In the world of application modernization, 2024 has been, as many of us predicted, breathless and momentous so far. Let’s take a second to catch our breath and take stock.
Rumours of my demise? Ha!
I am sure you spotted some of the IBM mainframe’s 60th anniversary celebrations over the last couple of months. Viewpoints from across the industry offered a variety of perspectives, overwhelmingly positive, of big iron’s birthday, in what was a healthy volume of commentary to mark the occasion. I was delighted to collaborate with both the Open Mainframe Project in their recent webinar, and with an article for industry publication Enterprise Tech Journal, to help mark the occasion.
But arguably the most illuminating and striking contribution regarding the mainframe’s health in 2024, was the fact that IBM mainframe revenues continued to grow in Q1 2024. And that’s despite the current model, Z16, having been on the market for some time, with rumours of a replacement being prepared. You simply can’t argue with the numbers – the relentless success of the IBM mainframe is truly era-defining.
Elsewhere across the mainframe and application modernization space, key players have been busy. IBM services snapped up modernization tech from Advanced; Rocket Software completed the acquisition of the former Micro Focus (and then briefly OpenText) AMC business; AWS and TCS announced a GenAI-infused modernization partnership agreement. I sincerely doubt that’s all we’ll see this year…
Leadership Credentials
Making sense of the market offerings, analyst and research firms have been busy poring over the relative merits of the vendors in an increasingly crowded sector. Forrester’s latest modernization services vendor market report pointed at TCS, Accenture, Infosys, IBM, Cap Gemini, and Wipro as leaders, while a similar report from the Everest Group listed TCS, HCL, Wipro, DXC, Kyndryl, and Ensono as the leaders. Notable services and technology vendors continue to jostle for position.
The more ambitious 2024 ISG Provider Lens™ Mainframe — Services and Solutions attempts, as the name suggests, to cover both technology vendors and service providers. It lists no fewer than twenty-four organizations as leaders, across a variety of categories, symbolizing a rich and complex market, served by a broad array of credible capabilities.
Modernization Clearly Matters
The mainframe’s commercial success, and a busy vendor space, both imply a healthy industry, dedicated to supporting the modernization of core (often pejoratively labelled ‘legacy’) systems, for thousands of organizations and government agencies worldwide. It has been a busy year, the conversations remain as varied as they are important, including –
- AI: the great disruptor? You can’t blink in the tech space without news of a fresh Artificial Intelligence discussion, innovation, or prediction. Application modernization is no exception. AI (and GenAI) offers a range of potential efficiencies for a range of use-cases in the modernization journey, and I’ve noticed several vendor investments to tackle those requirements.
- It is about people, process, and technology: always. Further, the reality facing large mainframe shops is that their valuable, critical systems have far outlasted any reasonable prediction of their tenure. As such, those who built them and knew the systems well have long-since moved on, and there is a deficit of genuine expertise in place to orchestrate the major changes those systems now need. The net summary of the skills issue is this: Modernization won’t work without smart, skilled people, as well as the right technology too.
- Take an umbrella, it is cloudy out there. While mainframe revenues are up, cloud deployment revenue growth outpaces any other platform, and the big three (AWS, Microsoft. and Google) continue to dominate. Studies suggest that very few are standardizing on a single cloud platform – even mainframes are connected in a cloud ecosystem. Emerging opportunities of flexibility (the removal of egress fees a fresh talking point) has created greater competitive dynamics. The cloud’s profound impact on the application modernization world remains a defining market characteristic.
In each case, I have summarized my understanding of things in this blog series.
A look to the future with, um, COBOL
That’s right. This is a busy year of celebration. First the mainframe hit 60, but this gets eclipsed by the 65th anniversary of the COBOL programming language later this year. I have been pleased to witness (and participate in) events and commentary regarding COBOL’s continued relevance and viability. For me, talking application modernization mandates us to understand what part COBOL did, does, and will play.
There’s more than one letter in the alphabet
Of course, the world of application modernization is not just about what to do with mainframe systems. Z isn’t the only letter available. Similar opportunities, challenges, concerns – and enabling technologies – focus on the mid-range market, not least the i series (AS/400) world. And everything we’ve already said here also applies to the AS/400 platform. That market has a rich heritage of vital applications and loyal advocates, built using tech and languages that are arguably falling behind in terms of contemporary viability, innovation, and investment.
Leaving a Legacy of Truth
I’ve already mentioned the term ‘legacy’, above. Your dictionary defines the word as a positive – a gift from the past. Yet, in IT, the term now denotes bad news – legacy implies out-of-date, unfit for purpose, dusty, and due for replacement. However, that is the perspective of the commentator, and is a subjective opinion. In fact, if you replaced ‘legacy’ with the adjectives ‘heritage’ or ‘long-standing’ or ‘valued’, they would be more accurate.
That’s just one example of where what we say, or read, contains an implicit bias based on someone’s world view. Eradicating misleading commentary can only help us all. Given the strident opinions on all sides of the application modernization market, it remains important to clarify both what you, and others, are really saying
