But that is about to change!
I am now leaving the finance industry for a new cutting edge firm. Dealing with mainframe batch jobs, DB2 file limits and file transmission errors are soon to be a distant memory. But before they are, I'd like to capture some of my thoughts in this blog.
While reading through my LinkedIn news feed this morning, I came across an article posing this question:
"The mainframe has stood the test of time — but in the age of cloud computing, can the mainframe still be relevant?"Believe me, this question was batted around regularly.
As per the article: a few mainframe stats are below.
- 96 of the world’s top 100 banks, 23 of the 25 top US retailers, and nine out of 10 of the world’s largest insurance companies run IBM's System z mainframes.
- Seventy-one percent of global Fortune 500 companies are System z clients,
- Nine out of the top 10 global life and health insurance providers process their high-volume transactions on a System z mainframe,
- Mainframes process roughly 30 billion business transactions per day, including "most major credit card transactions and stock trades, money transfers, manufacturing processes, and ERP systems".
The company I'm leaving does roughly $530 billion in volume and $15.4 billion in payment transactions annually. And it's all mainframe...I dare you to walk up to a developer and tell them we're migrating to the cloud. You will be met with a look of incredulity followed by serious shaking of the head.
To even get past the massive amount of work it would be to retool the myriad of systems into the cloud, the first thing which needs to occur is a cultural shift. The cultural shift needs to come top down. And that isn't an easy thing. Changing the culture of the finance industry, which admittedly, isn't very fast will take quite a bit of time.
