EMA Research: Modernizing Mainframe Applications. Strategies, Tools, and Insights for a Digital Future

In a landscape where digital transformation is often equated with cloud-first strategies, mainframes remain a cornerstone of enterprise IT. This research carried out by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) reveals that rather than fading away, the role of the mainframe is expanding. The report explores how organizations are integrating these critical systems with hybrid and cloud-native environments to drive innovation, security, and operational resilience.

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What You’ll Learn From This Research

The Expanding Role of Mainframes: Why 47% of organizations anticipate an increasing role for their mainframes over the next 5-10 years, driven by the need for unparalleled scalability and security.
Hybrid & Cloud Integration Strategies: How the "Extend" strategy is enabling enterprises to integrate mainframes with distributed and cloud systems, maintaining operational functionality while supporting digital transformation.
Modernization in Place: Insights into why "Modernize in Place" remains the most prevalent long-term strategy, with 79% of respondents achieving or exceeding expectations by optimizing applications on the platform.
The Impact of AI: How the integration of AI is extending mainframe capabilities, helping organizations overcome complexity and bridge the skills gap.

Who Should Read This Report?

CIOs and IT Executives balancing the dual mandates of innovation and system stability.
Mainframe and Infrastructure Leaders looking to validate modernization strategies and investment priorities.
Digital Transformation Strategists seeking best practices for integrating legacy systems into modern hybrid architectures.

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Gain strategic insights into the future of the mainframe and its vital role in the hybrid enterprise. Learn how leading organizations are leveraging modernization strategies to turn their most reliable assets into engines for digital future growth.

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Further Resources

Blog Article

Workflow Orchestration: How It Works, Use Cases, & Tools

A batch job finishes on one system. Nobody tells the next system to start, so three teams spend the next two hours on a call trying to figure out which of them broke it. This is what happens without workflow orchestration: coordinating automated tasks, data, and dependencies across systems so a process runs end to end without a human stitching the pieces together manually. Unplanned downtime now costs Global 2000 companies $600 billion a year, up 50% in just two years, according to Splunk and Oxford Economics. A meaningful share of that traces back to exactly this kind of gap: automated tasks that run fine individually but were never orchestrated as a connected process. Below, we break down what workflow orchestration actually involves, how it works step by step, where it differs from automation, and which platforms enterprise IT teams are evaluating in 2026.

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Blog Article

7 Best Broadcom Automic Alternatives & Competitors for Enterprise IT in 2026

Are you evaluating a Broadcom alternative for enterprise workload automation? You’re likely already dealing with rising license costs, unpredictable renewal terms, or a scheduler that hasn't kept pace with your hybrid cloud strategy. You're not alone. Gartner’s 2026 Magic Quadrant for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms (SOAP) notes that Broadcom customers have reported friction around contract renewal pricing and a lack of self-service migration tooling, both of which are common triggers for a vendor switch. This guide covers the 7 best Broadcom alternatives for enterprise IT in 2026 so you can shortlist with confidence before you start a formal evaluation.

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Blog Article

Where Enterprise Automation Is Heading: Insights from the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP

The move from traditional workload automation to intelligent, end-to-end orchestration is accelerating. This change is one of the clearest signals we've seen from the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms (SOAP), and it comes at an important moment for Beta Systems. For the second year in a row, Beta Systems has been positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for SOAP. But beyond vendor positioning, the 2026 report provides an important view into where enterprise automation is heading. The evolution is not simply from job scheduling to more sophisticated workload automation. SOAPs are increasingly becoming the operational layer connecting applications, infrastructure, data pipelines, cloud services, and now AI agents. Here are our key takeaways from the 2026 research.

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