3 IBM Z Day Takeaways: Looking Back on IBM’s Largest Tech Event of the Year
Mainframe uses are expanding, Ross Mauri, general manager of IBM Z and LinuxONE, said during his keynote presentation
That’s the word IBM executive Ross Mauri used during his opening keynote session at IBM Z Day to describe the platform’s continued growth, both in terms of its worldwide installed capacity and the shipped capacity of z16 systems.
“The momentum, as I look at it, is [that] the uses of the mainframe around the world continue to expand,” said Mauri, general manager of IBM Z and LinuxONE.
“What’s driving the growth?…It’s our clients’ digital transformation, it’s cyber resilience, it’s hybrid cloud modernization and it’s AI,” he added.
Z Day, the free virtual conference billed as IBM’s largest tech event of the year, took place Oct. 1, featuring dozens of sessions covering every aspect of the platform. According to Meredith Stowell, VP of Ecosystem, IBM Z and LinuxONE, registrants from more than 135 countries watched the proceedings as more than 250 industry experts and global thought leaders from IBM and throughout the mainframe world shared their knowledge and insights.
Two of the six session tracks—IBM Z Skills and Academic Symposium, a new track—were geared toward students and younger mainframe professionals. For a broader perspective on the evolving mainframe workforce, read IBM Z Embraces Gen Z.
3 observations from IBM Z Day
1. AI Continues to be a Hot Topic (Naturally)
Elpida Tzortzados, CTO of AI on IBM Z and LinuxONE, introduced the hour-long AI keynote session by citing the spiking interest in—and activity around—AI by mainframe clients. And yes, the M word came up in her remarks.
“We’ve seen significant momentum and client interest in AI use cases both on IBM Z and LinuxONE. That interest has grown by over 70% in just the last year,” she said.
According to Tzortzados, IBM is working with nearly 200 unique clients, some of whom have taken on multiple AI projects. She said that the most common AI use cases—more than 50%—come in the areas of fraud detection, money laundering and IT AIOps.
As evidence of how mainframe clients are broadening their use of AI, Tzortzados cited the emergence of ensemble AI.
“Really, ensemble AI is nothing more than using multiple models to get more accurate results,” she said. She went on to explain that traditional machine learning models are very good at working with structured data and can be more effective at numerical pattern recognition or anomaly detection, while large language models (LLMs) are capable of understanding text and language and generating text-based data features.
“We’re seeing clients now combine the strength of both of those techniques to get better results in terms of having their predictions be more accurate, be able to make better decisions and increase the accuracy that they can deliver for different types of use cases with AI,” Tzortzados added.
2. The Modern Mainframe and What’s ‘Next’
Though key hardware components in the newest IBM Z system were formally announced at Hot Chips 2024 in August, Mauri further hinted at the future of the platform. He noted that zNext, code name for the newest version of the mainframe that is expected to be available in the first half of 2025, is running well in test labs.
He also touched on the two versions that will follow zNext in coming years. Development of “zNext +1” is past the concept stage and “deep into the logic phase of the microprocessor,” while research and development is already underway on “zNext +2.”
Of course, none of this is to suggest that the present-day mainframe isn’t itself a technological marvel. Mauri had high praise for the z16 and its impact on IBM and the mainframe world.
“We’re seeing z16 as the best generation of mainframe probably in the last 30 years, in terms of business performance and customer acceptance and customer delight,” he said. “It is a record-setting system, the z16.”
3. The Client Perspective
Mainframe clients were front and center throughout the Z Day event. During the opening keynote, Mauri name-checked La Mobiliere. The Swiss insurance provider is using AI on the mainframe to more efficiently and effectively craft its customer policies.
“La Mobiliere implemented AI on Z and targeted what the AI thought would be the clients’ most desired policy,” Mauri said. “In turning on AI, La Mobiliere went from 25% accuracy to 94% accuracy. That cuts down on the sales time. It cuts down on the time to value to the client and it accelerates revenue for them.”
Later in the session, Skyla Loomis, VP of IBM Z Software, conversed with Julie Trevisan, director of retail lending development for the Bank of Montreal. Trevisan said her organization has been revitalized when it comes to its interest in and activity around the mainframe.
“There was a long time where we didn’t really hire people into mainframe; that’s changed over the past five years. We’ve hired so many new people and now we’re trying to figure out how to get them up to speed, trained on the mainframe, developing new applications,” she said.
“This involves bringing in modern ideas, bringing in new tooling, bringing in different ways to see the applications, understand how to change them, simplify the way we’re changing them—just streamline the whole process.”
Bank of Montreal has been working closely with IBM over the past year to simply its massive set of COBOL applications and improve developers’ overall experience.
“I’m very excited about the future of the mainframe,” Trevisan said.
Note: Based on recent practices, the session replays of IBM Z Day should remain available for several weeks following the Oct. 1 event. IBM registration is required.