The mainframe has been declared dead so many times over the years, it’s sometimes hard to believe it still has a role to play in the enterprise world. But it does. IBM recently reported that 75% of the top 20 global banks are running the newest z15 mainframe. Enterprises use mainframes for applications that rely on scalability and reliability, and to perform large-scale transaction processing, as well as support thousands of users. More importantly, mainframes have become the foundation upon which businesses are building their DevOps and digital initiatives.

But it’s not all rosy. Larger environments such as the mainframe are by their nature more difficult to manage, with interoperability implications and a lot of complexity that needs addressing.