New Survey Illuminates Mainframe's Role in Major Corporations at Center of Big Data Ecosystem

WOODCLIFF LAKE, N.J., Nov. 18, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Syncsort, a global leader in Big Data and mainframe software, today announced the results of an industry survey confirming the mainframe's role at center stage in large corporations around the world and highlighting how the tool has evolved to meet the growing need to process and analyze large volumes of Big Data.

In partnership with Syncsort, Enterprise Systems Media, a leading publisher of magazines for IT managers and technical professionals who work with IBM mainframes and other computing platforms, conducted the "State of the Mainframe" study, polling 187 respondents including IT Strategic Planners, Directors/Managers, Architects and Administrators at Global Enterprises with $1B or more in annual revenues.

Based on the survey results, the mainframe may be the key to closing the Big Data processing gap and supporting the latest data delivery technologies. Over 89 percent of respondents indicated that mainframe's key benefit in the next year is its Big Data processing horsepower through CICS, DB2 and WebSphere, and more than a third see it as an opportunity to provide data to Big Data platforms such as IDAA, Netezza, Splunk, Spark, Oracle, Teradata and Hadoop.

The survey uncovered several other key findings about the mainframe's use in large businesses, where it still houses the lion share of corporate data, is the system of record and is now at the heart of their Big Data strategies, including:

• More than two-thirds of respondents (69 percent) ranked the use of the mainframe for performing large-scale transaction processing as very important
• More than two-thirds (67.4 percent) of respondents also pointed to integration with other standalone computing platforms such as Linux, UNIX, or Windows as a key strength of mainframe
• While the majority (79 percent) analyze real-time transactional data from the mainframe with a tool that resides directly on the mainframe, respondents are also turning to platforms such as Splunk (11.8 percent), Hadoop (8.6 percent), and Spark (1.6 percent) to supplement their real-time data analysis

"The mainframe is the go-to computing platform for the overwhelming majority of our largest customers, who leverage its ability to be the backbone for billions of computational intensive transactions for business-critical applications in industries like financial services, insurance, retail, manufacturing and telecommunications," said Harvey Tessler, founder and general manager, mainframe at Syncsort. "This survey reveals that the mainframe is also at the center of their Big Data strategies, providing an opportunity to integrate mainframe and big data platforms to support and drive Big Data adoption."

In addition to its robust compute processing power, survey data shows that both security and availability continue to be perceived as key strengths of the mainframe, while their biggest concerns are with CPU usage and related costs as well as meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs). These are all top of mind for not just mainframe professionals, but also CIOs: 

• 82.9 percent and 83.4 percent of respondents cited security and availability as key strengths of the mainframe, respectively
• In a weighted calculation, respondents ranked security and compliance as their top areas to improve over the next 12 months, followed by CPU usage and related costs and meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
• A separate weighted calculation showed that respondents felt their CIOs would rank all of the same areas in their top three to improve

"The survey demonstrates that many big companies are using mainframe as the back-end, transaction hub for their Big Data strategies, grappling with the same data cost and management challenges they used it to tackle before, but applying it to more complex use cases with more dauntingly large and diverse amounts of data," said Denny Yost, associate publisher and editor-in-chief for Enterprise Systems Media.  "The results also show that the mainframe's ability to be that hub for emerging Big Data analytics platforms is also of growing interest."

For more information on the State of the Mainframe study, click here.

About Syncsort

Syncsort provides enterprise software that allows organizations to collect, integrate, sort and distribute more data in less time, with fewer resources and lower costs.  Thousands of customers in more than 85 countries, including 87 of the Fortune 100 companies, use our fast and secure software to optimize and offload data processing workloads. Syncsort software provides specialized solutions spanning "Big Iron to Big Data," including next gen analytical platforms such as Hadoop, cloud, and Splunk. For more than 40 years customers have turned to Syncsort's software and expertise to dramatically improve performance of their data processing environments, while reducing hardware and labor costs.  Experience Syncsort at http://www.syncsort.com.

About Enterprise Systems Media

Enterprise Systems Media, Inc. (ESM) was originally founded by Bob Thomas in 1981, publishes two magazines for IT professionals in the world's largest enterprises, Enterprise Executive and Enterprise Tech Journal. These two independent publications were previously targeted solely to the needs of IT managers and technical professionals who worked with IBM mainframe computer systems under the names Mainframe Executive and z/Journal respectively. The change of titles and editorial focus is in line with the reality of today's multi-platform enterprises where it is necessary to deploy workloads on a best-fit basis and manage IT assets with an enterprise-wide view.

Media Contacts:

Sarah Borup     
SHIFT Communications
Tel: 617-779-1803
[email protected]

Michael Kornspan
Syncsort Incorporated
Director, Corporate Communications
Tel: 201-930-8216
[email protected]

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SOURCE Syncsort

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