in meeting the challenge and harnessing the opportunity. No matter what industry you’re in, you need to honestly assess the mainframe risks you face, stay open-minded about combining mainframe with modern systems, and be strategic in how you balance resource optimization with innovation.
Posted on: June 7, 2024
