Dive Brief:
- Confidence in the mainframe remains high as AI use expands the platform's capabilities, with 94% of mainframe practitioners and decision-makers saying they expect long-term investment in the technology, according to a BMC survey. The IT consulting company surveyed 1,300 mainframe professionals for the Tuesday report.
- AI use in mainframe maintenance is increasing, as 45% of respondents said adopting AI tools remains a top priority. More than one-third of respondents said they plan to invest in creating agents to manage the mainframe, and 32% plan to invest in third-party agents.
- The survey results describe "an industry moving beyond AI experimentation toward trusted, operational adoption,” said John McKenny, SVP and general manager of Intelligent Z Optimization and Transformation at BMC, in a statement.
Dive Insight:
The deployment of AI across the enterprise initially left CIOs having to think through where applications, processes and workflows should live — and whether it’s worth maintaining legacy systems. Leaving mainframes behind does not represent a viable option for most companies, as systems are deeply embedded in operations.
But AI may be helping ease modernization of mainframes. Organizations aren’t replacing mainframe investments with AI, but instead continue to optimize the platform, including it as part of their AI infrastructure, the BMC survey found. Concerns about data privacy and security related to the use of cloud-based generative AI technologies have helped sustain the mainframe’s reputation in recent years.
Enterprises continue to lean on the mainframe to power critical transactions, protect data and support customer experiences. Although mainframe professionals were once concerned that those with the skillset for the computers were aging out, the workforce demographics are now shifting younger. More than half of respondents in BMC’s 2025 survey were millennials.
Mainframe leaders are using AI to secure connections for both humans and applications, this year’s survey said. Most respondents are using in-house automated tools or services to manage their organization’s digital certificates or are managing certificates manually.
“What I am seeing now is a shift where the platform is not just surviving but is being architected to lead in the era of AI,” Steven Dickens, CEO and principal analyst of HyperFRAME Research, said in a research note earlier this year. “I see AI as a tailwind for the mainframe, not the opposite.”
Within mainframe professionals, the approach to AI has shifted from experimental to operational, focusing on trust, governance and measurable outcomes. The mainframe is evolving from a mission-critical platform into an intelligent enterprise platform that powers digital businesses, BMC’s 2026 report said.
“It’s becoming clear that the path to greater AI autonomy on the mainframe will be earned through trust, with the option of humans remaining in the loop to oversee and implement AI recommendations,” McKenny said in a statement.
