The IBM® mainframe remains a widely used enterprise computing workhorse, hosting essential IT for the majority of the world’s top banks, airlines, insurers and more. As the mainframe continues to evolve, the newest IBM Z® servers offer solutions for AI and analytics, blockchain, cloud, DevOps, security and resiliency, with the aim of making the client experience similar to that of using cloud services.

Many organizations today face challenges with their core IT infrastructure:

• Complexity and stability
• Workforce challenges
• Total cost of ownership
• Lack of speed and agility

Some software vendors suggest addressing these challenges with the “big bang” approach of moving your entire environment to a public cloud. But public cloud isn’t the best option for every workload, and a hybrid multicloud approach can offer the best of both worlds. IBM Z is constantly being developed to address the real challenges businesses face today, and every day we’re helping clients modernize their IT environments.

There are 4 strategic elements to consider when modernizing your mainframe environment:

• Infrastructure
• Applications
• Data access
• DevOps chain

This paper focuses on these four modernization dimensions.

Infrastructure modernization

Application modernization

Data access modernization

DevOps chain modernization

Conclusion