Because of their performance, reliability, and stability, many firms continue to rely on their mainframe systems, particularly in the finance, insurance, and healthcare sectors. In recent years, however, more companies are finding that their legacy systems simply aren't compatible with today's cutting-edge technologies or providing them with an adequate level of operational efficiency.

Legacy systems tend to be complex and resistant to change, making them a stumbling block for firms that want to spend less time on maintaining their computing systems and more time using them to cultivate innovation. This is why more companies are now implementing mainframe modernization: to adopt and leverage today's new technologies without having to abandon the legacy systems in which they've invested.

Advantages of Mainframe Modernization

Because mainframe systems become increasingly costly and cumbersome to maintain over time, some firms implement mainframe modernization initiatives to reduce IT expenses and improve operational efficiency. Another reason companies are interested in mainframe modernization is that developers and administrators with the skills and experience to implement and maintain mainframes are becoming a rarity. Mainframe operating systems are run in languages that are difficult to support, and many mainframe specialists are retiring or approaching retirement. There is also the risk that a mainframe vendor will discontinue support for certain systems.

One of the greatest drivers of mainframe modernization is the demand for adopting new technologies like cloud computing, big data analytics, and connected devices. Forward-thinking firms want to leverage today's most advanced analytics platforms as well as affordable, scalable cloud services, and modernizing their legacy systems is essential for doing so. Many firms carry out mainframe modernization to enable easier data integration—to more easily migrate DB2 mainframe data, for example, to a Hadoop ecosystem like Cloudera in which data from different sources can be integrated and processed.

Mainframe Modernization Made Easy: Qlik Solutions for Mainframe Data Migration and Application Integration

Mainframe modernization can be implemented by adding new features or functions like web services to an existing application, rebuilding applications on new platforms, integrating mainframe applications and data across platforms, or by migrating an entire application portfolio to a lower cost mainframe or platform on the cloud.

Qlik Replicate® can help you implement mainframe modernization initiatives easier and faster—empowering you to reuse and repurpose your legacy systems and integrate your mainframe data with advanced analytics platforms. By offloading analytics workloads to specialized analytics platforms, you can reduce costly MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) cycles and free up resources for production operations on your legacy mainframe systems.Qlik Replicate, which features a highly-scalable data ingestion framework and leading CDC (change data capture)technology, provides you with an efficient and automated way to integrate mainframe data with modern analytics ecosystems. Qlik Replicate offers you low-latency, low-impact data integration capabilities for source mainframe databases such as DB2 replication, using non-invasive DB2 CDC. Qlik Replicate supports a wide range of destination systems including database systems like SQL Server or MySQL, data warehouse platforms, and big data systems like Hadoop.