Legacy application modernisation and MIPS efficiency projects top the agenda for UK mainframe shops according to a sentiment study carried out by BMC Software Inc.

It is the fourth time the company has carried out its Annual Worldwide Survey of Mainframe Users, and this one was tuned to assess user perceptions about the economics of the platform, and its role in preparing for business growth and the future upturn said Bill Miller President of the company’s mainframe service management unit.

The research found that mainframe users remain committed to the platform and are retooling in preparation for growth.

“Over 60% of mainframe sites expect they will continue to grow their use of their platform through the addition of new workloads, so they are very bullish about the status of the mainframe,” he said.

The survey also found that more respondents believe corporate management is more open to the mainframe due to pressures imposed by the poor economy. “The cost of a general purpose processor and its software could be as high as $7,200 per MIPS, which makes offloading work to a specialty processor that costs only $200 per MIPS the right choice in the current economy. “

Miller said there was no surprises in data which showed users believe the mainframe’s security, availability and utilisation as second to none. 

One surprising outcome was about Linux on the mainframe. “Evidence showed people are beginning to take it seriously,” he said. “There’s been a heavy uptick in interest in z/Linux, partly because IBM has made it more cost-effective.”

The company also found that for large sites, 47% of respondents indicated MIPS growth reduction as a top priority, followed by 35% citing reduction or elimination of unplanned outage events, pointing to a desire to increase cost efficiencies in the environment. 

BMC said it was addressing that need with software that will automatically shift MIPS usage onto a mainframe specialty processor so freeing up additional workload space, or with tools that help reduce peak MIPS usage by tuning applications. By using BMC SQL Performance for DB2 software, for instance, customers can reduce CPU usage in some DB2 applications by more than 50%. It has also just released BMC Capacity Trending Advisor, as a tool to help create more accurate capacity plans for planning mainframe futures.

Miller said the poll, which includes a good cadre of mainframe representatives, had detected a sense of nervousness about one aspect of the mainframe’s future.

“The skills shortage issue showed much stronger than it did last year.” Shortage of skilled staff is a growing concern. After a slight decrease last year, concern about staff skills in applications, operations and systems management increased by around 5%.

  • In a separate announcement today, BMC said it had agreed with McAfee to deliver jointly developed products for data centres. The vendors will work on a product that integrates BMC’s BladeLogic Client Automation with McAfee’s Policy Auditor, ePolicy Orchestrator and security content from McAfee Labs to identify, report, patch and fix policy violations.