Enterprises’ AI & Cybersecurity Needs Are Rejuvenating Mainframes

• 56% of respondents are now using DevOps on the mainframe, up from 50% in 2019.
• 63% of respondents cited security and compliance as their top priority, which may be a surprise to many given the platform’s highly securable nature.
• 42% of respondents have cited maintaining application availability as a priority

Faced with the challenge of reinventing themselves into a digital business, organizations are scrambling for AIOps and DevOps expertise to work on multiple platforms. Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, 2020 found that the faster the democratization of AI occurs, the greater the importance of developers and DevOps to create enterprise-grade applications. The 2020 BMC Mainframe Survey provides new insights into just how quickly enterprises rejuvenate mainframes as part of their broader AIOps and DevOps initiatives.

Most noteworthy about the study’s results is how enterprises pursuing next-generation business models find value in rejuvenating mainframes as part of their digital business strategies. They are now core to DevOps and AIOps integration company-wide, further solidifying their value.  

Key insights from the study include the following:

• Mainframes’ rejuvenation driven by AIOps and DevOps makes the platform core to enterprises’ digital transformation strategies.  Enterprises are applying AIOps to improve mainframe efficiency and learn how further improvements to DevOps integration can accelerate new application development. 54% of executive and mainframe practitioner respondents report higher transaction volumes, 47% report higher data volumes and 44% report that the number of databases in their mainframe environment has increased in the past year. Automation and AI are helping businesses find new ways to reduce scheduled outages and ensuring rapid recovery from unplanned outages. 64% of IT leaders are being asked to reduce scheduled maintenance outages.
• The majority of respondents (90%) see their mainframes as a platform for new growth and long-term application development. Nearly seven in ten (68%) expect MIPS (million instructions per second) to grow, which is the survey’s 15-year history’s highest growth outlook. It could be surmised that this is due to the development and launch of exciting new digital business models that necessitate having mainframes, cloud platforms, open-source, Linux and Windows DevOps platforms as part of the same agile framework.
• 63% of respondents cited compliance and security as top priorities for the mainframe, as these insights strengthen current and future digital strategies. It’s fascinating to see how the IT leaders who responded to BMC’s survey prioritize mainframes’ contributions to their organizations. What’s interesting about the findings shown below is how these factors interact with each other, mainframe modernization enables the other five to be achieved, for example:

• 65% of respondents are currently using or plan to use a dedicated mainframe Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), underscoring cybersecurity’s increasing importance. BMC reports the number of enterprises considering a SIEM continues to increase from 2019 when only 57% had dedicated SIEM in use. BMC observes that enterprises are also working to integrate mainframe security with the rest of the enterprise environment by bringing mainframe SIEM data into the security operations center (SOC). 38% now send mainframe SIEM data to the enterprise SIEM system, with another 34% evaluating this approach—both increasing from 36% and 28% respectively in 2019.
• 74% report seeing positive ROI within a year or less after…