On Wednesday, June 9th, two major Brazilian banks made their mainframe strategy public: “Bradesco and Caixa place AI at the center of the mainframe, treating the legacy system as a data platform rather than replacing it, as part of continuous modernization.” In short: The mainframe remains the core of their IT strategy as a secure and high-performance platform – and is being directly linked to the future technology of AI.
The timing of this announcement could hardly have been better. Because the following day, Alexey da Hora (founder of 4bears technologies, the Brazilian Solution Partner of Beta Systems Software AG) presented exactly this in his talk: a modernization approach for this supposedly “legacy” technology, which continues to form the foundation of the financial world and other key industries. The goal is to preserve the proven strengths of the mainframe while simultaneously opening it up to innovations and new technologies. The following slide presents this approach compactly:
JABOL: 97% Automation in COBOL Migration
4bears technologies sees itself as a one-stop shop for modernization and has already successfully implemented over 100 projects. The focus of the presented project for a major bank in Peru was the goal of making the functionality of COBOL applications more broadly accessible via APIs. To achieve this, the COBOL code was migrated to Java – in such a way that the documentation and COBOL structure were adopted exactly. The great advantage: The previous knowledge bearers can continue to seamlessly support these applications. Internally, this code is affectionately called “JABOL”. Incidentally, an impressive automation rate of 97% was achieved during this conversion. The result of this modernization project speaks for itself:
The Historic Step: IBM Opens the Mainframe to ARM
Also on stage: Tobias Leicher, z Client Architect at IBM. In his usual entertaining manner, he guided the audience through the success story of the mainframe and precisely highlighted its success factors (I also refer to my earlier blog posts on this).
Tobias Leicher emphasized a crucial factor that ensures the future viability of the mainframe in the long term: In a historic step, IBM is opening its traditionally closed mainframe world to the ARM architecture. A new cooperation will make it possible to run ARM-native software for AI and data-intensive workloads directly on IBM Z systems in the future. IBM is thereby responding to a massive market trend: The ARM architecture is fundamentally changing the IT landscape – strongly driven also by Microsoft’s massive investments in ARM-based Azure servers and AI PCs. For IBM customers, this dual-architecture strategy means maximum flexibility:
- No more either-or between the unmatched reliability of the mainframe and the modern ARM software ecosystem.
- Future AI models will run right where the most sensitive corporate data is already securely stored.
- A true win-win situation for enterprise customers.
Panel Discussion at BEYOND26: The Mainframe is More Alive Than Ever
A third highlight regarding the future viability of the mainframe was the top-class panel discussion at BEYOND26. Participants included Tobias Leicher, Alexey da Hora, Niels von der Hude (Vice President Product Strategy & Development), Eric Weyler (Mainframe Solution Architect and IBM Champion 2024–2026), and Vanni Martini, Head of Unit Operations at Value Transformation Services.
The panelists discussed numerous topics, but one aspect stood out in particular: While the mainframe was often declared dead at the peak of the cloud hype about ten years ago, the tide has turned. Today’s IT landscape is hybrid. For many enterprise companies, the mainframe, with its unique performance profile, remains a fixed, irreplaceable component of their IT strategy.
In this hybrid world, different technologies bring different strengths and address specific requirements. Here, mainframe and cloud equally have their firm place. This is also evident with new market participants: Not only the established “incumbent players” are relying on the mainframe. Even young FinTech start-ups are discovering the technology for themselves – exactly where there are the highest requirements for security and performance.
