State of the Cloud?
The latest “State of the Cloud Report” published by RightScale highlights the continued growth in the use of Cloud Infrastructure with 96% of responding organisations indicating that they are now using a Private and/or Public Cloud. With 20% of organisations planning to more than double their spending on Public Cloud in 2018, the Public Cloud is rapidly becoming the platform of choice for application deployment.
The Mainframe
For those of us who have grown up with the mainframe, my first computer was an IBM 370/138 with a wonderful hardware control panel, the big question is what does the Cloud mean for the mainframe of tomorrow? IBM have already started to address this issue by offering a specialised Cloud based mainframe service. But what about the customer that wants to retain all of the capability in their COBOL and PL/I applications while benefiting from the flexibility and choice that the Public Cloud offers, what options do they have? If any?
Step Foward Micro Focus Enterprise
This is the challenge that Micro Focus has been helping customers to resolve for over 20 years. Enterprise Server 3.0 is the latest version of our mainframe compatible application environment and it enables customers to rehost their existing mainframe online and batch applications to an Operating System of their choice, typically Linux or Windows, and run either on premise or in the Cloud. Some recent examples of customers who have rehosted mainframe applications are BGL, Empire Life, SMSV and Banco Guayaquil.
Using Micro Focus’ Enterprise Server customers can separate their COBOL and PL/I applications from the mainframe platform on which they were originally developed making a mainframe in the Cloud, with all of the benefits, a realistic option.
If you would like to know more then download our Moving IBM workloads to AWS Webinar or contact us directly. I am also on Twitter and would love to hook up and talk further about any aspect of this if you’re interested, find me here.
