“Digital business” is one of the noisiest buzzwords of the moment as organizations strive to transform their operating models into something more relevant, agile and, ultimately, disruptive. Even as organizations push toward more innovative operations, System z remains at the core of many strategies, according to BMC’s annual mainframe survey.
BMC outlined six imperatives for successfully evolving into a digital business:
- Intuitive experience
- Actionable intelligence
- Agile applications
- Adaptive automation
- Optimized infrastructure and cost
- Compliance and risk mitigation
“Changes in the way consumers, technology and enterprises behave have led us to these imperatives,” said BMC’s Vice President and General Manager of Z Solutions and Select Technologies Jonathan Adams. “And this year’s survey results show that mainframe IT is responding to these imperatives. In fact, the survey shows the mainframe plays a key role and will continue to grow in importance in the future.”
For 91 percent of respondents, the mainframe is still a critical part of their organization’s long-term business strategy, BMC reported. In fact, nearly half anticipate growth or new workloads on the mainframe over the course of the next year.
The top two reasons respondents said their organizations stay with the mainframe are availability (53 percent) and security (51%). The mainframe also proved to be essential to 81 percent of respondents’ big data strategies.
Respondents also broke down their top five IT priorities:
- IT cost reduction/optimization – 70 percent
- Application availability – 52 percent
- Application modernization – 48 percent
- Data privacy – 47 percent
- Business/IT alignment – 44 percent
As the mainframe continues to play such a vital role in business strategies, SHARE serves as a pivotal industry influencer. The community gives voice to System z users and helps connect them with the knowledge, trends and insight needed to effectively refine their organization’s digital business strategy.
The times change, but the mainframe endures as the platform of choice for the business drivers of today—and tomorrow.
Tell us: How your IT priorities align with those of BMC’s survey respondents?