Mainframe biz critical, India a vital cog: IBM

India plays a crucial role in modernising IBM's mainframes, which form the backbone of some of the most critical applications in industries such as banking, airlines, retail, and government.

- AVIK DAS

While many consider it a legacy technology, and perhaps no longer at the forefront of today's technology conversations, it remains indispensable to innovation in enterprise businesses.

According to a recent report from the IBM Institute for Business Value, 43 of the world's top 50 banks and 8 of the top 10 payment companies rely on mainframes as their core platform. In fact, 70-80 per cent of the world's transaction data still resides on these systems.

IBM is making significant investments in its new mainframe hardware, which is designed to accelerate the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), according to Ric Lewis, senior vice-president of IBM's infrastructure business.