Mainframe is Growing – Survey | Data Center Management and Mainframe Infrastructure Services updates at Maintec Blog

Mainframe usage continues to grow – 2011 Annual Mainframe Survey

Yes, Mainframe market is in the right pace of growth in 2011. According to the 6th Annual Mainframe survey conducted by BMC software, the Mainframe technology is expected to show an increased demand for capacity and workload by this year. The survey report released in September 2011 was conducted among 1300 Mainframe users across the globe. The result indicates that the Mainframes have a long standing future in the IT business environment as enterprises continue to look for new ways to integrate mainframes into the future data centers. As technology advances with cloud computing, mobile technology etc, enterprises are looking forward to integrate Mainframes with these technologies to generate more value in business. The cross platform integration features, newly introduced in Mainframes like z196, z114 etc contribute to the increasing demand of Mainframes in data centers, compared to distributed systems.

According to the BMC survey, about 62% respondents expect to grow their Mainframe capacity by this year, which is a noticeable increase from the last year’s 56%. About 93% of respondents saw growing or steady MIPS usage. MIPS (Million Instructions per Second) are a common measure of mainframe usage. The survey also points to the concerns regarding shortage of Mainframe skill set and staffing issues. About 32% of the respondents expressed this concern in the survey.

Survey results in a nutshell

62% of the survey respondents anticipate growth in the overall mainframe capacity.

93% of the survey respondents anticipate capacity to grow or remain steady in the coming year.

47% said new workloads and new business applications are contributing to their MIPS growth.

60% believe that cost reduction is the number one IT priority.

60% consider that private clouds is important for Mainframes.

31% believe that mobile device support as an important expectation for accessing the Mainframes in the future.

47% of the respondents said that new workloads and business applications are adding to their capacity growth.

32% showed concern over Mainframe staffing issues.

The top priorities of the Mainframe users are Reducing IT cost, Disaster recovery, Application modernization, MIPS utilization and reduction, Reducing the impact of outages and improving availability.

The survey once again confirms the strong market support Mainframe technology enjoys, something which was declared to be outdated several years back. The economic downturn has not much affected the Mainframe growth projections. Mainframe technology has adapted to the changing IT trends. The MIPS growth rates over the years are a testimony for the increasing demand for Mainframe computing in the future. Availability and security features of Mainframes make the big iron systems apt for becoming the IT powerhouse of enterprises. Companies are heavily committed to the Mainframes as they remain the top choice for reliable and secure platform to run IT organizations effectively.

The survey clearly captures the overall pulse of the mainframe market. Companies running Mainframe services just need to optimize their services to meet the current and emerging market requirements.