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BMC Survey Confirms Mainframe As Platform For Innovation

Findings reveal DevOps, DevSecOps, and AIOps adoption increased while mainframe security remains a top concern

HOUSTON – October 6, 2022 – BMC, a global leader in software solutions for the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, announced findings from its annual mainframe survey1 that reinforce the mainframe as a key platform for innovation. Organizations are bringing the mainframe to more of the enterprise, and digital transformation is increasingly inclusive of the mainframe. The insights align with the company’s focus on providing intelligence-driven solutions that span all IT and business environments from mainframe to the cloud.

Ninety-five percent of the more than 1000 executive and technical professionals surveyed have a positive perception of mainframes and state that the mainframe is a long-term platform that is growing and adding new workloads. In addition, perceptions of mainframe technologies, the ability of mainframes to serve enterprise data-driven use cases and practices, and usage capacity have increased over the last year.

AIOps and DevOps increase resiliency for mainframe organizations

Mainframes play a valuable role in enterprise innovation to deliver real-world results. The survey shows that adopters of AIOps and DevOps are seeing clear value from their investments, and the adoption of new tools and processes in key areas like DevOps, DevSecOps, and AIOps all increased from the previous year.

In AIOps, adoption is growing as implementation barriers decline. The mainframe is moving firmly into enterprise AIOps, as witnessed by the decreased use in non-mainframe environments and increased use in combined environments. The adoption of DevOps on the mainframe also continues to be a trend, as  DevOps and collaboration deliver real-world results. According to the survey:

  • Sixty-five percent of respondents report the combined use of AIOps in their mainframe and distributed environments. With the increase in AIOps adoption, more enterprises include mainframes in their enterprise wide AIOps initiatives, reinforcing the mainframe as a valuable platform for innovation.
  • More than twice as many respondents this year reported no challenges implementing AIOps on the mainframe, with the expense of implementation dropping by 8% over last year.
  • Seventy percent of large organizations reported DevOps use within their mainframe environment.
  • Silos between teams are declining, and collaboration is increasing, with 53% of respondents sharing DevSecOps roles – and 57% sharing platform ops roles – across mainframe and distributed environments.
  • Forty-four percent report site reliability engineering (SRE) as a shared role that includes the mainframe.
  • Mainframe AIOps and DevOps adopters point to increased enterprise resiliency, with 70% reporting faster visibility into service issues. Applications developed in-house are being delivered faster than a year ago, reinforcing the mainframe’s business value, with 76% realizing value in under 12 months.

Security and compliance lead mainframe priorities

For the third year, security and compliance lead the list of priorities for mainframe organizations, with 67% of respondents citing these as top issues, a 6% increase over last year. These priorities demonstrate a growing awareness of the need to effectively secure mainframe environments, although most businesses have not moved fast enough to adopt countermeasures or effective practices. As a result, privileged user monitoring and sharing event data with enterprise Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) have declined in production environments.

“The growth of mainframe innovation continues,” said John McKenny, senior vice president and general manager, Intelligent Z Optimization and Transformation at BMC. “While significant progress is being made in implementing DevOps and AIOps, there’s still a need to train staff to accelerate and more quickly realize the benefits. Slow rollouts today can lead to a lost competitive edge tomorrow. Now is the time to consider professional services to fill short-term needs.”

“The survey points to enterprises needing to prioritize SIEM integration for real-time visibility of mainframe threat events to help prevent data theft, loss, or business disruptions,” continued John McKenny. “As the mainframe becomes a more integral part of enterprise security initiatives like Zero Trust, it will be imperative to prioritize best practice alignment across teams. C-level executives need to back and invest in these efforts to fast-track improvements and embrace automation.” 

Additional Resources

12022 BMC Mainframe Survey Report, a study conducted by BMC among more than 1,000 mainframe and IT professionals globally, with responses gathered March 21-April 19, 2022 via email invitations to an online survey.

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Editorial contact:
Sheila Watson
BMC
ExtComms@bmc.com