Few IT technologies are as long lived as the venerable mainframe, which has been part of the infrastructure landscape for well over 50 years.

According to BMC's 18th annual mainframe report released today, the company continues to find that mainframes remain a critical part of the technology stack for many organizations, despite assumptions that the platform is outdated.

The survey found that there is continued growth and innovation on the mainframe platform. A large majority – 94% of respondents – have a positive view of the mainframe, and 63% reported increased investments in the past year. DevOps and AIOps adoption on the mainframe teams is increasing, with 62% using DevOps and 32% using AIOps. Mainframe users aren't myopic, either, and typically also use modern server technology and increasingly have an interest in cloud, according to the report.

"Organizations and businesses around the world continue to depend upon mainframes and probably one of the biggest misperceptions about it is that it's old tech," John McKenny, SVP and GM of Intelligent Z optimization and transformation at BMC, told SDxCentral. "The platform and technology is very different from when it started 50 years ago; it's very different from when I started working on it over 40 years ago."

Not only has the underlying technology of mainframes changed over the years, so, too, has the user demographic.

In the past, there was a perception, backed up in part by BMC's own data, that mainframe users tended to skew older, into the territory that is commonly referred to as “graybeards.” However, the new BMC report found that the demographics of mainframe professionals have shifted significantly in recent years.

According to McKenny, 62% identify themselves as millennials and only 8% were baby boomers. This is a major change from just five years ago, when nearly half of mainframe professionals surveyed were baby boomers.

This demographic shift is having an impact on how mainframes are developed, managed and secured. Younger professionals are more open to adopting modern practices like DevOps and AIOps that can improve efficiency.

"There's more acceptance and there's more willingness to implement more modern processes across the platform," McKenny said. The survey found growing adoption of practices like DevOps, AIOps and improved security integration among mainframe teams.

BMC's report found that mainframe usage continues to grow as applications and associated workloads are increasing in size and complexity.

McKenny noted that the pandemic proved mainframes' resilience compared to other platforms, which has been a key factor in driving continued investment in mainframe capacity and capabilities. At the same time, cloud computing is becoming more integrated with mainframe environments. Over a third of respondents saw cloud as a priority, with many using cloud for secondary storage, data protection and other new use cases.

While the future is never certain, McKenny is, however, confident that mainframe computing will continue to exist and evolve for many more years to come.

"The technology has continued to change; we continue to change and evolve with it so that customers can get more out of the platform," he said. "It's going to outlive me, I'm pretty confident of that. It'll still be alive and kicking and be part of core infrastructures for the next 25 years."