...and virtualisation, as well as support new technologies such as service-oriented architecture (SOA), Linux and Java, he said.
Gartner's Gadjuli added that the introduction of enhanced features and functions will ensure mainframe's existence in the market, as well as the user mindset that these systems are reliable in supporting critical and non-stop workloads.
Sheina said security and performance are the reasons why mainframe systems remain permanent fixtures in datacentres for certain types of applications — in particular, mission-critical, high-volume financial and retail transactional environments.
"Mainframe systems were originally designed to be shared by thousands of users [and] have security built into nearly every level of the computer — from the processor level, to the operating system and the application level," he said.
Mainframe skills issues
However, Sheina said the mainframe market faces challenges related to integration, availability of skillsets and user mindset.
Noting that wall-to-wall mainframe architectures are rare today, he said mainframes will have to co-exist and integrate smoothly within distributed client-server environments and newer SOA, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud computing models.
Finding the right skills is also a challenge that needs to be resolved, he added.
"Mainframe professionals come at a premium over trendier and more abundant Java, PHP, skills," he said. "As mainframe specialists become a rare commodity the cost of their skills rises to a premium. Simply put, there are not enough young bright people wanting to learn mainframe skills over PHP, Java, Flash and other 'hip' Web 2.0 technologies."
According to HP's Kitamoto, this lack of skilled resources was so severe that it was dubbed the "2007 problem". Mainframe skillsets are retiring from the industry and younger engineers prefer to learn newer technologies, he noted.
It is increasingly tough to identify experts who want to teach Cobol, he said, adding that mainframes are proprietary legacy systems that are no longer relevant in the market.
One of the industry's oldest programming languages, Cobol is used on mainframe systems.
However, Sheina noted that mainframe vendors have started to address the skills shortage. IBM, for instance, has been introducing mainframe courses into academic IT curriculums and currently works with some 400 education institutions worldwide to introduce its System z into academic programs.
In addition, he said, mainframe vendors are making efforts to reduce the complexity of managing such environments, They are also looking to narrow the skills gap by introducing newer and more mainstream development and programming techniques, such as Java and PERL, into the mainframe environments.
Sheina said: "Opening up the environment in this way transfers existing IT skills to mainframe environments and helps break the perception that mainframes require a highly specialist breed of skills and training.
"And perhaps the biggest obstacle for moving BI onto the mainframe is debunking some of the traditional myths about mainframes," he said. "A generation of IT management educated and brought up on distributed server architectures still believes it is far too costly and difficult to host their BI applications on the mainframe."
The Ovum analyst noted that while this might be true some 10 years ago, mainframes have since been redesigned to match other modern IT platforms.
