From the CXOToday News Desk
Mainframes continue to endure a backbone for most business organizations globally, despite being a legacy architecture and is popular across large corporations across the banking, finance, healthcare, insurance, utilities, aviation and government sectors. Despite this, siloed infrastructure is yet another concern for mainframes, putting companies at risk in multiple ways. For example, while 75 percent of CIOs recognize that distributed application developers have little understanding of the mainframe and 70 percent are concerned that a lack of documentation will hinder knowledge transfer and create risk, 4 out of 10 have not put formal plans in place to address the coming generational shift in mainframe stewardship—as their most experienced platform professionals retire.
By the same token, advancement of mainframe applications ranked lowest on the survey when it came to allocation of human resources on the mainframe—despite the fact that respondents claimed to value those applications as key corporate IP.
The survey also revealed that the mainframe remains “siloed” from the rest of IT, even though CIOs also recognize the increasing importance of utilizing the mainframe in concert with other enterprise IT resources.
“Executives are increasingly realizing that in order to remain competitive in today’s dynamic, digital world, they must move away from siloed organizational structures,” said Jason Bloomberg, President of agile digital transformation analysis firm Intellyx. “Organizations that depend upon mainframes to run their businesses must put the right tools, processes, and culture in place to drive collaboration across mainframe and non-mainframe teams. Digital success hangs in the balance.”
“CIOs clearly need to re-prioritize investments in the mainframe in order to maximize the value IT delivers to the business and to effectively mitigate the risk associated with the generational shift in IT staffing,” said Compuware CEO Chris O’Malley. “Our survey reveals that CIOs are aware of this, but are struggling to respond. Not since Y2K has the mainframe required as much CIO attention and direct involvement. Hope is never a good mainframe strategy.”
Read the entire article at http://www.cxotoday.com/story/cios-not-doing-enough-to-protect-mainframes/.
