The post-pandemic era of digitalization brought a tsunami of innovation and change for the enterprise, and this will continue on in 2023.
As we turn to the New Year though - there will be both challenges and opportunities that will influence IT’s decision surrounding its applications, talent, and future strategies in the digital age, and here are a few we anticipate to be top of mind:
- Economic headwinds impacting spend – and decisions: In any economic downturn, organizations across all industries are forced to cut costs. IT budgets tend to be at the top of the list when that happens, and modernization initiatives may be downgraded to "do-it-yourself" projects. As a result, we may witness a resurgence of companies getting themselves into hot water by attempting to bootstrap their own application modernization initiatives to cut costs, driven by the incorrect assumption that systems are much simpler than they really are.
- The aversion to risk will influence strategies at every level: Advanced’s 2022 Mainframe Modernization report uncovered that security was not only listed as the primary driver for legacy application transformation, 41% of respondents ranked it as the key element when prioritizing their mainframe modernization strategies altogether for the first time. Downstream impact of mainframe reliance including the risk, accessibility, and applicability of data, regulatory compliance, and infrastructure management due to a shrinking talent pool have become major causes for risk-specific unease – and will continue to be a key driver for enterprise IT leaders in the New Year. The de-risking task is to migrate from the obscure and outdated technologies sitting on the mainframe to modern equivalents that can be sufficiently resourced to meet compliance.
- Data influencing decision-making more than ever: As companies aggressively adopt tech like AI/ML to improve decision-making and optimize operations and Devops/agile methodologies to drive innovation, having on-demand data is key. While the mainframe can be a treasure trove of data insights, it’s often trapped in legacy databases that don’t integrate well with demanding business intelligence and analytics solutions.. This therefore limits the opportunity for omniscience and the common accessibility of data, comprehensive visibility, and airtight integrations that allow companies to respond to business needs and changes in real-time.
- Service providers seek to enable interoperability: As a result of the need for accessible data and real-time decision-making, it’s also likely that we’ll see an increase in the productization of multi-cloud offerings from infrastructure and service providers intent on streamlining the use of their cloud databases and associated technologies. This will simplify the use of multi-layer multi-cloud environments and sophisticated deployments. Like that of Oracle Azure Database as a Service, this makes it much simpler to use these platforms across every cloud.
- Hyperscalers deepen their seat at the table: Five years ago, it was the Systems Integrators alone that managed application modernization projects. Today, the major providers (Microsoft, Google, Amazon) have a direct seat at the table with companies in this journey in a way they never have before, and are at the forefront of paving the way forward to continued innovation in this space. This will drive continued adoption of cloud-based (sometimes proprietary) solutions that are trending towards incompatibility with many legacy systems.
- Talent shortages will persist: According to Advanced’s data, 75% of IT executives are concerned about having access to the right IT talent to properly maintain legacy systems, 49% report that the pool of mainframe-capable skills is decreasing more rapidly than ever before, and 22% say they lack the systems and processes to transition the knowledge of their legacy systems to the new employees. Those that will be most challenged will be the ones still reliant on obscure languages like CA-Gen, CA-Telon and Natural where capable programmers are almost non-existent. However, many organizations running COBOL may feel the talent pool evaporate more slowly, electing to delay migration by investing in their legacy systems for the longer term.
Download the latest 2022 Mainframe Modernization Business Barometer Report summarizing key findings from a survey of organizations around the globe that utilize mainframes.
About Advanced
Advanced is a leading international provider of application modernization services, with unique expertise in the legacy modernization market. With more than 600 modernization projects completed worldwide, and 3 billion lines of code processed through our solutions, we have been driving IT efficiency, agility, and competitive advantage for customers through core application and database transformations for over 40 years.
Over that time, we have helped organizations across all sectors including the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions, FedEx and The New York Times.
