IBM admits mainframes need modernization and will use AI to do the job

IBM said on Monday that its Z series mainframes can drift toward hard-to-manage complexity that reduces resilience, and that the platform needs help from AI. The company issued a Statement of Direction for a forthcoming product called IBM Z Atlas, described as an AI-native solution that uses system intelligence to ground AI skills and agents in workflows such as planning and validating changes or modernizing applications and infrastructure.

What IBM Z Atlas is meant to do

The document says IBM Z Atlas intends to map a client's entire z/OS stack across infrastructure, middleware, and applications, then use that system intelligence to reduce the manual effort of tasks such as patch management, regulatory response, and sharing knowledge across teams from systems programmers to application developers. IBM also hopes the tool helps mainframe technology and operations teams better understand how components connect, interact, and depend on one another. IBM says Z Atlas is intended to eliminate the leading cause of unplanned z/OS outages, which it identifies as changes that are not proven to be safe, by mapping how a change impacts the z/OS stack, testing it, and validating it.

Human review remains part of the plan

IBM says the design accelerates modernization by keeping experts in control and giving every practitioner in operations or development the same shared Z system visibility to reduce risk. IBM also says AI-assisted insights and recommendations are intended to preserve appropriate human review and decision authority. That means the company appears not to be going all in on AIOps, the emerging practice of allowing agents to keep infrastructure running or autonomously find issues and develop proposed fixes.

Modernization and the mainframe's staying power

The multiple mentions of modernization caught attention because IBM's rivals often suggest the best way to modernize mainframes is by replacing them and moving the applications they run to another platform. In recent years, vendors have suggested using generative AI to rewrite mainframe applications in other languages, an idea that analyst firm Gartner thinks is highly overrated. IBM, by contrast, appears to want modernization to mean making mainframes easier to live with so customers stay with the platform. That matters because IBM's revenue spikes when each new generation of Z-series machines reaches the market. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said last week that the current Z17 generation of mainframes has outsold all others by $1 billion. That kind of result puts to bed the long-running death of the mainframe narrative, a prediction that never goes away and never comes true. With Z Atlas, IBM appears to be trying to ensure that rumors of the mainframe's demise are even more exaggeratedly false.

Sources: The Register