As organisations pursue Digital Transformation strategies, Mike Siemasz, Director, Solution and Customer Marketing, Rocket Software, says the mainframe remains a critical and innovative backbone for compliance, security and hybrid cloud integration.
While the adoption of cloud native technologies has been on the rise, even after sixty years of existence a significant portion of the world still runs on mainframes. This is particularly true of large enterprises in highly regulated industries including banking, insurance and healthcare. According to IBM, 71% of the Fortune 500 companies use mainframe systems and the market is expected to grow in the years to come.
The need for enterprise leaders to adapt and stay competitive, including on the mainframe, should not be underestimated. Gartner has forecast a 9.8% growth in global IT spending in 2025, with data centre systems claiming the biggest portion across the categories. As the topic of modernisation increasingly dominates boardroom conversations, correctly evaluating the role of the mainframe is becoming even more important. Opting to stay on the mainframe over fully or partially migrating to the cloud does not remove the potential for innovation. In fact, modernising on the mainframe creates opportunities for significant innovation, risk reduction and cost savings when pursued with the right strategy.
In many ways, the mainframe is an unsung hero. It is well equipped to process large volumes of transactions and data, often holding some of the most mission-critical and insights-rich data that enterprises depend on for operational excellence and competitive innovation. It is incredibly securable, making it a prime choice for mission-critical operations and ensuring regulatory compliance. And it remains reliable, available and serviceable as well as cost-effective, even in hybrid IT infrastructure environments that continue to grow in complexity.
These are only a few of the core strengths of the mainframe, but they should be strongly considered as organisations develop modernisation strategies around the platform, whether modernising on, extending into a hybrid cloud strategy or considering workloads that can be replatformed.
Mainframe data access for AI and analytics
The mainframe has earned a reputation as a mostly barricaded system in data centres, but a lesser-known fact is how adaptable it has become to work with the latest technologies and respond to the evolving needs of the market. Modern mainframes are designed to integrate smoothly with the latest digital tools and methodologies, ensuring that organisations can continue to build on decades of reliable business logic while also pursuing innovation and greater agility. This flexibility is especially valuable for companies looking to implement AI solutions or leverage real-time data analytics.
The effectiveness of AI and advanced analytics relies heavily on the quality and depth of data they process, making the vast historical datasets accumulated on mainframes over decades uniquely valuable. These rich stores of transactional and operational data provide essential context and continuity, enabling AI tools to identify long-term trends, train more robust models and generate accurate, unbiased insights.
As a result, organisations should view the mainframe as a strategic data repository that strengthens modern AI and analytics initiatives, ensuring business intelligence fully reflects the depth and complexity of the enterprise and supporting a true competitive advantage in a data-driven world.
Evolving security and compliance
While mainframes are inherently secure, with layers of protection in place, they are not immune to risks from evolving external cyberattacks or insider threats. Fortunately, the mainframe is a highly adaptable environment that is well suited for continuous improvement to security through things like secure host access, multi-factor authentication and code vulnerability scanning to keep the platform, its applications and its data safe.
As IT complexity grows, mainframe security risks – like privileged access abuse, API exploitation and hybrid ransomware – need to be addressed, especially in light of compliance requirements intensifying across industries and geographies.
According to Forrester, 41% of IT leaders cite security and compliance as their top concerns when pursuing modernisation. From DORA to the EU AI Act, security and compliance have become the cornerstones of all modernisation projects – and the mainframe is often at the centre, even if organisations don’t immediately realise it.
It is critical that companies are able to innovate while remaining compliant and secure in their day-to-day operations. The stability of a modernised mainframe is critical to an organisation’s cyber resilience and keeping valuable systems, data and applications safe.
Opportunities for hybrid cloud
Mainframe systems have been continuously updated through the years, with the IBM z17 being the latest example, making them an ideal ecosystem for integration with emerging technologies like open-source and hybrid cloud solutions. Hybrid cloud strategies present an opportunity for organisations to accelerate modernisation by extending the reliability and performance of their mainframe systems rather than abandoning them.
Contrary to the misconception that they are expensive to maintain, many mainframe systems actually offer a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to other systems. The centralised architecture allows for efficient resource utilisation, reducing both operational costs and energy consumption.
Often labelled as the ‘best of both worlds’, going hybrid with mainframe and cloud allows enterprises to modernise incrementally by moving data and workloads between systems as needed, enabling them to unlock new efficiencies while continuing to reap the benefits of the platforms they trust.
Ultimately, the goal of any modernisation project is to take what’s working and make it better. It’s a strategic series of decisions guided by business needs, compliance standards and risk management. Organisations cannot afford to be left behind, but that does not mean they have to completely abandon decades of mainframe investment in order to embrace emerging technologies like the cloud.
Projects wrap up but innovation is never finished. The organisations that learn to navigate evolution with strategic consideration are the ones who will see long-term success and real ROI on their IT investments.
