the 2019 mainframe user survey - arcati.com

© Arcati Limited, 2019 13

Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2007Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2019

2019 user survey

Asia/Pacific8%

Europe20%

Middle East/Africa12%

North America56%

South America4%

As usual, our annual mainframe survey provides a snapshot of the IBM Z user community’s existing hardware and software configuration, and also their plans and concerns for 2019.

This year we have continued to track the growth of mainframe integration with mobile and cloud computing, and other areas of new development, as well as gauging the extent to which the API economy, DevOps, and Big Data are really impacting on the mainframe world. In addition, we have continued to explore relative costs in some details, asking respondents how fast their distributed server costs are growing relative to the mainframe.

Profile of respondentsThe mainframe user survey was completed by 100 individuals between the 1 November 2018 and the 30 November 2018. Survey respondents were either contacted directly by e-mail or other online means and invited to complete the mainframe user survey on the Arcati Web site. Responses from

large mainframe vendors and multiple entries from different people at the same site were excluded from the survey, as were largely incomplete responses.

The distribution of all respondents is shown in Chart 1. Over half (56 percent) were from North America with a fifth (20 percent) from Europe, with 12 percent from Middle East/Africa, eight percent from the Asia/Pacific region, and four percent from South America.

As usual, a wide range of industry types are represented in our sample (Chart 2), with IT services, banking/finance, insurance, and retail/distribution being the largest groups, making up a fifth (20 percent) each. Manufacturing and healthcare each comprised four percent, and people describing their industry as other made up 12 percent. This year, there were no respondents from education, government, transportation, telecommunications, or utilities/energy.

The 2019 Mainframe User SurveyAn analysis of the profile, plans, and priorities of mainframe users.

Many thanks to all those who took part.

by Trevor Eddolls and Mark Lillycrop

Chart 1: Distribution of respondents

© Arcati Ltd, 201914

Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2019

2019 user survey

A third way to categorize respondents is to look at business size. As shown in Chart 3, the largest group of respondents are from companies with 1001 to 5,000 employees worldwide (46 percent). Almost a third (29 percent) had over 10,000 staff. At the other end of the scale, 13 percent had 0-200 staff, leaving eight percent of respondents with 201 to 1000 staff, and four percent with 5001 to 10,000 staff.

62 percent of our respondents were involved in running in-house data centres, which is the down on last year’s figure (75 percent). 13 percent (down from last year’s 21 percent) of respondents said they were working in an outsourced operation, with a further 25 percent (well up from last year’s four percent) saying that they were partially outsourced.

Chart 2: Industry sector of respondents

Chart 3: Number of employees woldwide in organizations surveyed

20%

20%

20%

20%

4%4%

12%

IT

Banking/finance

Retail/distribution

Insurance

Manufacturing

Healthcare

Other

13%

8%

46%

4%

29%

0-200

201-1000

1001-5000

5001-10000

10000+



2019 user survey

Installed MIPS and capacity growthAs in previous surveys, we have used MIPS as the principal measure of size. We asked respondents to indicate the total mainframe MIPS installed on their systems, and the result is shown in Chart 4. 21 percent had under 500 MIPS (down from last year’s 24 percent). 29 percent had 500 to 1000 MIPS (up from last year’s 24 percent). 29 percent had 1000 to 10,000 MIPS (down from last year’s 38 percent). Five percent had 10,000 to 25,000

MIPS (the same as last year). And 13 percent of respondents had over 25,000 MIPS (last year it was nine percent). As in previous years, we use installed MIPS later in the survey to identify differences between small, mid-sized, and larger users.

Chart 5 shows the annual MIPS growth of respondents. 84 percent of sites (up from last year’s figure of 78 percent of mainframe

Chart 5: Annual MIPS growth of respondents

21%

29%29%

8%

13%

Under 500

501-1000

1001-10000

10001-25000

25001+

Chart 4: Total mainframe MIPS installed

8%8%

46%

34%

4%

Decline

No growth

1-10 percent

11-25 percent

26-50 percent



2019 user survey

installations) are experiencing some growth, with 46 percent of sites (down from last year’s 57 percent) reporting growth up to 10 percent, and 34 percent reporting growth between 11 and 25 percent (double last year’s figure of 17 percent). Four percent of sites have growth between 26 and

50 percent. On the down side, Eight percent (down from 18 percent last year) of sites are reporting a decline in mainframe capacity growth. Eight percent of sites (up from last year’s four percent) have not experienced any kind of change in their MIPS this year. Looking at Chart 6, however,

Chart 6: MIPS growth by installation size

Chart 7: Mainframe capacity growth compared with other platforms

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Less than 1000MIPS 1000 to 10,000

MIPS Over 10,000 MIPS

26-50 percent

11-25 percent

1-10 percent

No growth

Declined

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

Mainframe Unix Linux Windows i5

Over 50 percent

26-50 percent

11-25 percent

1-10 percent

No growth

Decline



2019 user survey

we can see that the picture varies considerably depending on the size of the system. This year, we find that the larger systems are anticipating the largest growth, while, at the same time, some of those sites are expecting a decline – a confusing picture. The picture is also confused with middle-sized sites, where some are expecting a decline and others are expecting some kind of growth. The majority of the smaller sites are expecting growth in the 1-10 percent range, with only a few expecting no growth and no-one expecting a decline. Perhaps it’s a reflection of the ebb and flow in the business world at the end of 2018.

We also compared the rate of growth of the mainframe with that of other IT platforms within the enterprise. As shown in Chart 7, the IBM Z is the only platform showing any decline. Windows is showing the best overall growth graph, which may be due to the growing use of its Azure cloud computing environment. Interestingly, just over 50 percent of sites don’t have IBM i and 15 percent don’t have Unix. Linux is generally showing good growth with only a few sites (about 5 percent) not showing any growth.

Hardware and software currencyThe IBM mainframe hardware range continues to receive a regular makeover, with new high-end and low-end systems generally being announced on alternate years. July 2017 saw the announcement of the new Z14 mainframe, which came with pervasive encryption, and so much more. April 2018 saw the announcement of the ZR1 mainframe/LinuxONE Rockhopper II. Perhaps the most interesting thing with this mainframe was that it featured a 19-inch industry standard, single-frame design allowing for easy placement into cloud data centres and for private cloud environments. It looks like any other rack-mounted server, while providing significant increases in capacity, performance, memory, and cache across nearly all aspects of the system. Delivery dates for each range of processor can be found in the Mainframe evolution section of the Yearbook.

Our research suggests that, traditionally, users upgrade on a regular basis to the most recent hardware to take advantage of capacity increases and cost benefits. Surprisingly, Chart 8 shows

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

ZR1 z14 z13s z13 z12BC z12EC z114 z10BC z9BC otherIBM

Chart 8: Mainframe processors installed



2019 user survey

that the most popular processor used by survey respondents was the slightly older z12BC. The next most popular was the z13 at 32 percent of sites. The even older z114 was found at a fifth of sites. It was a little surprising to find so few sites (eight percent) had installed the z14, which was announced last year. It must be noted when looking at these statistics that many sites had more than one model of mainframe installed.

We also took the opportunity to ask people whether they were interested in LinuxONE Linux mainframes and when they were likely to get one. Disappointingly for IBM, just over 70 percent (up from last year’s 60 percent) said they wouldn’t get one in the foreseeable future. But, on the brighter side, four percent said they already had one, with just over 20 percent (more-or-less the same figure as last year) expecting to get one at some time in the future. And, currently, there are just under 5 percent of sites with a Linux mainframe.

Software currency (Chart 9) presents a more mixed picture and usually lags a little behind hardware. This year’s survey found that 43 percent of sites were using z/OS Version 2.2, and 35 percent were using Version 2.1. The big change from last year was the percentage of sites using Version 2.3, which has increased from four

percent to 22 percent. No-one reported using any other operating system (eg Linux) as their primary operating system.

Mainframe strategyWe asked respondents what, in their opinion, are the main benefits to their organization of the mainframe over other platforms. This year’s top of the list was security with 96 percent of respondents highlighting it as a benefit (up from 80 percent last year). 92 percent of respondents highlighted the benefit of availability (same as last year), with 68 percent identifying scalability, and a further 62 percent picked manageability as a mainframe benefit. These last two values are higher than last year.

Less positively, 64 percent of sites (down from last year’s 68 percent) thought mainframes are too expensive (or appear to be), making it the biggest obstacle to mainframe acceptance within the enterprise. Over half (52 percent) thought the difficulty in retaining the necessary skills was the second biggest obstacle (up from 40 percent last year). A further 48 percent had concerns about the future availability/support of mainframe applications. That figure was 36 percent last year. 36 percent of respondents (well down

35%

43%

22%

z/OS 2.1

z/OS 2.2

z/OS 2.3

Chart 9: Primary mainframe operating system release in use



2019 user survey

from last year’s 52 percent) thought there were cultural barriers between mainframe and other IT professionals. 28 percent (well up from last year’s 12 percent) thought mainframes are too complex (or appear to be). And 12 percent couldn’t see any obstacles to mainframes being accepted in the enterprise.

Within the industry as a whole, opinion is clearly divided over the role of the mainframe in new applications. For some companies the mainframe remains a separate legacy environment while others are leveraging the strengths of large systems by using them in cloud and mobile working. You hear mainframers talking about JSON

Chart 11: Which middleware have you, or do you plan to enable, with Web services?

27%

41%

32%

Fully

Partly

No

Chart 10: Do your mainframe applications participate in your Web services/SOA?

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

CICS Db2 IMS WebSphere Other



2019 user survey

and RESTful interfaces along with smartphone app designers. We found that 60 percent of sites viewed their mainframe as a legacy system (down from last year’s 68 percent). Worryingly, only five percent (down from eight percent last year and 22 percent the year before) still viewed mainframes as strategic, and 36 percent (up from 20 percent) viewed them as both strategic and legacy.

We asked respondents whether their z/OS systems participate in Web services and SOA environments, and the results are shown in Chart 10. 68 percent of organizations said that their mainframes participate partly or fully in Web services (up from last year’s 57 percent).

26 percent (down from last year’s 40 percent) went on to say that they run Java-based applications on the mainframe, with a further five percent (down from last year’s 20 percent) planning to. 52 percent of respondents (well up from last year’s 32 percent) said that they run Linux on IBM Z, with

another eight percent (same as last year) at the planning stage. There are considerable cost and management benefits of consolidating distributed Linux workloads onto the mainframe. IBM made the IFL (Integrated Facility for Linux) specialty processor available in 2001, and announced the LinuxONE in 2015 and the Rockhopper II in 2018. Running Linux on a mainframe could so easily be a mainstream technology.

84 percent of organizations said that they are Web-enabling their CICS subsystems (Chart 11), which is the same as last year. 44 percent of sites are Web-enabling Db2, which is down on last year’s 52 percent. 36 percent of sites are Web-enabling IMS, slightly higher than last year’s 32 percent. 24 percent (same as last year) are Web-enabling WebSphere Application Server. And 16 percent of respondents are Web-enabling other software.

We asked whether respondents currently used their mainframe for cloud computing, and, for the

Chart 12: Legacy application plans over the next three years

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Less than 1000MIPS

1000-10,000MIPS

Over 10,000MIPS

Maintained but not integrated withnew apps

Maintained and activelyintegrated/enhanced with newapps

Mostly ported to Unix/Linux

All of the above to some degree



2019 user survey

first time, found 16 percent of respondents did. We also asked whether respondents were planning to adopt cloud computing as a strategy. 56 percent (up from last year’s 24 percent) said they weren’t at present. 16 percent thought that they would use cloud in the future. Eight percent (way down from last year’s 36 percent) thought some mainframe applications will be cloud enabled. 12 percent (same as last year) planned for all of their applications to use the cloud model.

As for the future of legacy systems, once again the answer depends to a degree on the size and maturity of the installation. Interestingly, Chart 12 clearly shows that the smaller and middle-sized sites expect the majority of their legacy applications to be maintained and actively integrated/enhanced with new apps. In contrast, none of the larger sites expect this. They expect that some will be maintained but not integrated, some will ported to Unix or Linux, and something will happen to the rest! That is an amazingly sharp contrast between the differently-sized mainframe groups. No-one suggested that their mainframe

applications would be ported to Windows, nor that they would be outsourced.

When we asked whether application modernization was a priority, we found that a third (32 percent) thought they’d modernize a few applications here and there. Another third (32 percent) suggested that at their site they had some plans to modernize applications. And 12 percent had great plans for application modernization. Sadly, 20 percent had no plans for any application modernization.

Relative costThere are many ways of comparing the costs of mainframe systems with those of other platforms, but none of them are straightforward and few are meaningful. CIOs and finance directors all too often have little experience of the factors that contribute to mainframe total cost of ownership and there is still little published data available to help them make informed comparisons. It is beyond the scope of this short survey to go into detail on cost, but the following questions explore some areas where financial comparisons can be

Chart 13: How fast is your System z-related expenditure growing annually, on thetechnology itself and on the people required to manage the technology?

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Capacity Technology costs People costs

26-50 percent

11-25 percent

0-10 percent

No growth

Declining



2019 user survey

made between large centralized systems and distributed servers.

We asked respondents how fast their IBM Z-related expenditure is increasing, in terms of the technology itself and the people needed to support it. In Chart 13, we compare these results with the growth in mainframe capacity. From the graph, you can see that 83 percent of sites have seen some kind of increase in capacity, and, similarly, 83 percent have seen an increase in technology costs, but only 46 percent of sites believe their people costs have increased! A further third of sites have seen no change in their people costs. Nine percent of sites are seeing a decline in technology costs with an almost matching eight percent seeing a drop in capacity, but 21 percent are seeing a drop in people costs. The figures on people costs are quite alarming. At some stage, management will have to realize that you can’t always do more with less – no matter how good the technology is.

We went on to ask what proportion of the total IT budget is absorbed by mainframe-related costs (Chart 14). Over 80 percent of sites say that the bulk of their IT budget is spent off mainframe,

leaving less than 20 percent of sites where the majority of the expenditure is on the mainframe side.

Again this year, we asked how fast respondents believed their acquisition/maintenance and support costs for distributed platforms were growing relative to the mainframe, for an equivalent amount of capacity or size of user population respectively (Chart 15). In other words, did they think that their mainframe costs were increasing faster or more slowly than their Unix, Linux, Windows, and IBM i costs. Of course, these numbers have to be treated with great caution because we are asking respondents to make direct comparisons, which, as we have just stated, are very complex. Once again, this chart can be used only as an indication of a general trend, but it’s a very interesting trend nevertheless! Anything above the green block in each column suggests higher costs for alternative platforms. Again this year, a substantial number of respondents felt that their Unix, Linux, and Windows user-support costs and acquisition/maintenance costs were increasing faster than the mainframe for an equivalent amount of capacity or support.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%100% Mainframe : 0% Non-mainframe

100% Mainframe : 0% Non-mainframe




Chart 14: IT budget and corporate data: mainframe and distributed systems compared



2019 user survey

IBM versus the ISVsThe mainframe independent software vendor (ISV) business is continually evolving, and there have been a number of small companies acquired by larger organizations, but, on the whole, not any obvious shifts in the landscape. The Broadcom acquisition of CA Technologies doesn’t count because Broadcom didn’t sell software.

IBM regularly argues that some ISVs are too inflexible and need to change their software pricing strategies, while the third-party suppliers respond that IBM is placing excessive pressure on them by using its size and influence to win over their customers. Mainframe management is now sold as a way of allowing customers to maintain the quality of the service they get from the mainframe without the reliance on experienced mainframers. In other words, the software will identify a problem and, as well as informing a less-qualified human, will take the necessary steps to negate the problem. In addition, vendors are beginning to use GUI-type screens, which younger IT people are more familiar with, to display important information. And much mainframe monitoring data can now be accessed from a browser.

What this doesn’t do, of course, is develop new products. Experienced programmers are still needed for that to take place.

We asked respondents what makes them consider a change of vendor for their mainframe tools and utilities. It’s clear from Chart 16 that cost is by far the biggest driver, even though cheaper tools often offer less functionality, it may be the case that some customers feel the higher-priced software is filled with bloatware that they have to pay for, but will never use. ISVs may be pleased to know that only 12 percent of sites said they rarely if ever change their software. This figure was higher last year at 20 percent.

We also asked how much of users’ mainframe software budget is spent on IBM software, and how much on products from other vendors. This

Are your distributed user support costs growingfaster or slower than mainframe?

Chart 15: Relative growth of expenditure: mainframe versus distributed

Are your distributed acquisition/maintenance costsgrowing faster or slower than mainframe?

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

Unix Linux Windows i5

Much faster

A little faster

About the same

A little slower

Much slower

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%


Much faster

A little faster

About the same

A little slower

Much slower

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%




2019 user survey

year (see Chart 17) we found that the majority (61 percent) of respondents pay more to IBM for software than to other vendors.

Other issuesWe asked about IBM’s ‘specialty’ processors such as the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL), the

Chart 16: What are the most important reasons for replacing mainframe tools and applications?

Chart 17: How much software budget goes to IBM and how much to ISVs?

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

20% IBM : 80% other vendors





0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

To reduce costs To reduce thenumber of

vendorssupported

To gain newfunctions

To obtainbetter

service/supportfrom vendor

Other Rarely if everreplace

mainframesoftware



2019 user survey

Application Assist Processor (zAAP) intended for Java applications, and the Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) intended primarily for Db2. We asked respondents which specialty processors they had. This year, 12 percent of sites had all three, and forty percent of sites had just two specialty processors. More sites had zIIP processors (80 percent – up from 64) than any other. 40 percent (up from last year’s 20 percent) had IFL processors, and 28 percent had zAAP specialty processors (up from last year’s 16 percent) installed. 16 percent of sites don’t have a specialty processor installed (the same as last year). The full results are shown in Chart 18.

In the USA, regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and BASEL II, plus what’s estimated to be over 150 state and federal laws dictate the length of time that Electronically-Stored Information (ESI) needs to be retained. These regulations, and they do depend on the industry, have greatly increased data retention periods. The EU GDPR regulations came into force in May 2018. These affect any company in the world

storing any data about EU citizens (airlines, car hire, banks, etc).

In the light of this, we asked whether respondents had a data archiving strategy in place that was compliant with the latest regulations. 29 percent of sites (down from 35 percent last year) said they were fully compliant, with a further 19 percent (well down from last year’s 29 percent) being nearly compliant with these regulations. The figure for sites not having an archiving strategy is a staggering 43 percent, hugely up on last year’s 18 percent. Clearly, compliance is an important issue and many organizations don’t seem to be taking the matter seriously. It’s worth recognizing that GDPR administrative fines for organizations that aren’t compliant can be as much as 20 million Euros or 4 percent of annual global turnover, whichever is the highest. The full results are shown in Figure 19.

There’s been a huge growth in the use of social media in recent years, and we wondered whether those people “using their dad’s technology” found social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc)

Chart 18: Specialty processors installed

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

IFL zIIP zAAP None



2019 user survey

useful for their work on the mainframe. Only 12 percent said that they did (same as last year), with a further four percent not sure, and the rest not using it at all. IBM has Facebook pages dedicated to IMS, CICS, and Db2, it seems a shame if they’re not being used.

With the growth in the number of software products that allow users to monitor the mainframe from a browser on a tablet or smartphone, and with IBM’s deals with Apple and Microsoft in mind, we thought it would be interesting to see whether our survey respondents were using these devices to monitor or control their mainframe. Only 12 percent said that they were (similar to last year’s figure). So, not a disruptive technology!

Much has been made in the media (for years) about IPV4 addresses running out and the need for everyone to migrate to IPv6, which has many more addresses available. The change would require a lot of effort for mainframers, so we wondered whether users had any plans to introduce IPv6 in 2019. Eight percent of sites said they already have IPv6, but only four percent (well down from last year’s 23 percent) said that they were planning to implement it in 2019.

Another hot topic recently has been Big Data and all the things associated with that (such as Splunk, Hadoop, and Spark). We asked whether sites had any plans to use Big Data. 12 percent of sites said that they were already using Big Data (up from five percent last year). A further 12 percent said that they were planning to use Big Data (down from last year’s 19 percent).

DevOps (and DecSecOps) has also been talked about a lot during 2018 and so we were interested to see whether sites were actually embracing the technology. The survey found that 12 percent of sites were already using DevOps (down from a third last year), with a further 28 percent planning to use it (very slightly less than last year’s value of one third).

Similarly, we asked whether sites had any plans to publish and reuse APIs to speed up application development. Using APIs means that organizations can re-use the best parts of their existing programs and new or updated applications can be created much faster by combining existing APIs. 44 percent of sites said that they were already using the technique with a further 24 percent planning to.

Chart 19: Data archiving strategies that comply with the latest regulations

43%

9%

19%

29% No, not at present

Not yet, but we are implementing acompliance strategy

We are almost fully compliant withthe latest regulations

Yes, our data archiving strategy isfully compliant



2019 user survey

One way that CICS, IMS, and Db2 sites can easily allow their applications to link to mobile working is to use Liberty. Liberty is a JEE application server based on WebSphere Application Server technology that can run stand-alone, on multiplatforms, or on z/OS. It dramatically simplifies the interaction with mainframe resources from Java applications. We asked whether people were making use of Liberty. Surprisingly, only 8 percent of sites already use Liberty (down from 14 percent last year), with 16 percent (down from 24 percent) planning to install it.

Zowe was announced in 2018 as a way for non-framers to securely manage, control, script, and develop on the mainframe like any other cloud platform. Four percent of sites say they are already using this open source technology. 20 percent of sites have plans to make use of it in the coming year.

Blockchain is the cryptocurrency idea that can be used for securing and sharing ledgers and all sorts of information. The survey found that four percent of sites are already using it, and 12 percent are planning to use it.

Docker is a way of containerizing applications – like little virtual machines – that allows an application to perform in the same way on any platform. Eight percent of respondents said they were already using docker, with a further 12 percent saying that they had plans to use it.

Finally, we asked about BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). We wanted to know how important sites thought it was to make mainframe data available to other platforms. 72 percent (down from last year’s 80 percent) of sites said that it was very important to the way they work at the moment. Eight percent (up from four percent last year) are in the planning stage, and a further eight percent expect to do some work on this in the future. When it comes to how important is the idea of people using their own devices (BYOD) to access mainframes, 16 percent (up from last year’s null value) said it was

very important to the way they work now. Eight percent (down from last year’s 13 percent) are in the planning stages, with 28 percent (the same as last year) expecting to be in the future. And 44 percent (48 percent last year) said it wasn’t important.

Probably the most interesting question was: “how viable do you see mainframe computing at your site?”. Worryingly, four percent of sites suggested that mainframe computing was not viable at their sites and will be gone very soon. On a brighter note, sixty percent of sites thought it will continue much as it is, with a third (32 percent) suggesting they had positive plans for the mainframe in the future, and four percent having great plans for the mainframe in the future.

Survey commentsAt the end of the survey, respondents were invited to leave comments or other information they wanted to share. In the main, respondents are perfectly happy with their mainframes.

One respondent commented passionately: “The biggest problems facing mainframe is simply getting higher management to appreciate and get educated on the possibilities. Too many ‘O’ opinions are outdated and vastly incorrect. Combine that with total naivety created by outsourcing almost everything to India, where mainframes are a total unknown, then there seems little hope for a long future. The legacy term of “expensive mainframes” is beginning to look more-and-more inaccurate each year. Windows and its associated hardware and software seems to be exempt from such cost comparisons! Cost comparison needs to be done on a cost/user basis in order to give a balanced comparison. Ultimately though, availability beats TCA every time. When you’re already utilising the fastest hardware, fastest database, and most reliable operating systems on the planet, there’s only one other direction you can go in the future. zIIP processors are proving very effective at controlling costs better, even ISVs are beginning



2019 user survey

to appreciate their importance and changing their outdated licensing models to reflect zIIPs. zIIP exploitation is critical to mainframe longevity.”

A second respondent wrote: “Mainframes can last for another 100 years for lots of the good reasons. The main killers of mainframe technology are the old baby boomers, who are still holding their positions and not sharing their knowledge, and not allowing newcomers to embrace the technology. If the management at companies, especially IBM and big banks, won’t wake up to this fact, then mainframes will die with these baby boomers.”

Heartfelt comments showing just how much mainframe professionals feel about the technology they work on.

CONCLUSIONSAs always, it was an interesting survey this year seeing how various sites are adopting the new technologies that seem to come out every year and how the world of the mainframe seems to be integrating with the other IT platforms used by most organizations. Clearly, working with mainframes is an interesting way to spend your day – particularly as they are able to reach out to mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and the way DevOps practices can speed up what was a very slow process of application development. In fact, even CICS and IMS now have quarterly updates that add value to the product.

In terms of what’s new (or, perhaps more correctly, what appears on a lot of PowerPoint slides), the survey found that only 12 percent of sites are already using Big Data, with a further 12 percent planning to use it. Again, 12 percent of sites are already using DevOps, with a further 28 percent planning to use it. And 44 percent of sites are already using APIs with a further 24 percent planning to do so. Blockchain has been in the news a lot, yet only four percent of sites are currently using it, with 12 percent planning to use it. Similarly with docker, we found that eight

percent of respondents were already using it with 12 percent in the planning stage.

Probably the hottest idea in 2018, was Zowe, the open source way of accessing mainframes. We found that four percent of respondents were already using this new technology, with 20 percent planning to. I wonder how those numbers will grow over the next few years?

When it comes to Web-enabling subsystems, we found that 84 percent of organizations were Web-enabling their CICS subsystems; 44 percent were Web-enabling Db2; and 36 percent of sites were Web-enabling IMS. In contrast, only 8 percent of sites already use Liberty, with 16 percent planning to install it.

Mainframes in an organization are just one of the computing platforms people use (along with smartphones, tablets, laptops, Power systems, etc), and, for a long time, there has been an issue, at many sites, with mainframes being accepted in the enterprise. The reason suggested by 64 percent of sites was that mainframes are too expensive, or appear to be. The good news is that this figure has been dropping over the past few years. However, 36 percent of respondents (well down from last year’s 52 percent) thought there were cultural barrier between mainframe and other IT professionals. On the positive side, 12 percent couldn’t see any obstacles to mainframes being accepted in the enterprise – which is a good sign.

Perhaps highlighting the need for something like Zowe, just over half of respondents thought the difficulty in retaining the necessary skills on the mainframe was an obstacle to mainframes being accepted. 48 percent of people surveyed had concerns about the future availability/support of mainframe applications. And 28 percent thought mainframes are too complex (or appear to be).

Reinforcing the value of the mainframe to organizations, the survey found that 84 percent of sites have seen some kind of increase in



2019 user survey

capacity, and 83 percent have seen an increase in technology costs, and yet over half the sites believe their people costs have decreased or stayed the same!

But no organization is going to develop an asset unless they view it as having a future, and we all know the mindset that still exists about the mainframe, treating it as little more than your dad’s technology. Unfortunately, the survey found that 60 percent of sites viewed their mainframe as a legacy system. Worryingly, only five percent (down from eight percent last year and 22 percent the year before) still viewed mainframes as strategic. 36 percent (up from 20 percent) viewed them as strategic and legacy.

But it’s not all bad news, 96 percent of respondents highlighted security as one of the mainframe’s benefits. This was closely followed by 92 percent highlighting the benefit of the mainframe’s availability. 68 percent identified scalability as a benefit, with a further 62 percent picking manageability as a mainframe benefit.

Interestingly, this year’s survey didn’t find that last year’s mainframe model was the most prevalent. There seems to be a spread of conservatism amongst mainframe sites with older models like the z12BC and z13 being retained. Only eight percent of sites in our survey had a z14. In terms of operating system, 43 percent of sites were using Version 2.2, and 35 percent of sites were using Version 2.1, with 22 percent using the newer Version 2.3. While the figure is much higher than last year, it doesn’t show a rush to embrace the latest software.

It’s interesting to see that cloud computing is only just beginning to make any kind of impact this year. 16 percent of respondent said that they were currently using their mainframe for cloud

computing. 16 percent thought they would use cloud computing in the future. 56 percent (up from last year’s 24 percent) of respondents said they weren’t planning to adopt cloud computing as a strategy. Looking to the future, 20 percent thought some or all their mainframe applications would be cloud enabled in the future.

Linux is often in the news, so it was interesting to see what our respondents had to say about it. Over half of respondents said that they run Linux on the IBM Z, with another eight percent at the planning stage. There are considerable cost and management benefits from consolidating distributed Linux workloads onto the mainframe. However, 70 percent of respondents weren’t interested in LinuxONE mainframes, although four percent said they already had one, with 20 percent expecting to get one at some time in the future. But, no sites in the survey said their primary operating system was Linux.

Going back to costs, the survey found that at the majority of sites, the support costs of Unix, Linux, and Windows were growing faster than the mainframe’s.

As is so often the case, the bottom line is that the mainframe continues to offer a cost-effective, secure (especially with pervasive encryption), and powerful platform for organizations with the necessary background and expertise in place to support it. It seems that non-mainframe IT staff and managers are not getting the opportunities to find out about the multitude of advantages that using a mainframe can bring to an organization – in terms of security, reliability, availability, flexibility, as well as understanding the true total cost of ownership figures for the platform. Perhaps Zowe will help the mainframe to appear like any other server to a younger generation of programmers and managers.



2019 user survey

http://www.dkl.com/arcati19

the 2019 mainframe user survey - arcati.com

Documents