Traditional mission-critical applications must adapt to changing business models. Organizations are looking for ways to reduce cost by leveraging their infrastructure as well as adopting emerging models, such as the move to subscription or consumption-based pricing. These transformational changes are required as a step toward modernizing applications that are suited to be rewritten, refactored, or rehosted.
Several factors are driving the quest for increased agility:
Financial flexibility improves when companies can allocate costs as operating rather than capital expenses. Capital costs typically require special financial approvals and a large outlay of money. IT and business executives have found a lot more flexibility through consumption-based pricing, paying for what they use, as long as these costs are still bounded and predictable.
Digital transformation initiatives have accelerated as a result of COVID-19, with 61% of the executives surveyed by IDG on this topic saying the global pandemic has forced their organization to accelerate implementation of their digital-first strategies. These initiatives may involve extending and integrating traditional applications with rebuilt or replaced applications, shifting to a hybrid-cloud model, or potentially adopting software as a service (SaaS) for some of their applications. The goal is to make their transformation fast and successful while maintaining any required integration.
Mergers and acquisitions activity, which has increased steadily for years, has created redundancies and inefficiencies that organizations must resolve in order to break down silos and enable decision-making across a unified data plane. This creates new requirements for their applications and technical infrastructure.
The “cloud-first” strategies that many organizations are adopting are prompting IT leaders to seek cloudlike economies even for their on-premises infrastructure. Increasingly, CIOs want to pay only for the infrastructure they use, regardless of where it is located.
Increases in data center costs or the end of data center leases provides opportunities for organizations to rethink their infrastructure investments and seek economies by using provider solutions that can reduce or eliminate those costs while extending the potential for enhanced integration with popular cloud platforms.
Gaps in their knowledge about modern mainframes may exclude mainframes from consideration for new or modernized applications, on the assumption that they are out of date. This is even though the mainframe is often the most reliable and economical choice.
None of these trends should be taken as an indication that the modern mainframe is expensive, closed, or monolithic. Rather than seeking alternatives to mainframes, organizations are best advised to seek greater efficiency in integrating and managing all their resources, including their mainframes, using common processes enabled by common tools. IBM Z and IBM i remain the best choice for some applications. In fact, for some use cases, consolidation and repatriation to a mainframe provide the simplification and cost savings that enterprises are looking for.
It’s about using all the platforms you have available and matching the right workload to the right platform. The mainframe should be a cornerstone and, in some cases, should be at the center of a hybrid-cloud strategy.”
Mainframes have traditionally been housed in on-premises data centers, which carry attendant costs in terms of real estate, power, security, and environmental controls. Doing it yourself is not the only approach. There are options that can reduce the requirement to maintain a dedicated mainframe data center and hire or train staff. Providers such as Kyndryl can take over tasks such as providing ongoing administration, doing upgrades, maintaining hardware and software currency, and facilitating the move to agile development methodologies. Kyndryl employs 8,300 mainframe experts and continually invests in building their skills through resources such as the hands-on IBM Z Xplore Learning Platform and the IBM z/OS Mainframe Practitioner Professional Certification as well as extensive early-hire and internal digital badge programs. Kyndryl can also help its customers migrate to Linux and facilitate cloud-native development of low-latency applications in a secure, highly available, and cost-effective environment.
Full-service partners such as Kyndryl have the experience that is needed to optimize workloads and workload placement, improve processes, and rightsize application portfolios through short-term project-based services as well as ongoing infrastructure and application management services.
Cross-platform and cross-industry expertise that can fill in gaps and augment skills in your organization
Ability to enable you to optimize your infrastructure investment with on-demand capacity planning, upgrade aging components, and transition to hybrid-cloud infrastructure while also enabling you to plan for future needs
Skills with modern and traditional programming languages, containers, and Linux as well as standard connectivity to public clouds to enable transformation, portability, consolidation, and integration of applications securely across the enterprise
Options to engage for project-based services tied to specific deliverables
Flexible selective-outsourcing or task-sourcing squad services that provide limited outsourcing of some of your functions based on defined key performance indicators (KPIs) integrated into your overall delivery
Whether you want to derive more value from your existing environment or migrate to a cloud-based solution, look for the following capabilities in a services partner.
Deep experience in helping customers leverage their mainframe application investments to enable them to transform while maintaining reliability and security
Options to run mission-critical enterprise applications in a dedicated private cloud or a multitenant cloud that can scale as needed while reducing your total cost of computing by hosting your IBM Z and IBM i workloads on a secure shared infrastructure
Ability to provide advice on choosing the right platform for each workload and accelerating the transition to the cloud as appropriate to optimize development and management costs
IDG Communications, Inc.
