The Resilience of the Mainframe
As Mark Twain once said, “the report of my death was an exaggeration.” This is the same with mainframes for an enterprise. As far back as the early 1990s, consultants, advisors, and executives have noted that the mainframe is an outdated computer infrastructure that is both expensive and inflexible. While those descriptions may be appropriate, they miss the finer point that there is a significant percentage of commerce-based workloads that have their home on the mainframe. Applications from Federal and State governments to banks, credit processors, and insurance companies continue to survive and even thrive on the mainframe.
Why are Applications Still Running on the Mainframe Today?
While pro-mainframe programmers and administrators would have you believe it is because of the robust nature of the platform and high level of security, the reality is that it is difficult and expensive to rewrite applications that are as much as 50 years old to new modern architectures. The perception of the mainframe is that it is expensive because of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who have invested heavily in the platform and want to see positive returns on that investment.
