The rapid evolution of latest technologies – combined with increasing customer demands and ongoing disruptive market forces – is driving firms to prioritize digital transformation greater than ever. According to a recent survey conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration with Oxford Economics, 67% of executives surveyed say their firms need to alter quickly to maintain up with competition, while 57% report that current market disruptions are unprecedented Put pressure in your IT.1
Digital transformation places significant demands on existing applications and data, requiring modernization and integration into a company's heterogeneous technology landscape, including cloud and mainframe. That's no wonder CEOs ranked technology modernization as certainly one of their top priorities for his or her organizations seeking to reinvent products, services and operations to enhance efficiency, agility and time to market.
Enterprises need flexible, secure, open and fit-for-purpose platforms to consistently operate and develop services across their hybrid cloud environment. The mainframe stays a critical component as business-critical applications proceed to leverage the ability of mainframes. A hybrid best-fit approach spans mainframes and cloud and supports application modernization, integration, and delivery. This maximizes business agility and addresses customer issues including reducing the talent gap, accelerating time to market, improving access to business-critical data across all platforms, and optimizing costs.
New research from the IBM Institute for Business Value found that almost seven in 10 IT leaders say mainframe-based applications are central to their business and technology strategies. Additionally, 68% of respondents say mainframe systems are central to their hybrid cloud strategy.1
However, modernization could be a complex process with firms facing quite a lot of challenges. Nearly 70% of executives surveyed say their organizations have to modernize their mainframe-based applications. The study also shows that firms are 12 times more prone to use existing mainframe resources in the following two years than to rebuild their application assets from scratch, which might be too costly, dangerous or time-consuming.1 For those firms now seeking to modernize their mainframe applications, executives surveyed cited an absence of crucial resources and skills as the most important challenge. Mainframe costs, which executives cited as a major constraint two years ago, aren’t any longer perceived as reminiscent of executives now search for more sources of value in mainframes reminiscent of resiliency, optimization and regulatory compliance.
Given that application modernization is critical for organizations focused on a “best-fit” transformation that spans mainframe, cloud, and even generative AI, IT leaders leading their mainframe modernization must If you wish to revitalize yourself, take some vital steps now:
Consider your industry and workload attributes as a part of your plan to integrate latest and existing environments. Collaborate with your small business partners to jointly create a business case and a “best-fit” roadmap designed to realize your strategic goals. Take a gradual and continuous approach to modernization quite than “big bang, rip and replace.”
Examine the capabilities that outline the mainframe's role in your organization today and the way these capabilities tie into the larger hybrid cloud technology ecosystem. Additionally, prioritize cross-skills throughout the organization and lean in your partners to fill latest or existing talent and resource gaps.
Enable quick access to existing mainframe applications and data using APIs. Deliver a shared developer experience by integrating open source tools and a streamlined process for agility. Develop native cloud applications on the mainframe and containerize applications.
Learn more about IBM Consulting's mainframe application modernization consulting and services
1.
