Respondents also report up to 225% return on investment on their mainframe transformation initiatives in one year

Mainframes continue to play a critical role in hybrid IT environments

NEW YORK, Sept. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Kyndryl (NYSE: KD), the world's largest IT infrastructure services provider, today released the results of its second annual State of Mainframe Modernization Survey, declaring that 2024 is the year of AI adoption on the mainframe. The survey also reaffirmed that while modernization projects are delivering significant financial benefits, many organizations continue to face skills shortages, preventing the transformation of complex, mission-critical systems.

As business leaders face economic, competitive, technological and regulatory challenges, they are increasingly seeking to transform and derive new value from their IT estate, including the mainframe. Kyndryl's survey among 500 business and IT leaders reveals that 86% of respondents are quickly adopting AI and generative AI to accelerate their mainframe modernization initiatives. A third of respondents indicated that the platform has become a foundation for running AI-enabled workloads. Additionally, almost half aim to use generative AI to unlock and transform critical mainframe data into actionable insights.

"Mainframes continue to occupy a central role in the hybrid world and are evolving to serve new use cases, with AI and security increasingly influencing modernization plans. Kyndryl is at the forefront of this trend, providing mission-critical expertise to help customers achieve their goals," said Petra Goude, Global Practice Leader for Core Enterprise & zCloud at Kyndryl. "By working with partners on their mainframe modernization and AI journey, businesses can unlock new opportunities, enhance resiliency, mitigate skills challenges and drive better outcomes. This way, mainframes can continue to thrive and provide strong business value in hybrid environments."

According to the survey respondents, IT modernization projects and patterns are yielding substantial business results, including triple-digit one-year return on investment (ROI) of 114% to 225% and collective savings of $11.9 billion annually. Almost all organizations have opted for a hybrid IT strategy — a combination of modernizing on the mainframe, integrating with public/private cloud, and moving applications and data off the platform. Furthermore, 96% of respondents are migrating some workloads — on average 36% — to the cloud.