To higher perceive how IT leaders are leveraging mainframes right now and envisioning their future within the period of AI and hybrid cloud, the IBM Institute for Enterprise Worth, (IBV) in collaboration with Oxford Economics, carried out a survey of two,551 world IT executives. The findings present the mainframe is already enjoying a pivotal function in supporting AI innovation, hybrid cloud methods, and acceleration of digital transformation. With unmatched safety and processing capabilities, the mainframe powers 70% of world transactions, on a worth foundation.
Mainframes have confirmed their vitality by way of their skill to course of huge quantities of knowledge rapidly, reliably and securely, and they are going to be key to unlocking the complete potential of data-driven innovation.
How AI impacts mainframes
The research exhibits that 78% of IT executives surveyed mentioned their organizations are both piloting tasks or operationalizing initiatives that incorporate AI capabilities into mainframe functions and transactions. The research discovered that organizations view the mainframe as a useful platform for deploying enterprise AI for a big selection of features together with driving innovation, bolstering cybersecurity, streamlining operations, and modernizing functions. For instance:
- Propelling innovation – 79% of respondents agree that the mainframe is crucial for enabling AI-driven innovation and worth creation. By making use of AI on to transactional workloads on the mainframe, companies can extract new insights and improve workforce productiveness. This maximizes the worth of their core programs and drives significant enterprise outcomes.
- Boosting safety – When it comes to safety, 90% of surveyed executives indicated their organizations are piloting or implementing AI-powered cybersecurity tasks; with 82% of these surveyed citing the significance of the mainframe for monitoring, analyzing, and responding to cyber threats, a system already identified for its safety prowess.
- Modernizing system administration – 74% of respondents mentioned that they’re integrating AI into mainframe operations to reinforce system administration and upkeep. In the meantime, 61% of executives mentioned utilizing generative AI (gen AI) for software modernization efforts on mainframes is essential to their group. Gen AI-driven software modernization instruments are revolutionizing mainframe modernization methods, accelerating time to worth, and shutting mainframe abilities gaps by enabling builders to modernize or construct functions sooner and extra effectively.
Mainframes as a part of the hybrid cloud
Mainframes additionally play an important function in profitable hybrid cloud methods, enabling organizations to deploy software workloads in essentially the most appropriate computing environments. Important workloads, equivalent to monetary transactions, healthcare information, and authorities companies, demand superior safety, reliability, and scalability. Through the use of the mainframe for these workloads, organizations can faucet into its optimized structure for unparalleled efficiency and effectivity, minimizing prices and dangers throughout their IT ecosystem.
This method has been confirmed to ship vital returns on funding, with hybrid-by-design corporations reaching greater than 3x greater returns from their digital transformation efforts. Nonetheless, to totally understand these advantages, organizations should keep mainframe programs to make sure foreign money, modernize mainframe functions and combine them with distributed knowledge, functions, clouds and fashionable improvement practices.
Unlock the complete potential of hybrid cloud and AI
As organizations advance of their digital transformation journeys, they have to leverage their current investments in mainframes to unlock the complete potential of their knowledge with hybrid cloud and AI applied sciences.
IT leaders trying to revitalize their mainframe methods ought to take into account a number of vital actions now:
Be intentional about your IT basis.
To ascertain a stable IT basis, organizations ought to decide to a hybrid-by-design technique, modernize mainframe functions, and develop a transparent integration and data-sharing technique. This entails optimizing enterprise worth throughout the know-how property, creating an software modernization technique aligned to enterprise aims, and prioritizing integration between mainframe and different applied sciences for seamless knowledge change and API connectivity. By doing so, organizations can enhance total competitiveness, cut back prices, and improve their skill to answer altering enterprise necessities.
Lean into AI innovation.
Organizations ought to leverage AI to empower DevOps groups, improve mainframe operations, and infuse AI into enterprise transactions. This may be achieved by equipping builders with gen AI-assisted instruments that speed up software discovery, evaluation, and modernization; enhancing operational features with good aids and next-generation chatbot assistants; and leveraging AI for in-transaction insights to reinforce enterprise use instances. By embracing AI innovation, organizations can streamline modernization, enhance operational effectivity, and drive enterprise success in a hybrid cloud and AI-driven world.
Spend money on superior mainframe capabilities and ability units.
Organizations ought to leverage right now’s mainframe capabilities, domesticate a various and expert mainframe workforce, and upskill mainframe professionals with AI-tooling and collaborative initiatives. This entails leveraging new mainframe capabilities, equivalent to superior encryption and authentication, and superior processor chips and specialised AI accelerators; addressing abilities gaps by way of focused skilling initiatives and mentorship packages; and empowering mainframe professionals with AI-tooling, assistants and collaborative initiatives just like the Mainframe Expertise Council.
Speed up your digital transformation
Because the period of hybrid cloud and AI unfolds, the mainframe’s endurance is extra evident than ever. Its function as a strategic asset in serving to guarantee safety, knowledge privateness, and operational effectivity makes it indispensable for organizations striving to stay aggressive. By embracing modernization methods that leverage the mainframe’s strengths, organizations can speed up their digital transformation journeys and unlock new alternatives for progress and innovation.
Learn the complete IBV research
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