Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By Open Mainframe Project Experts
New Capabilities and Momentum for Mainframes in 2020 - Insights from 4 Mainframe Experts
Mainframes are a re-emerging platform which continue
to be critical to our society. The speed, power, and security of Big Iron
provides critical advantages to a wide range of industries. What sorts of new
capabilities and new uses will we see in 2020? Open source is key to growth on
the platform, and the Open Mainframe Project is the center of gravity for
open source collaboration and innovation. We talked with four experts from the
Open Mainframe Project to get an up close look at the space.
Rick
Perret, Head of Marketing Communications, Broadcom Mainframe Division
"Organizations are leveraging digital capabilities to
improve the customer experience to gain a competitive advantage. As a result, IT departments are investing in
new capabilities that streamline the integration of data and processes in
today's hybrid environments. Mainframes
are a rich source of customer data and core customer applications. In fact, organizations investing in the mainframe
to transform their business are seeing a 6X return on their investment.
Recent developments in open frameworks such as Open
Mainframe Project's Zowe and Eclipse Che4z are making it easier to develop,
test and interact with mainframe platform. Since then, a recent study showed
nearly 20% of organizations are planning to use technologies like Zowe.
With the availability of enterprise-grade support for
these open technologies, companies can be confident in deploying these tools
within their hybrid cloud architectures."
Steven
Dickens, Worldwide Sales Leader, LinuxONE, IBM and Chair of Open Mainframe
Project's Marketing Committee
"2020 will be a
big year for the Mainframe, as clients move to chapter 2 of their cloud journey
and increasingly embrace hybrid cloud models I predict the mainframe will move
to the front of their thought processes.
As Kubernetes and containerized workloads become the norm for enterprise
IT the decision process will move to where best to run these workloads. With the mainframe platforms continued focus
on performance, availability and most importantly security it is a natural
platform choice for the most demanding workloads in an enterprise. These core characteristics coupled with the
compelling total cost of ownership case that can be built around enterprise
workloads all bode well for the platform in 2020.
The other key
dynamic for the mainframe in 2020 is the explosion of Open Source development
being driven by the community.
Regardless of whether it's in the z/OS or Linux space the sheer scale
and pace of open source development is on a level never seen on the
platform. This is both exciting and
dynamic for clients as they look to build long term investment strategies, but
over the position is universally positive."
Tim Willging, Distinguished
Engineer, Database Tools Architect & Strategist, Rocket Software
"When
it comes to technology it can be difficult to predict the future, but one thing
we know about 2020 is that IBM Z will
still be the dominant platform for mission-critical workloads. How can I
say this with confidence? Because just about every bank, government, and major
logistics company uses it to collect, store, and analyze their most valuable
data - and that trend is only increasing. In my 20+ years of working on these
systems, I've seen many alternatives proposed and attempted, but Z still leads
the way because there is no better platform to get the job done.
In
fact, it's easy to predict that usage will actually increase over the next 12
months thanks to modernization and security improvements that make it possible
to drive real value for users, their partners, and end users. Security is a top concern of many CIOs, and
the z15's Data Privacy Passports provides the ability to comprehensively
control and protect data throughout its lifecycle. I see many corporations in
2020 accelerating modernization initiatives that provide a much lower-cost
alternative to rip and replace. Zowe,
Open Source, and DevOps practices will lead these modernization efforts and
make IBM Z even more accessible and familiar to early career professionals and
cost-effective to manage in a hybrid cloud environment."
Mike
Friesenegger, Solution Architect, IBM Global Alliance, SUSE
"Database
consolidation as well as data encryption and compression are important
differentiations for the IBM Z and LinuxONE platform. A new workload that will
get significant attention in 2020 is the combination of containerized cloud
native application deployment next to the data secured by the most reliable and
safe server platform. SUSE, through the Open Mainframe Project, has contributed
leadership and mentors to make Cloud Foundry based containerized development
and deployment for the IBM Z and LinuxONE platform."
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About the Open Mainframe Project
The
Open Mainframe Project is intended to serve as a focal point for deployment and
use of Linux and Open Source in a mainframe computing environment. With a
vision of Open Source on the Mainframe as the standard for enterprise class
systems and applications, the project's mission is to Build community and
adoption of Open Source on the mainframe by eliminating barriers to Open Source
adoption on the mainframe, demonstrating the value of the mainframe on
technical and business levels, and strengthening collaboration points and
resources for the community to thrive. Learn more about the project at
https://www.openmainframeproject.org.
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