SHARE, Washington D.C., Put the Mainframe in the Spotlight

Recently, we set off to SHARE Washington D.C., to connect with a mix of IT leaders and industry experts passionate about the latest technology trends, much of which revolved around the mainframe.

Rocket Software hosted multiple sessions throughout the week on common mainframe challenges. Our joint presenters, Phil Buckellew, president of infrastructure modernization, and Puneet Kohli, president of application modernization, helped IT teams on their mainframe modernization journeys in their session, “Future Proofing Your Mainframe.”

Ezriel Gross, principal solutions advisor, presented multiple sessions on Customer Information Control System (CICS) challenges. Gross also took home some hardware for Best Vendor Presentation for his session at the SHARE KC conference in November, “CICS Problem Analysis and Performance Tuning Methodology.”

Let’s dive into how Rocket Software’s team spent their time at SHARE Washington D.C.

Overcoming CICS and mainframe challenges

Gross’s sessions covered how employees, regardless of mainframe experience, can solve problems pertaining to CICS, the middleware system used in banking, insurance, retail, and other critical industries, to manage large volumes of financial transactions. Common CICS challenges IT teams face include identifying performance bottlenecks, and complexities that impact transactional integrity, which lead to downtime, decreased productivity, and frustrations for both IT and users. In the event of downtime or outages, administrators must be able to solve these issues quickly.

The mainframe talent shortage makes it difficult to solve CICS issues when they occur. Younger IT talent often lacks the specialized expertise required to diagnose and resolve these problems. To overcome this hurdle, IT teams need to adopt solutions that make managing the mainframe and CICS issues easier for IT professionals who are not mainframe experts.

Gross shared in his presentation that IT departments must be equipped with solutions to simplify troubleshooting for less experienced IT professionals. Rocket^® C\Prof simplifies issues around CICS by offering simple-to-understand visibility into issues through problem analysis and intuitive transaction analytics. This solution improves incident response times, enhances operational efficiency, and increases cost savings, making problems around CICS and the mainframe less of a headache, even for folks who are not “mainframe experts.”

Future proofing your mainframe

The impact of emerging technologies, like AI, on mainframes was a dominating topic at SHARE Washington D.C. In their session, “Future Proofing Your Mainframe,” Buckellew and Kohli expressed that modernization is at the core of future-proofing the mainframe as it empowers organizations to adapt to trends in the market including the emergence of AI.

They also emphasized that modernization is imperative for connecting mainframe applications with the rest of an enterprise tech stack. That is why 56% of organizations on a modernization journey are modernizing applications on the mainframe and integrating them with replatformed or existing applications hosted in the cloud, according to a recent survey by Forrester.

The biggest barrier organizations face with mainframe modernization is concerns over security and risk since IT teams worry that modernizing the mainframe will lead to downtime, opening the door to vulnerabilities.

Modernization without disruption

Modernization is a continuous journey and does not need to involve overhauling an entire system at once. Instead, they can modernize without disruption by preparing for the future over the long-haul, while avoiding downtime.

To avoid vulnerabilities during the modernization process, IT teams should focus on specific areas of security. These include secure data handling, regular monitoring and auditing, incident response and recovery, application regulations, and vulnerability analysis.

Attendees at SHARE looked for best practices to overcome mainframe challenges and to be successful on their modernization journeys. Every company’s modernization journey looks different, but a trusted partner like Rocket Software can meet them no matter where they are to modernize without disruption.

Learn how Rocket Software helps organizations on their modernization journey.