FINAL WORD
“
ENTERPRISES MUST
CHANGE HOW THEY SEE THE
MAINFRAME, PUTTING TO USE THE
WEALTH OF DATA RESIDING ON IT
TO MAKE THE MOST OF MAINFRAME
BENEFITS SUCH AS RELIABILITY,
PERFORMANCE AND SECURITY.
of data residing on it to make the most
of mainframe benefits such as reliability,
performance and security.
Taking advantage of the
mainframe’s proven prowess
to enable Digital Transformation, doing so
creates risk. Instead, businesses should be
looking to innovate on the platform, so that
they do not lose these vital insights and
business benefits.
So, how can this be achieved?
Adopting cloud or new hardware isn’t
the only way to embark on a Digital
Transformation journey, despite what people
may think. Incorporating the mainframe into
digitisation strategies is not only possible,
but preferable. The mainframe’s longevity
and consistently high-functioning nature
offers reliability and security to enterprises
– a benefit especially crucial in an era of
endless outages and security breaches.
The mainframe is scalable and can process
millions of transactions between devices
within an enterprise’s IT ecosystem;
any disruption to these processes
can result in huge disruption, with
potentially catastrophic effects on the
customer experience.
As well as being secure and reliable, the
mainframe is also rich with insights, in most
cases accumulated over decades. These
invaluable customer insights can help
businesses to both inform future digitisation
strategies and compete with digital-native
disrupters by tailoring offerings to the
customer. The insights that established
businesses can glean from mainframe data
are far more detailed and span a longer
period of time than anything captured by
new disrupters. Enterprises with a mainframe
are sitting on a goldmine of data and must
take advantage of this asset to supercharge
their customer offerings and experience.
So, while the temptation might be to move
away from mainframe to newer platforms
86
INTELLIGENTCIO
While this all sounds well and good, the
tools and processes used to interact with
mainframe applications have been in use
for decades and have become outdated
and difficult for less-experienced developers
to work with. Antiquated green-screen
development environments need to be
replaced with a modern, familiar IDE that
helps new-to-the-mainframe developers
get to grips with the platform faster,
enabling them to interact with it just as
they would with any other code. However,
this modernisation of tools and processes
requires long-time mainframe developers
to change their long-established ways of
working and it can be difficult to convince
them of the benefits.
The best approach to achieve this is
implementing cultural changes like DevOps
that will help to make the modernisation
process possible through improved
collaboration. Adopting a DevOps culture
helps to make all developers feel like
they are striving towards a shared goal
– with the unity ultimately enabling the
mainframe and its applications and data,
to be part of faster development cycles.
This enables a continuous delivery process
of software updates, boosting output and
accelerating the digitalisation of a business.
Implementing DevOps practices will help
to modernise tools and processes, making
it possible for developers of all experience
levels to interact with the mainframe. This
means enterprises can rest easy that the
platform is able to adapt to new tools and is
compatible with new technologies as they
develop, such as AI and Machine Learning.
Taking these steps will enable the
incorporation of the mainframe into
enterprises’ digital futures, meaning
companies don’t have to sacrifice all the
benefits the platform brings in their Digital
Transformation quests.
Improvement not impediment
Instead of investing huge amounts of time
and budget into migrating endless data
and applications from the mainframe to
another platform, companies must recognise
the benefits they would lose. The platform
is not a barrier to Digital Transformation;
businesses that incorporate the mainframe
into their digital maturity strategy will find
themselves gaining a serious advantage
thanks to the rich data and increased
stability it can offer the company. The drive
to improve levels of digital maturity should
not mean assets accumulated over decades
are simply cast aside. Improving and
modernising mainframe software delivery
systems is possible through the adoption of
modern tooling and methodologies such as
Agile Development and DevOps, meaning
core information that can inform future
actions of the business is preserved. n
Elizabeth Maxwell, EMEA Mainframe
Technical Director at Compuware,
www.intelligentcio.com