Mainframes Join the Fight for Clients and Revenue

The pressure’s on big iron – again. Nowadays it’s coming from a massive shift to online business and commerce, a sharp increase in transaction loads, and especially the user interactions at the front end.

A client’s online experience means serving a just-in-time automotive contract from a desktop, managing personal health on a smartphone, making a purchase using a watch and anything in between. The quality of these online exchanges has become a major revenue driver where the highest levels of availability, speed and security are expected.

Google, Walmart, and Amazon are unanimous: they’ve all concluded that reducing page-load times on a mobile site can increase revenue significantly.  And when Amazon’s one-click ordering function goes off-patent this year – and competitors adopt it – what company can afford not to adapt to client expectations?

Clear, clean, seamless transactions in real time are the new normal, and that puts a high priority on modernizing infrastructure and applications.  Sure enough, in a survey Forrester recently conducted for Ensono, 97% of IT executives said they were at some stage of a modernization campaign.

Every mainframe operation has experience with some degree of “application apathy” – the natural tendency to not invest in application modernization or retain old apps, patch them up, and train staff on their “uniqueness”.  But that approach won’t cut it in today’s economy as billions of daily transactions demand increased levels of speed, availability and efficiency.

Companies that get in front of this challenge can drive revenue upward to remain competitive and relevant with their client base. How can they do that?

For the details, take a look at my article in IBM Systems Magazine.