Mainframe hardware & OS versus Mainframe Applications

Another interesting study by Forrester has been published. Although it is a commissioned study by CA, there are some interesting figures in it, namely the 15000 mainframe sites remaining.

One company may own several mainframe sites and a mainframe site may host more than one physical machine. A mainframe site size is usually measured in MIPS, the accumulated power of all the mainframe hardware running on that site.

The total amount of MIPS is growing 20% annually according to Forrester.

BMC published similar figures some time ago.

The problem with figures coming from IBM, CA or BMC is that they all focus on MIPS, i.e. hardware.

But a mainframe today can run z/VM and several hundred z/Linux images. As such, it is essentially a virtualization environment for Linux. These Linux images probably run Java/J2EE applications of some form. No doubt that there is a need for such centralized architectures which explains part of the MIPS growth.

But how about the more traditional COBOL-CICS or PL/I-IMS applications? Do they have a share in the 20% annual growth rate?

It is probably not a good idea to look at the compound MIPS growth rate anymore since it now sustains workloads that are totally unrelated.

I would love to see a study focusing on legacy-MIPS.