As we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the IBM Z mainframe in 2024, it's worth reflecting on its journey from pioneering computing behemoth to becoming an indispensable cornerstone of modern technological infrastructure. Airlines still use the mainframe to manage reservations and ticketing, insurance companies use the mainframe to process claims and banks still run their core banking platform in the mainframe — the list goes on and on. It’s amazing to think that some of these applications were first created 50 to 60 years ago, and they still work as well as they do.
Despite the success of the mainframe and the role it plays in the world’s economy and our daily lives, some forget about the mainframe’s value. Since the mainframe has been around for 60 years, some people who are not familiar with the mainframe see it as a legacy architecture. While the original architecture was created 60 years ago, the mainframe platform is upgraded every two years with new processors, software, and additional capabilities. This is often overlooked with so much focus on cloud and AI.
With so much emphasis on moving legacy workloads to the cloud and building new applications in the cloud, it feels like the industry believes the mainframe and cloud cannot coexist — it’s either one or the other. Mainframers don’t really get the appeal of the cloud and often argue many of the things you do in the cloud you can do on a mainframe. And cloud developers don’t understand why someone isn’t using the modern capabilities of the cloud. In my opinion, mainframe and cloud can and should coexist.
5 Reasons Why Cloud and Mainframe Are Perfect Together
Mainframes have been the backbone of enterprise computing for decades. They are renowned for their security, reliability, scalability, and ability to handle massive volumes of transactions with unparalleled speed and security. Industries such as banking, insurance, and healthcare rely heavily on mainframes for mission-critical applications due to their resilience and high availability. Mainframes are particularly adept at processing large-scale batch and transaction processing, offering unmatched performance for applications that demand extreme precision and security. Their ability to integrate and process data from various sources in real-time is a key asset for any organization with extensive legacy systems.
Cloud computing, on the other hand, offers unmatched flexibility and scalability. It allows businesses to quickly adapt to changing demands by provisioning resources on-demand, reducing the need for significant upfront investment in IT infrastructure. The cloud provides a platform for rapid innovation, enabling businesses to deploy applications quickly and scale them as needed. Cloud services also offer a wide range of tools and technologies that can enhance business operations, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, and IoT integration. This makes the cloud an ideal environment for developing new applications and services that require flexibility and agility.
Combining mainframe and cloud technologies allows businesses to leverage the strengths of both platforms. Mainframes can continue to support core business operations with high security and reliability, while cloud services can be used to enhance agility and drive innovation. Here’s how they complement each other:
1. Scalability and Flexibility: Mainframes handle high-volume transaction processing efficiently, while the cloud offers the flexibility to scale applications and services in response to business needs.
2. Cost-effectiveness: By offloading less-critical workloads to the cloud, businesses can reduce the load on mainframes, optimizing costs and improving resource allocation.
3. Innovation and Modernization: The cloud provides a platform for developing and testing new applications without disrupting existing mainframe operations, facilitating digital transformation and modernization efforts.
4. Enhanced Data Analytics: Mainframes can process vast amounts of data, which can then be analyzed in the cloud using advanced analytics tools to derive insights and drive business decisions.
5. Improved Disaster Recovery: By utilizing cloud-based backup and recovery solutions, businesses can ensure data redundancy and protect critical information against unexpected outages or disasters.
Recently, my company, VirtualZ Computing, started developing new products for the mainframe so that the mainframe can coexist with the cloud. Based in Minneapolis. VirtualZ is looking to connect the mainframe to cloud in a way that has never been done before.
VirtualZ currently has three products available, including their most recent one, Zaac™. A lot of innovation has happened on the mainframe, yet there is one area that has been overlooked: storage. Zaac allows mainframes to leverage cloud, physical, and SAN storage as virtual tape or virtual disk.
The Traditional Approach
Let’s look one an example where Cloud could help the mainframe. Traditionally, mainframe uses a Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) and virtual tape as their storage solutions. Compared to modern storage solutions such as cloud storage, these solutions are expensive and not nearly as flexible. Since a significant amount of data is generated from mainframe applications, customers need more flexibility and scalability and having an on-demand solution would significantly help. If a mainframe customer needed storage on demand for a short term use they would need to order new storage and what for it to be installed, slowing the development process.
A New Approach
If a customer was in a distributed environment, they would just simply connect to a cloud storage environment and request what they needed and configure their distributed environment to connect to this storage environment. This is not easily done with the mainframe and we have made this possible for the mainframe.
Our Zaac solution allows a mainframe customer to request cloud storage on demand and configure their mainframe to use their requested cloud storage environment as they need. The customer pays for what they use and they can access the storage immediately, reducing the development time. Zaac makes the cloud storage environment look like a mainframe volume of disk, so there are little changes to existing mainframe applications.
Conclusion
Zaac is a good example of innovation that is taking place on the mainframe. These kinds of innovation help non-mainframers see the mainframe in a new way and reduce the friction between mainframe and non-framers. My hope is that these kinds of innovations will help both sides recognize the value of a cohesive solution to drive better business value and preserve the benefits strengths of the mainframe.