GenAI Interest ‘Exploding’ for Modernization on IBM i and Z, Kyndryl Says

September 18, 2024 Alex Woodie

There’s been an explosion of interest in using generative AI on IBM i and System Z servers, according to Kyndryl’s latest report on mainframe modernization. Hybrid IT, security, the skills gap, and observability round out the top five trends impacting the IBM midrange and mainframe platforms.

Last year, Kyndryl contracted with Coleman Parkes Research to survey about 500 senior IT leaders at IBM i and System Z mainframe shops around the world. That effort turned into the 2023 State of Mainframe Modernization Survey Report, which we covered here.

Many of the same modernization trends that the former IBM Global Technology Services arm detected in 2023 remain in place for 2024, according to Richard Baird, Kyndryl’s SVP, CTO & Engineering Lead for Core Enterprise and zCloud.

For instance, the percentage of IBM i and System Z shops that are looking to move some applications and data off their IBM platforms came in at 96 percent, which is one percentage point higher than last year. And the average percentage of apps and data that survey respondents are looking to move off the mainframe or midrange box came in at 36 percent this year, down from 37 percent last year.

“From last year to this year, some areas have not really changed,” Baird tells IT Jungle in an interview. “Statistically, it’s the same. But the big thing that has shown up this year is that a lot of customers are actually focusing in on AI . . . . The big ticket item from the survey is around AI.”

Source: Kyndryl

Kyndryl found that 86 percent of survey respondents (composed of about two-thirds System Z shops and about one-third IBM i shops) are looking to deploy GenAI, the survey found. More than one-third identified GenAI as their top investment priority for modernization over the next 12 months, Kyndryl says.

While many IBM shops are still fleshing out their GenAI projects, 71 percent say they have already deployed GenAI in their organizations, the survey found. Nearly half (44 percent) say they’re using GenAI to transform unstructured data into actionable information, while about one-third are using GenAI to aid in the development of new products or services.

Baird said System Z shops are further along the GenAI journeys thanks to two products available from IBM: the Telum co-processor and watsonx Code Assistant. These products are helping drive adoption of the nascent technology on the big boy mainframe, Baird says.

The Telum co-processor allows mainframe shops to keep their AI inference workloads running on the systems, while watsonx Code Assistant provides natural language understanding for mainframe code.

“Where the industry has tended to focus more at this point is on Z and the use of generative AI for doing application modernization, application understanding, using generative AI to create test cases, test data, etc.,” he says. “They are focused more at this point on COBOL.”

That’s not to say that GenAI isn’t happening on IBM i. But when it does occur, it involves calling out from the Power server to cloud hyperscalers to run AI workloads, Baird said.

“They’re taking their data, building the models, making a RESTful call out of RPG or whatever to go call the model on the distributed platform and then gaining additional business insight,” Baird said.

IBM Rochester currently is developing a code assistant for RPG. The IBM i code assistant, which IBM announced at the COMMON conference in May, will target three areas: Db2 analytics, operations, and the developer experience.

Co-pilots can help with application modernization efforts in several ways, Baird says. For starters, they can help by automatically generating summaries of what the source code (COBOL, RPG, or otherwise) does. They can also help by generating test data and test cases to assist developers with testing new code.

“You know as well as I do, a huge number of customers do not have good test cases or test data for their application sets,” the longtime IBMer says.

Hybrid IT was the second major trend identified in Kyndryl’s support. Different customers use cloud resources differently. Some are offloading large parts of their IT estates onto the cloud, while others are looking to integrate their mainframe applications with cloud-based applications in a more tactical manner. In either case, the cloud genie is not going back into the bottle.

“Hybrid. It is here to stay,” Baird declares.

Security continues to be a major component of the modernization discussion. According to Kyndryl’s study, 49 percent of survey respondents say security is the number one driver of modernization investments over the next 12 months. The survey also indicated that many IBM i and System Z shops consider security on the platforms to be an advantage.

Regulatory compliance and data sovereignty requirements also play into the security story. More than 90 percent of survey respondents say cybersecurity regulations impact their mainframe and IBM i modernization plans, while they also influence organizations’ decisions to take a “move off, modernize on, or integrate with” strategy.

Source: Kyndryl

A shortage of people with the right skills is also impacting mainframe users. The survey found that 18% of organizations that are taking an “integrate with” modernization strategy point to the skills gap as the number one challenge they face, while 28% say they’re worried that they don’t have the right skills to modernize their IBM environment.

There is considerable overlap between the skills issue and security and co-pilot/GenAI initiatives, according to Barid.

“We’ve still got the same issues around security and skills,” he says. “The skills problem is twisting a little bit from ‘Do I have the COBOL and RPG skills’ to ‘Can I get the AI and generative AI skills in order to help me unpick this COBOL and RPG ?’”

The final area of focus for the Kyndryl modernization study is observability. The survey found that 92 percent of respondents would like to have a single dashboard to monitor IT operations occurring across its IT land scale, but 85 percent say this is very difficult to achieve.

This goes back to the hybrid cloud, where the world is hybrid,” Baird says. “They want observability across the estate. They want to be able to see what’s going on over here as well as over here, particularly if the two halves are talking to one another.

Baird sees the Open Telemetry project, which seeks to create a unified standard for logs, metrics, and traces, as helping to drive better observability into mainframes and IBM i servers, as well as every other piece of IT in the data center and the cloud.

“The OTel movement is going to make that a whole lot easier,” he said. “It’s good to see the various players in the industry are adopting OTel and getting to the point where the data can be shared more easily and managed more easily.”

You can download a copy of Kyndryl’s mainframe modernization report here.

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