The Mainframe is Dead, Long Live the Mainframe

Although declared dead decades ago, they continue to run the world’s banking and insurance industry–and much more. Akkodis experts are helping clients navigate through today’s tech world by striking a careful balance between old and new.

When it comes to Enterprise IT, it’s easy to feel like an archeologist digging down into the past, with more fossils to be found the deeper the dig. But, although they’re ancient, these fossil systems are still an indispensable part of the infrastructure, connected to the upper layers by an intricate web of software and interdependency.

The Staying Power of Mainframes is Number Crunching

Mainframes are still around for a reason. Their ability to crunch numbers at speed is second to none, and they’re stable and reliable. Hardware can be replaced while the system is running, and performance shifted from one processor to another, always maintaining full control over CPU and memory usage.

So, it should come as no surprise that according to Akkodis expert Patrick Leixner, a German manufacturer of premium cars is using a mainframe to generate and store the “heart” of every new car – the secret keys to its immobilizer.

Mainframes Paving the Way in Automotive Innovation

Leixner is head of a seven-strong mainframe team based in Ingolstadt. For Leixner and his colleagues, mainframes are a growing business area, and that includes maintenance of that secret key storage system. A niche, yes, but an expanding one. Mainly catering to the automotive industry, they assist OEMs in maintaining mainframes running data warehouses and other essential systems.

A “just-in-time” system manages parts delivered by suppliers, collects data from the production lines and supply chains, consolidates it, and generates delivery notes, which are forwarded to the car manufacturer’s billing system.

The Search for Mainframe Expertise in Banking

Dirk Frobese, manager of an Akkodis unit specialized in software development for the banking sector, is clearly envious of Leixner’s team of mainframe experts. He is looking high and low for mainframe people.

In Frobese’s line of business, mainframes are even more common than in automotive, but he has only one employee and a few freelance developers with sufficient skills in mainframes and the programming language that goes with them, Cobol. To meet the needs of his customers, he recently launched a new initiative called “´Kings of Cobol”, offering retired Cobol programmers lucrative freelance assignments. Trying to get young engineers on board is fighting a losing battle. They simply refuse to work with what the developer community considers “big iron”.

Leixner seems to be a notable exception to this rule. By far the youngest member of the mainframe team, he finds it fascinating to work with software older than himself.

Mainframes Outperform Tech Giants Like Google

The fact that mainframes are highly reliable number crunchers secures their survival in large enterprise IT infrastructures. Mainframes are used by 71% of Fortune 500 companies. They handle 90% of all credit card transactions, and host more daily transactions than Google. Airlines, banks, and insurers all rely on mainframes.

But it is not all smooth sailing. Apart from the difficulties in finding skilled people, Frobese says the main problem is Cobol CICS, the IBM transaction system used in Cobol financial applications.

“Nearly 30 years ago, I was fresh from university and started working with software for the banking and insurance sector,” Frobese explains. “At that time, we had a vision to get rid of the host and replace it with client/server applications. Our customers wanted us to develop nicer user interfaces than the green-on-black screens they were used to. We began to develop Java applications to replace Cobol clients. Then came another tier, a server layer controlling the clients and running with Java. And then we made an API, a kind of middle frame, to transport the interaction from the user interface to the mainframe handling the transaction.”

Everything looked good, in the end, Frobese says. “But in the background, the system was still running all these Cobol CICS transactions. However, now management had no incentive to replace the host, because all the users were happy with this nice, modern user interface we had developed for them. This is when the trouble began.”

The Problem with Cobol CICS

As Frobese explains, the main problem is Cobol CICS. Cobol is easily replaced, but not the CICS, the middleware that lies on top of the operating system and ensures that a transaction is safe. “In businesses like banking and insurance, you have vast numbers of complicated transactions. If one of these transactions fails, for whatever reason, you can roll it back and find the cause of the failure.” There is no real replacement for the CICS, so migrating to a newer system involves a lot of risk.

In addition to this, mainframes are a monopolist business dominated by IBM as the sole vendor. Customers pay for a license, without any alternative or real competition between vendors. This means the price is rising slowly but steadily.

Mainframes and the Future of IT

That said, mainframes are here to stay. Frobese expects them to remain part of the IT infrastructure for many years to come.

Mainframe systems are ideal for number-crunching and fast transactions. But for other kinds of banking and insurance logic like the calculation of loans, they can be replaced with other platforms such as Unix. “Just like when I started my career 30 years ago, we’ll have a heterogenous environment with small clients, middle tier servers, etc., and a host at the end, running a big database, data warehouse, or transaction machine. That concept is old, and it won’t change. We’re going to continue to see it in the future,” he says.

The Challenge of Finding Skilled People

The crux of the matter is finding people willing and able to work with this “big iron”. Specialist companies such as Akkodis provide these skills for their clients, although Cobol programmers are few and far between. Both Frobese and Leixner are planning to expand this part of their business. They are even discussing joining forces to beef up their crew of Cobol experts to meet the growing need.

Bridging new technology and legacy systems is good business. The mainframe is dead, long live the mainframe!