Everyone's talking about Jenson Button right now. The Formula 1 motor racing flyer jumps into an entirely new car and wins race after race.  All of this from a man who according to almost everyone was washed up a few years ago. A driver who had been overtaken by the young Turks like Lewis Hamilton and who should consider packing it in.

Hang on a second....what does that remind you of? Out of date? Tired? Weren't critics applying the same argument to Big Iron not so long ago? They'd be ashamed to admit it, but if you scroll back 15 years, the mainframe had more critics than you could count. However, after a decade of discontent-i.e., most of the 1990s-the mainframe has come full circle. Even in the midst of what's shaping up to be the worst economic crisis in 80 years, many industry watchers foresee a thriving future for Big Iron. There are, after all, pointers toward optimism. For instance, ten years ago, about 3.5 million MIPS were installed on mainframe systems, according to CA calculations-we now estimate that customers will buy about the same amount of capacity this year alone.

When I go around talking to customers I can see what's happening. They've talked about moving the mainframe out into the garage, ready for it to be taken out next Sunday to the local refuse tip. They've immersed themselves instead in thousands of distributed servers-and simply created an even bigger burden for themselves. They've woken up to the fact that the complexity of managing servers demands even more people, more management time, and the one commodity that's in short supply during these tough economic times: money. It's taken them time, but they are coming to realise that mainframes are not 'old technology'-but instead are highly efficient platforms designed to run generalised workloads in an extremely secure, high quality of service ... manner.

Still thinking about taking that trip to the refuse tip? Then think again, because recent research across Europe by CA provides conclusive proof that the mainframe is Jenson Button all over again. In every area we examined-cost effectiveness, security, robustness-the mainframe platform won the day. For example, comparing the mainframe with the distributed environment, organisations spend less of their budget with the mainframe-on more critical applications. This is based on the survey finding that respondents spend 19% of their IT budget on the mainframe. They also report that the mainframe holds 55% of their business critical data and hosts a larger than 50% of the critical applications and 55% of their data.

Where the mainframe is a fully connected resource within a distributed, web-enabled enterprise, 65% of all respondents state that it is an ‘incredibly secure environment'; 63% of all respondents state that performance levels are ‘excellent'; and 52% state that ‘the system never goes down'. In terms of security, 68% agreed that the mainframe-centric infrastructure is inherently more secure than its server-centric equivalent. While 65% of respondents state that ‘the mainframe is an incredibly secure environment'.

Ah, I hear you say, Marcel has reached all this way though his blog and never once mentioned the word ‘grey'. Anyone who has walked into a mainframe shop will be surrounded by people who either don't have any hair at all or who are a little grey on top. So how can the mainframe address the seemingly impenetrable issue of the skills gap?

According to our CA European research, a new GUI may be the answer. 52% of all respondents agreed that a web-oriented graphical user interface that a less experienced member of the IT department could use would make the mainframe more attractive and would help to close the skills gap. Training can address the skills gap too: 33% are looking at skills and training needs as a way of dealing with the shortage.

Stereotypes and misconceptions have a habit of sticking. Anyone looking to today's mainframe environment will see that its reputation is long out of date.  Just ask Jenson.

More info?:

Read the press release (ca.com/gb/mediaresourcecentre)

Read the Report (ca.com/gb/mediaresourcecentre))

See the video (ca.com/gb/mediaresourcecentre)

more.... (ca.com/gb/mediaresourcecentre)