For companies in data-driven industries like healthcare, insurance, and finance, mainframe systems have been the trusted workhorse in business IT solutions for seventy years. They easily process behemoth volumes of information and transactions and offer secure data storage, catch errors quickly, and are dependable for avoiding crashes and downtime.

Tech experts predicted the decline of mainframes in the market for decades, yet mainframes persisted since their utility has outweighed their huge cost and maintenance challenges—at least, until recently. In a breakthrough announcement this week, Amazon unveiled the launch of AWS Mainframe Modernization, promising an efficient service option for migrating legacy mainframe workloads into an updated framework.

Read more about AWS’s Mainframe Modernization HERE.

So is big iron ready to hit the skids? Companies looking to keep a keen competitive edge have good reason to modernize in order to keep their options open, like leveraging the skyrocketing applications for AI. Since flexible alternatives to mainframes have become readily available, some companies are transitioning to a hybrid system or migrating entirely to cloud-based data frameworks. 

But what happens when your provider, such as AWS, experiences an outage? … which happened earlier this month, halting business for anyone depending on Amazon and Whole Foods, as well as business operations for Netflix, Disney, Canva, Reddit, Pinterest, Airbnb, and Adobe (fun times!). Compliance concerns, security, and issues like these are what may keep the mainframe around a while longer.

Before you hop on the cloud bandwagon, let our experts evaluate your data needs and put together an infrastructure plan with the future in mind. Contact us to talk with one of our engineers about your unique situation, and we’ll walk you through the best options for your needs.