Have cloud computing killed mainframes? you would possibly think so. In fact, mainframes remain supremely important, even within the age of the cloud. Here’s why.

It’s easy enough to know why one might think that mainframes are not any longer relevant within the present age of “cloud-native” everything. Today, everyone and their mother is moving workloads to the cloud.

Public cloud computing platforms like AWS and Azure are generating record amounts of revenue, while private cloud frameworks, like OpenStack, are more popular than ever.

You may think that, as a technology introduced quite a half-century ago, mainframes don’t have much to supply during a world dominated by much newer cloud computing technology.

MAINFRAMES ARE THE ORIGINAL CLOUD

Think about it. Cloud computing has become popular because the cloud gives you:

But they are doing . The thing is, many of the qualities that make cloud computing so valuable to enterprises also are true of mainframes.

• On-demand access to compute and storage resources which will scale virtually without limit.
• A more cost-efficient thanks to maintain infrastructure than counting on local commodity servers.
• The flexibility to spin up differing types of software environments. within the cloud, you’ll run any sort of host OS you would like . you’ll use virtual servers, otherwise you can use containers. You get tons of flexibility.
• A lower maintenance burden. once you move workloads to the cloud, you not need to maintain many individual on-premise servers.

To large extent, mainframes offer precisely an equivalent benefits. Consider the subsequent points:

• A mainframe provides one infrastructure that delivers massive compute and storage resources whenever your applications require them.
• If you employ a mainframe, it’s probably one that you simply already own. You don’t need to purchase new infrastructure. additionally , a mainframe can last for many years , whereas a commodity server lasts usually just a couple of years. For both reasons, mainframes offer cost-efficiency.
• Mainframes offer you many software flexibility. you’ll use a mainframe OS like z/OS, otherwise you can use Linux. you’ll even run Docker containers on your mainframe.
• once you run applications on a mainframe, you simply have one machine to take care of . this is often simpler than maintaining dozens of on-premise commodity servers.

Mainframes have long offered these benefits, but the cloud computing concept as we all know it today has been around just for a few decade.

Essentially, then, mainframes were the first cloud. Going back decades, mainframes allowed companies to create cloud infrastructure avant la lettre (which may be a fancy way of claiming “before the term cloud infrastructure existed”).

MAINFRAMES AND CLOUD COMPUTING TODAY

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-cloud. you ought to move workloads to the cloud when the cloud is that the best fit a specific sort of workload.

But if you’ve got a mainframe environment found out , there’s an honest chance that your mainframe can provide many of an equivalent benefits as a cloud platform. therein case, you’ll save time, effort and money by continuing to use your mainframe to supply an equivalent cloud-like benefits that it’s been delivering for years.

In short, the cloud isn’t a replacement for your mainframe. It’s just a newer , flashier way of implementing an equivalent sorts of functionality that mainframes offered starting decades ago.

In fact , employing a mainframe effectively today does require integrating your mainframe environment into the remainder of your infrastructure — whether it involves the cloud or not.

Source: https://blog.syncsort.com/2017/08/mainframe/mainframes-matter-cloud-computing/