The mainframe will continue to be instrumental in powering digital businesses in an unpredictable world, according to BMC‘s 16th annual mainframe survey. The survey finds leading organizations are investing in the mainframe, innovating with DevOps, and integrating systems and teams to drive digital transformation.

BMC also announced new and expanded capabilities within the BMC AMI (Automated Mainframe Intelligence) and BMC Compuware portfolios to fully support customers as they progress on their digital transformation journeys.

Among the key findings of the survey:

• 92% see the mainframe as a platform for long-term growth and new workloads.
• 86% of extra-large shops expect MIPS to grow while 72% of them have more than half their data on the mainframe.
• 66% of respondents are mainframe champions investing in new technologies such as AIOps and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), innovating to meet rising digital demands with DevOps, and integrating the mainframe into enterprise IT.
• 19% of respondents are mainframe laggards keeping their investment flat; they derive less value in new technologies on the platform and report relatively modest growth in mainframe data and apps.

Shift-Left Automated Testing Enables Faster Delivery with Better Quality
Organizations are moving quickly to keep pace with the rising demand for new applications and services that deliver a better customer experience for internal and external users. According to the survey:

• 39% of respondents cite application modernization as a top priority.
• 88% of champions want to update applications with greater frequency, and 40% update every week or every other week.
• 43% of champions want to improve application quality with DevOps.
• 80% of champions yield value from their mainframe DevOps adoption within a year or less.

In response to these demands and respondents citing test automation as a necessary capability, BMC has expanded shift-left automated testing capabilities in the BMC Compuware Topaz for Total Test solution. Development teams can now accelerate the delivery of innovations because fewer defects travel to the test environment. Manual testing that previously took days to complete can now be done in hours.

In combination with the BMC Compuware zAdviser solution, mainframe DevOps practitioners of all skill levels can identify bugs and defects earlier in the software development lifecycle (SDLC) when they are less costly to fix.