What is Mainframe Modernization? Efficiency & Cost Benefits

What Is Mainframe Modernization? Key Phases, Cost-Savings & Other Benefits

Mainframe platforms have long been the backbone of many businesses, providing unmatched computing power and stability for critical operations. However, these systems and the associated software can come with substantial costs and complexities that are increasingly difficult for organizations to justify and manage.

As most businesses now rely on online data storage and digital transactions, the need for mainframe modernization is clear.

In this article, we’ll discuss what mainframe modernization is, why it’s crucial for organizations, and its key cost-reducing and efficiency-enhancing benefits.  

What Is Mainframe Modernization?

Mainframe modernization is the strategic process of aligning cost, operations, and risk factors into a long-term strategy to ensure core systems are future-ready. This involves transforming legacy mainframe systems to enhance agility, efficiency, and compatibility with modern technologies. It also addresses challenges like high software and maintenance costs, a growing skills gap for legacy systems, and technological limitations.

Despite being widely used by large enterprises, including 71% of Fortune 500 companies for business-critical transactions, many mainframes need modernization due to their aging infrastructure, complex software requirements, and expense to maintain.

Organizations appreciate a multifaceted, phased-in approach to mainframe updates that can be tailored for their business needs. A mainframe modernization strategy often consists of rehosting, refactoring, or replatforming, which we’ll dive into below.

What’s the Importance of Mainframe Modernization?

Whether you are upgrading on platform or working to get off one, modernizing mainframe workloads does more than reduce operational expenses. It also aligns aging infrastructure with contemporary demands, such as cloud compatibility, streamlined maintenance, and improved flexibility. This shift addresses key challenges that legacy systems face, including:

• High Software and Maintenance Costs: As mainframe systems reach end-of-service life, keeping them up-to-date becomes costly and cumbersome.
• Skills Gap: With a retiring workforce, finding professionals skilled in legacy mainframe systems is becoming a growing challenge.
• Technological Limitations: Older mainframes often lack compatibility with modern technologies, limiting innovation and integration.

For businesses reliant on mainframes for mission-critical applications, these challenges introduce considerable risks.

The Path to Efficiency: Key Phases of Mainframe Modernization

While mainframe modernization can take some time, a proven strategic approach helps ensure a smooth transition. A successful modernization journey generally involves several phases, each contributing to a future-ready IT environment. Here are five key steps to successful mainframe modernization: 

1. Assessment and Planning

The first step in modernization is a thorough assessment of the existing mainframe environment, identifying workloads that would benefit most from change and estimating potential cost savings. This includes:

• Data center
• Hardware
• Software
• ISV code
• Operational processes
• Development practices.

This phase includes a road map outlining goals, budget considerations, and how to minimize disruptions to ongoing operations.

Both legacy and new concepts like observability and code mapping may be

introduced in this phase. Practical approaches to planning are critical – most failed modernization efforts don’t consider the true breadth of the current state of applications and organizations, including code. Observability is mandatory to understand your current state and help create a practical road map.

2. Workload Migration and Rehosting

Hybrid cloud is the new norm for mainframe workloads. The risk associated with application and network latency has dramatically decreased in the last decade. For businesses ready to embrace cloud environments, rehosting mainframe workloads in the cloud offers immediate benefits in flexibility and scalability. By relocating mainframe systems and workloads to the cloud, organizations reduce the burden of hardware maintenance while making applications accessible across various cloud services.

This approach can either involve a “lift and shift” rehosting approach or refactoring workloads and schedules on platform to optimize the application for cloud performance. This phase may include introducing new technology and processes like IBMLinuxONE, zLinux, and batch optimizers.

3. Replatforming and Refactoring

To make full use of the cloud’s capabilities, many businesses choose to refactor their applications, optimizing them for cloud-native environments. This phase involves converting legacy code to modern languages such as Java and C#, ensuring applications run efficiently in public or private cloud environments.

During this transition, organizations can also introduce containerization and microservices architecture, which boost flexibility and make updates and maintenance easier.

Moving to a modern language helps to close the skill set gap for new developers, and new development tools create a more modern experience. Introducing microservices may also improve business resiliency, allowing for the movement of workloads between clouds.

4. AI, Automated Testing and Quality Assurance

Introducing AI and automated testing in your DevOps and QA processes is crucial in any modernization project. Addressing release and QA challenges by design as opposed to manual release management helps detect and address issues early, reducing risk and project timelines.

Starting with validation is critical to your plan to automate your processes. AI and automation are core to modern quality assurance tools that ensure applications perform as expected in the new environment, promoting both reliability and performance for the business.

5. Continuous Modernization, Ongoing Optimization and Support

There’s no finish line for modernization and optimization. Once applications are rehosted or re-platformed, continuous improvement is essential to maximizing cost savings and performance. 

Modernization efforts typically include a mix of legacy and modern technologies to be successful. This takes years to complete. To be successful, you need a dedicated support team to help manage workloads, ensuring applications remain compatible with evolving technology and security requirements. 

This includes developing an ecosystem of internal talent and partners that can help manage modernization, continue to optimize on both platforms, and ensure the performance and availability of services.

How the MFaaS Approach to Mainframe Modernization Reduces Costs and Improves Efficiency

Mainframe-as-a-service (MFaaS) is a solution that provides expertise and resources tailored to each client’s needs.

Below, we’ll take a look at what your team will be able to accomplish with a partnership approach to mainframe modernization: 

✓ Eliminate ongoing software and operating expenses associated with maintaining equipment on-site

While each environment varies, the Mainframe-as-a-Service rehosting model saves organizations 15-20% on average, while refactoring and re-platforming to the cloud can achieve cost savings of 70-80%. Savings can be compounded if application modernization timelines run for multiple years.

We’ve seen state government clients reduce mainframe costs by $1.5 million per year by letting an outside expert host its mainframe workloads. We consolidated their software and leveraged our economies of scale to save them in licensing costs; enhance the depth and breadth of technical resources; and implement a robust disaster recovery solution.

✓ Gain access to 24/7 IT support and resources

A partner can provide personalized support, road maps and guidance for compliance and auditing. It can also add visibility into performance, guaranteeing the value of your cloud deployments – especially when staffing and backups are needed.

✓ Future-proof workloads with the latest technology, equipment and best practices

Experience improved performance and processing times with a managed service’s reliable and redundant infrastructure and configuration, leveraging the latest platforms for mainframe workloads.

Some MFaaS companies offer access to a consulting team that understands the latest technologies and strategies for maximizing your dollars and resources.

✓ Enable staff to focus on more customer-oriented projects

Give your teams the time and agility needed to focus on more long-term, strategic initiatives by leveraging a team with deep skill sets.

✓ Minimize both operational and financial risk

An IT partner can provide the expertise and resources needed to handle and secure your mission-critical workloads.

✓ Stay competitive in the marketplace

Worried you’ll be left behind competitively if you fail to evolve? Enlist a managed service to help you leverage the latest hybrid cloud platforms and software development approaches, including Agile, DevOps, business intelligence, AI, and more.

Modernize Your Legacy Mainframe System with FNTS

FNTS provides the experience, tools, and support to guide organizations through every phase of their modernization journey, from initial assessment to continuous optimization and modernization. With FNTS as your partner, you gain access to a team deeply skilled in modernizing and managing mission-critical platforms and workloads while securing long-term cost savings and performance gains.

Whether you're planning a gradual modernization or a full transition to cloud environments, with FNTS’s IBM Z System Modernization, you’ll gain a seamless, expertly managed shift. Together, we’ll help your business harness the cloud’s full potential and set the stage for success.