Mainframes are Still Mainstream

WHITE PAPER: MAINFRAMES
Mainframes are Still
Mainstream
JUNE 2007
Pam SnaithENTERPRISE SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT
Rob SteiskalMAINFRAME SYSTEMS MANAGEMENTTable of Contents
Executive Summary
SECTION 1 2Issues Surrounding the Mainframe Market Mainframe Market StatusBig Iron - A Little HistoryMainframes vs. Distributed Systems
SECTION 2 4New Opportunities for Mainframes Market Drivers
SECTION 3 5The Business Benefits of Mainframe TrendsMainframe Market Trends
SECTION 4 8ConclusionsMaximize Mainframe EffectivenessCA's Comprehensive Solution
SECTION 5 9AcknowledgementsAbout the Authors
ABOUT CA Back Cover
Copyright © 2007 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. To the extent permittedby applicable law, CA provides this document "As Is" without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. In no event will CA beliable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised of such damages.Executive Summary
Challenge
Organizations with significant processing requirements continue to maintain many oftheir most important applications on mainframes. Often, their most visible and mission-critical business services rely on the performance and availability of these mainframeapplications to users within and outside the organization.
As IT infrastructures increase in complexity and business demands escalate, mainframescan be at the heart of enabling these organizations to adapt to changing businessdemands, improve services and contain costs. The challenge is to stay abreast of what isavailable and to exploit the new technology effectively.
Opportunity
With IT increasingly critical to today's business success, but likely to increase incomplexity and size as it keeps up with technology, consolidation and simplification of ITassets management is essential. Without it companies will sacrifice growth and theircompetitive edge. At the same time, increases in energy costs and interest in making apositive contribution to the environment are also impacting markets.
Automation capability, service governance (self-healing and self-optimizing) andworkload management are key opportunity areas for mainframe owners as they count onthe capabilities mainframes have always offered - a highly responsive, virtualizedinfrastructure, ensuring performance and availability to match their businessrequirements. At the same time, mainframes are uniquely positioned to reduce energyrequirements and environmental impact.
Benefits
Taking advantage of new capabilities in the mainframe market that proactively monitorand automate to maintain high availability, continuous operations and proactive problemmanagement, will result in business benefits. By automating the optimization andmanagement of mainframe systems, businesses can increase IT responsiveness andcustomer satisfaction resulting in improved Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
WHITE PAPER: MAINFRAMES 1SECTION 1
Issues Surrounding the Mainframe Market
Mainframe Market StatusA quick look at headlines in the trade press is enough to let you know that the mainframecomputing market, while not exactly in revival, remains a significant factor in IT computing. Inthe 70s, the mainframe market was hot. By the 90s, it began to resemble a sleeping giant, butthe tide has turned in the last several years. The popularity of distributed systems as a way tobring local computing power to everyone remains, but distributed computing has been aroundlong enough for the honeymoon to be over. The difficulty and cost of managing large numbersof distributed systems has fueled the trend towards consolidation, and the increasing computerpower and memory needed to support large numbers of people on common applications hasenergized the virtualization market. Growing awareness of environmentally-sound computinghas also encouraged the consolidation and virtualization markets. These markets, in turn, havebreathed new life into the mainframe market.
Many businesses that currently run ... [download for more]