The Meaning of Mainframe Modernization - II

Mainframe modernization means different things to different people. Many apply a plain-meaning rule: If you're modernizing your mainframe, strictly speaking, you're modernizing it in place—updating it with new applications and integrations. To yet others, modernization necessarily involves ridding oneself of all of that pesky COBOL and replatforming elsewhere (for instance, on the cloud or a distributed system).

Misty Decker, director of worldwide AMC product marketing at Micro Focus, characterizes the dichotomy as confusing and not entirely helpful. Decker calls for moving to a broader definition of mainframe modernization that is based on goals and outcomes instead of tools.

"The broadest way to define modernization is not about the technology you're using, but by [how you are] meeting modern business needs," said Decker. "It's really about how well [an] application or infrastructure is meeting the needs of the business."

From this point of view, the mainframe component of mainframe modernization is almost incidental. Instead, for Decker, the doctrine of meeting business needs is everything.

"Modernization is not about the age of the application or the infrastructure," said Decker. "A lot of [modernization] techniques apply the same to an application that is only six months old and is no longer serving the needs of the business."

• Modernizing the mainframe can help close the skills gap. As companies continue to face skills gaps in their talent pool, modernizing systems is the most popular way respondents are working to maintain talent pipelines with 45% of respondents citing it as the top method. Forty three percent of respondents plan to offer mainframe-specific education to help address the skills gap.
• Implementing DevOps functionalities presents a valuable opportunity to modernize the mainframe’s capabilities and performance. Forty four percent of respondents say their organization uses multiple tools for DevOps functionality on mainframe applications, but it is not a complete DevOps platform while 24% have a comprehensive platform for mainframe DevOps.
• Integration of the mainframe with the cloud is key. Leveraging the diversity of solutions available from cloud to mainframe and optimizing each layer to operate together will create the most effective, unified environment. Eighty-two percent of respondents are migrating at least some of their workloads and operations from mainframe to cloud, however only 4% are going completely cloud native. This trend towards hybrid environments emphasizes the need for integration and optimization