The world still runs on mainframes

One might be tempted to assume that the march of technology always means “out with the old, in with the new.” But what if the so-called “old” technology is responsible for processing 87% of all transactions in the world; is favored by 44 of the world’s top 50 banks and the vast majority of top retailers; and already affects our lives every day? We’re talking aboutmainframes, such asIBM Z, which have hidden in plain sight and powered the world of commerce since the 1960s. (In fact, the IBM System/360 mainframe figured prominently in aMad Menepisode.)Mainframes are as misunderstood as they are ubiquitous. “If you used a credit card today, you used a mainframe,” said Tina Tarquinio, Chief Product Officer for IBM Z and LinuxONE, as part of a panel called “Mainframe Mythbusting” forNew York Tech Week. “If you booked a flight, refilled a prescription or pulled cash from an ATM, you used a mainframe.”

So what do these silent heroes do? As IBM’sPJ Catalano,Principal Test Lead for IBM Z and LinuxONE (andmainframe influencer), toldIBM Thinkin an interview, “Mainframes are big computers that are great at processing a lot—and I meana lot—of transactions at scale, with both speed and reliability.”He gave an example of how the user-end experience of a seemingly simple bank transaction is just the tip of the iceberg: “When I go check my online bank account, I only think about my single set of actions: log in, check a balance on one account, maybe transfer some money to my kids’ accounts and log off.” That single action involves 5-10 interactions with the bank mainframe, Catalano said. Multiply that by, say, 10,000 customers transacting every second, with fraud verification added on top of that, he explained, and you begin to understand the sheer volume of information and processes that customer activity requires.“That is what mainframes are built for: doing the work that powers the economy, powers the travel industry, powers healthcare systems, each and every day,” he said. “And that’s why they deserve lots of hugs.”

Still, a lack of public awareness about mainframes might be contributing to a number of myths about the technology, the “Mainframe Mythbusting” panelists said, including the notion that mainframes are being phased out because younger generations don’t use them. Not true, said Tarquinio, who pointed out that even modern tools like Python, Go, Visual Studio Code and Git all run on the IBM Z ecosystem. And anyone using those tools is also interacting with a mainframe, whether they know it or not. “All of the ways that people are learning to program today exists on the [mainframe] platform,” she said from the floor of the IBM auditorium, “and [the new formats] are designed to interact seamlessly with older code.”Another common misperception, IBM Staff Writer Aili McConnon and moderator of the panel shared, is that “if you want to be cutting edge, you have to rip up and replace the mainframe with something else.” But this is a move some enterprises will likely come to regret, she said, citing aGartner studyreporting that “by 2030, 75% of vendors operating in the ‘mainframe exit’ market will either pivot their business models or cease to exist.” The reason for the exit failure, according to the report, is that “for most large-scale enterprises, the sheer volume and interconnected complexity of this data make wholesale migration a physical and financial impossibility.”