CIOs face intense technology change: analytics, IoT, continuous delivery and more. But while these functional specifics are important, they’re not the Big Story.
The Big Story for CIOs is that their role in the business is—or should be—changing dramatically. No longer can they be mere order-takers or operations optimizers. Instead, CIOs must become their organizations’ primary champions of digital transformation.
Alas, at large enterprises, a key player in IT is not supporting the CIO in this critical shift to transformational leadership. That key player has a history of exceptional performance, rock-solid reliability and superb multi-tasking. In fact, this player may have more to contribute to the success of enterprise digital transformation than anyone else.
But instead of supporting the CIO, this player is sulking on the sidelines. And not without reason. This player has suffered neglect for years and has been thoroughly under-appreciated. Worse yet, most CIOs have no idea how to re-invigorate and re-integrate this player into the digital transformation that will determine the future of the business.
That player is the mainframe.
Mission and Mainframe
One reason CIOs have neglected the mainframe is that other technologies such as distributed and mobile have demanded huge investments. Because these investments were urgent—and because the mainframe fulfilled its then-current duties perfectly well—it seemed appropriate to minimize mainframe budgets and shift spending elsewhere.
For another, dominant mainframe software vendors likewise disinvested in mainframe so they could fund forays into other markets. This left enterprises without the innovative tools they needed to effectively modernize for mainframe DevOps.
The result: The mainframe languished so badly and for so long that it has actually become the single greatest impediment to the CIO’s mission of digital transformation—rather than its most powerful asset.
After all, while CIOs may have neglected the mainframe, it remains the beating digital heart of global business. The world’s largest companies depend at every moment on billions of lines of mainframe code and countless petabytes of mainframe data. Without them, you can’t buy on Amazon, ride with Uber or file a claim with Allstate.
That’s because mainframes provide absolutely essential back-end application logic and transaction processing for distributed, cloud, mobile and IoT.
CIOs can’t lead digital transformation if this primary digital engine of the enterprise remains frozen in time. If you can’t modify COBOL code at will—and if you can’t synch code changes across all your platforms—you can’t successfully compete against digital disrupters that start with a clean slate.
Enterprise CIOs must address this issue immediately and decisively. If it is not, they will fail and the business will suffer.
What to Do About It
If you’re a CIO seeking to shift your role from that of a glorified facilities manager to a true C-level leader of digital transformation, then you can’t afford to let your most important digital asset continue to languish in purgatory.
Fortunately, you don’t have to. Three steps in particular can help ensure that your mainframe becomes a powerful enabler of digital transformation—rather than a major impediment:
The Big Story for CIOs is that their role in the business is—or should be—changing dramatically. No longer can they be mere order-takers or operations optimizers. Instead, CIOs must become their organizations’ primary champions of digital transformation.
Alas, at large enterprises, a key player in IT is not supporting the CIO in this critical shift to transformational leadership. That key player has a history of exceptional performance, rock-solid reliability and superb multi-tasking. In fact, this player may have more to contribute to the success of enterprise digital transformation than anyone else.
But instead of supporting the CIO, this player is sulking on the sidelines. And not without reason. This player has suffered neglect for years and has been thoroughly under-appreciated. Worse yet, most CIOs have no idea how to re-invigorate and re-integrate this player into the digital transformation that will determine the future of the business.
That player is the mainframe.
Mission and Mainframe
One reason CIOs have neglected the mainframe is that other technologies such as distributed and mobile have demanded huge investments. Because these investments were urgent—and because the mainframe fulfilled its then-current duties perfectly well—it seemed appropriate to minimize mainframe budgets and shift spending elsewhere.
For another, dominant mainframe software vendors likewise disinvested in mainframe so they could fund forays into other markets. This left enterprises without the innovative tools they needed to effectively modernize for mainframe DevOps.
The result: The mainframe languished so badly and for so long that it has actually become the single greatest impediment to the CIO’s mission of digital transformation—rather than its most powerful asset.
After all, while CIOs may have neglected the mainframe, it remains the beating digital heart of global business. The world’s largest companies depend at every moment on billions of lines of mainframe code and countless petabytes of mainframe data. Without them, you can’t buy on Amazon, ride with Uber or file a claim with Allstate.
That’s because mainframes provide absolutely essential back-end application logic and transaction processing for distributed, cloud, mobile and IoT.
CIOs can’t lead digital transformation if this primary digital engine of the enterprise remains frozen in time. If you can’t modify COBOL code at will—and if you can’t synch code changes across all your platforms—you can’t successfully compete against digital disrupters that start with a clean slate.
Enterprise CIOs must address this issue immediately and decisively. If it is not, they will fail and the business will suffer.
What to Do About It
If you’re a CIO seeking to shift your role from that of a glorified facilities manager to a true C-level leader of digital transformation, then you can’t afford to let your most important digital asset continue to languish in purgatory.
Fortunately, you don’t have to. Three steps in particular can help ensure that your mainframe becomes a powerful enabler of digital transformation—rather than a major impediment:
- Acknowledge the problem. Admit that you’re never going to fully re-platform your systems-of-record and that you can therefore no longer tolerate waterfall processes that limit you to one code drop every twelve months.
- Lead—or find a leader. CIOs have been spoiled by sharp geeks who bring them fresh ideas about their domains of expertise. This “bottom-up” innovation won’t happen with the mainframe. The culture is too ossified and the incentives aren’t there. So someone else must do the job—typically, someone already leading Agile and/or DevOps in a non-mainframe context.
- Invest in innovation. You must address bringing Agile to COBOL and empowering next-gen developers to fearlessly work with undocumented, complex, irreplaceable and invaluable mainframe code that works—amazingly. Make rightsized investments in tools that help and play well within your broader DevOps toolchain.
