The mainframe has changed significantly over the past 50 years and the rate of innovation is likely to accelerate going forward.
According to Andy Hoiles, new workload leader for the Middle East and Africa at IBM Middle East, predicting where computing will be in the next five, 10 or even 50 years is not an easy task. "The mainframe of 50 years hence will be dramatically different to that which we know today."
Today's systems and devices rely on electrical signals flowing from point to point across electrical circuits, he says. This rise in processing contributes to drastic increases global energy consumption. In the future, systems could deploy optical circuits, where light transmits the information, which will transform the size and power requirements of physical computing, notes Hoiles. "In such an environment where high speed transmissions are accomplished at very low power, we may even see the first solar powered mainframe."
Known for imbedding specialised accelerator elements, like encryption and compression, this platform is set to take advantage of new techniques to bring analytic power to the large data elements the mainframe platform is renowned for, says Hoiles. "This will help unlock the potential associated with the explosion in data that we talked about in previous articles."
In addition to this, there have already been advances in cognitive computing through the analysis of large data stores that are dynamically growing, which can provide different analytic capability systems that can adapt and learn. "A mainframe embedding such technologies has the potential to transform industries and redefine the computing environment," he notes.
For Hoiles, as storage technology advances, systems will have memory capacity that far exceeds what is being seen today, which will lead to huge advancements in real-time analytics. "With the mainframe's transactional capability it will be possible to perform analytical operations in real-time based on the huge data contained in memory, giving an immediate answer or diagnosis to a problem."
From a security perspective, Hoiles foresees that mainframe technology of the future will isolate critical data in order to tamper proof critical information stores. "These techniques will continue the history of security that the platform is recognised for."
Currently, the mainframe can be used to consolidate workloads, simplify the environment and drive down costs, he says, noting that new developments in mainframe technologies will continue to drive value in similar ways. Interactions with these platforms may no longer require keyboards and screens but will rather be run via voice or hand gestures; simplifying computing through more intuitive interfaces, Hoiles continues.
Another way of reducing the cost and effort of administration of mainframes is through self-management, he adds. "IT analytics on the mainframe continues to expand to include more functions associated with the identification of issues before they affect the services for the end user," concludes Hoiles. "In the future, systems will constantly check point themselves so not only can they predict failure but will take action themselves transparently without use for human intervention, both at the application and system level."
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