Its the tenth consecutive year of BMC Software’s annual Mainframe Research Report, with the ever growing need for transactions powering not only the digital economy but the lifeblood of mainframes.

BMC says this year’s report ‘confirmed the mainframe’s continued growth is being powered by today’s digital ‘Always On’ world and its demand for secure access to applications and data, at mobile speeds and scale.’

Separately, we spoke to James Russell, BMC’s Area Vice President for ZSO Sales in the Asia Pacific on BMC’s 10th Global Mainframe Survey, which is embedded at the end of this article.

But before that - back to the survey results.

Security was the largest factor for continued investment in the mainframe with 56% responding that they see the security strengths of the platform as an advantage. This was followed closely by availability, as 55% of respondents leverage the mainframe’s availability benefits.

Another notable data point this year is 48% of customers are continuing their investment because of the mainframe’s centralised data server capability, and 45% said their transaction throughput requirements are best suited to the mainframe.

In looking at the top priorities for the year ahead, 65% said they will focus on cost optimisation and 59% on application availability, which underscores IT challenges to balance the delivery of innovation while efficiently operating their industrialised infrastructure.

This year’s research findings also indicated that business/IT alignment, Data Privacy, Data Recovery and Application Modernisation tied as the number three priority, which are all keys to successful digital transformation.

Plenty more after this ad, please read on.

Before we get to the more global results, what about the specific Australian and New Zealand stats from the survey, with A/NZ respondents representing just over 50% of the large zMainframes in the A/NZ Region?

• 97% verified the mainframe’s long-term viability for its ability to be a platform for security, mobility and growth of apps, where most of the data being accessed is managed and accessed via mainframe systems
• 62% said the mainframe will continue to grow and attract new workloads
• 50% said MIPS growth will come through legacy apps and new apps
• 86% said growing MIPS consumption and investment was driven by security, and 79% because of centralised data server capability and availability advantages
• 71% said transaction throughput requirements are best suited for the mainframe
• 8% expect general purpose MIPS growth of more than 10% over the next two years, with 46% growing between 1 and 10% - this is a more optimistic outlook than other parts of the world
• Looking ahead at the next 12 months, 94% said they will focus on cost reduction and optimisation and 69% on application availability.

Bill Miller, president of ZSolutions Optimisation at BMC said: “Mobile services with their need to be always on, always available to consumers are driving increased interest in mainframe technology due to its ability to speed the delivery of secure data coupled with its high availability.

“As the digital enterprise model gains momentum, BMC is enabling these robust capabilities through our BMC Database Solutions with Next Generation Technology for DB2, which easily manages the largest structured and unstructured databases. Additionally, our Mainframe MLC Cost Management solution helps optimise mainframe costs to enable IT to focus on innovation.”

Back to the global figures, over the last ten years, mainframes have remained incredibly relevant and resilient with 90% of respondents predicting the continued long-term staying power of the platform, and 83% continually projecting steady and growing mainframe capacity.

Mark Anzani, vice president z Systems Strategy, Resilience and Ecosystems said: “The IBM z13 can process up to 2.5 billion transactions per day -- that's the equivalent of 100 Cyber Mondays. [Cyber Monday is the growing online shopping sales bonanza that follows the yearly US Thanksgiving retail sales season.]

“Facing this boom in data and transaction growth, digital businesses are looking to transform their IT infrastructures to handle the load with maximum security, availability, and performance. BMC’s annual report confirms IBM z Systems clients are leveraging the platform as a centerpiece of their digital transformation, and we recognize BMC as a valued business partner,” concluded Anzani.

Compuware CEO Chris O’Malley said: “These latest research findings once again demonstrate that mainframe owners have big long-term plans for the platform—and that they require significant assistance in bringing fast and agile DevOps best practices to bear on their mainframe-resident applications.

“BMC and Compuware are working together to meet these ongoing mainframe ownership needs with solutions that empower customers to keep getting maximum business value from their investments in mainframe hardware, mainframe applications, and mainframe data.”

BMC’s 2015 Mainframe Research Report can be read in full here.

BMC’s has a blog entitled ‘5 key findings from BMC’s Mainframe Research: A long-term, powerful driver of the digital economy’ here, while a video featuring BMC’s President of the zSolutions Business Unit can be seen here. 

We also spoke to James Russell, BMC’s Area Vice President for ZSO Sales in the Asia Pacific.

Russell’s main focus in this role is leading the Sales team who are bringing BMC's ZSO Mainframe Cost Optimisation solutions to the Asia Pacific market.

The ZSO solutions are unique in their ability to enable organisations running IBM zSeries Mainframes to understand & reduce the TCO for what remains the most trusted platform for high performance transaction processing environments where security, risk mitigation, productivity & availability are most critical.

The interview with Russell was to discuss the results of BMC’s 10th Global Mainframe Survey.

Russell explained his role at BMC and his 16 year history at the company. He spoke about mainframes having been around for 50 years, and whether they are likely to go away anytime soon - something that clearly isn’t the case given the report’s results.

He explained how many zMainframes there are in Australia, some of the report’s headline findings, why Australian mainframe owners consider mainframes to have long term viability, what is driving MIPS grown on mainframes, top mainframe priorities over the next 12 months and more!

Here is the video interview: