Modern Mainframe Development

Chapter 13. The Future

The mainframe market is definitely large and diverse. As we’ve seen in this book, it includes maintaining applications, developing new programs, innovating around DevOps and AI, and performing migrations.

However, this is not to imply that the mainframe industry is seeing growth everywhere. As with any category, certain pockets stand out in terms of the long-term growth prospects. In this chapter, we’ll take a look at these, as they may be worth considering for those seeking a career in mainframe development.

Innovation of the Mainframe

Mainframes are truly amazing machines. They can process massive workloads, such as 19 billion encrypted transactions a day at about 220,000 per second. This is absolutely critical as digital interactions continue to grow at a rapid pace. Moreover, their performance will continue to get better and better. This has been the case for decades.

“We are seeing large organizations that are not looking to replace their mainframes,” said John McKenny, senior vice president and general manager of Intelligent Z Optimization and Transformation at BMC. “Rather, they are looking to add these machines. There may even come a time when startups—say, in the fintech sector—will consider mainframes because of their durability, performance, and security.”

The 16th Annual BMC Mainframe Survey points to these positive trends:

• 92% see the mainframe as a source of long-term growth.

• 72% of the respondents have half their data on mainframes.