I recently ran a number of seminars in EMEA. This gave me an opportunity to talk to many large mainframe users. And as always, it gives me a pretty good idea about the current state of IT. Even more than previous years, two issues are mentioned almost every time: Cost & Complexity.

And it's especially the latter that keeps coming back. Funny isn't it? We live in an economy where individualism is seen as a right and a way of life. "Yes, we want to standardize the desktop. We recognize 35-51-63 different roles in our company, and each of them has some special things, but we also do not want to limit our users too much. They need to be able to customize up to a certain extend."  We even go so far as giving departmental managers a large voice in the applications and platforms they "need" for their business.

Now, I am the last person to build a wall around IT and go back 20 years. But if you ask the question: "Yes, but how about managing/integrating/securing/ this application that solves a business issue?" the same people who complain about the complexity of IT will often tell us that our main task in life is to "serve the business"...

So IT is tasked with the impossible mission to "serve the business, reduce complexity and save cost". And the CIO's I meet are concerned. They feel like they are forced to chase each new hype which add to the already existing complexity and will cost money in order to bring promised savings later.

Is there a solution to this vicious circle? I think there is, but it requires strong leadership. Focusing on cost alone is damaging and short sighted, but a focus on reduction of the complexity will result in long lasting cost reductions.  Virtualization (on whatever platform, so including Mainframe) is one of the technologies that can help us to achieve this. But keeping stuff on the mainframe is another. Two different CIO's told me in the past months: "If I had known how complex my new application would eventually become, I would have kept it on my mainframe and modernized it."  And both were from a post-Mainframe generation....

They both found that moving stuff BACK to the mainframe actually helped them to reduce the complexity of their environment dramatically and ultimately saved them a lot of money. Many architects have not yet realized how much the zSeries IBM Mainframes have changed, but once they fully understand (takes some strong leadership...) the company will soon see the benefits. The technology has changed and the requirements have changed as well. Maybe it's time to revisit some of your companies IT strategies.