The Mainframe lives on

Recent results from Nasdaq-listed Compuware Corporation indicate that the software developer continues to derive a significant portion of its income from mainframe products. In South Africa, mainframe-related business accounts for over 40% of the operation's turnover.

"Given that for years industry experts have predicted the imminent demise of the mainframe, Compuware's continued focus on mainframe solutions could be regarded as ostrich-like head-in-the-sand, or extremely astute. We choose to believe it's the latter - and we are not alone in this," says Jorge Borralho, Regional Sales Manager of Compuware.

In its 2004 Management Update, leading IT market research house, Gartner Group, stated that "the mainframe endures and, in many respects, it is even more critical in many enterprises than it was only 10 years ago."

"In addition, Gartner Group estimates that more than 80 percent of business applications are written in COBOL - while we also continue to find applications built in MVS, DBII and VME . These legacy applications are typically hosted on a mainframe and have amassed decades of business knowledge and value.

"No business can afford to simply throw this away. Certainly the growing popularity of Web-based applications is a result of the fact that these deliver some important business benefits and they are less expensive to run. However distributed computing does not, and cannot, deliver the solid, enduring stability of a mainframe platform. Large corporates - particularly those in the financial services sector and government - which have taken the plunge and have attempted to switch to the 'more modern' platform, have found this to their cost," he adds and points out that many mainframes that were 'retired' are being dusted off and put back into use.

"Today, as companies draw up plans for SOAs (service-oriented architectures) that treat applications as reusable services, legacy applications hosted on the mainframe have a central role to play," he says.

According to Borralho, there was a time when - because of the perceived lack of mainframe skills and the high cost of mainframe maintenance - corporates were keen to outsource their mainframe requirements.

"This is also changing. The mainframe is now regarded as offering such a competitive edge - and it is so central to an organisation's strategic development - that corporates are taking direct control of their mainframes once again. They are also spending more on developing the skillsets required to operate these systems because of the strategic benefits that can be derived from effectively exploiting these systems

"In a business climate in which customer service levels are often the only key differentiator between competitors, the stability of one's computer systems can be the difference between being an industry leader, and an also-ran," he concludes.