STAMFORD, Conn., Dec. 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm, has launched a research study examining service providers that support the modernization, transformation and use of mainframe computers in enterprise settings.

The study results will be published in a comprehensive ISG Provider Lens™ report, called Mainframe Services & Solutions, scheduled to be released in April. The report will cover vendors that offer mainframe transformation and application modernization services as well as mainframe-as-a-service and storage-as-a-service offerings.

Enterprise buyers will be able to use information from the report to evaluate their current vendor relationships, potential new engagements and available offerings, while ISG advisors use the information to recommend providers to the firm’s buy-side clients.

The new report will examine a range of services offered in the mainframe space, to meet the needs of many large businesses and research organizations that require massive processing capacity, said Jan Erik Aase, director and global leader, ISG Provider Lens Research.

“To comply with digital transformation business requirements, clients can modernize their mainframe applications and introduce Agile methods as well as automate continuous integration tools,” he said. “Two alternatives exist in the market: modernization, which updates legacy code, and transformation, which converts legacy code into modern languages to run on modern platforms, including private and public clouds.”

ISG has distributed surveys to more than 60 mainframe service providers. Working in collaboration with ISG’s global advisors, the research team will produce six quadrants representing the services and products the typical enterprise client is buying in the mainframe space, based on ISG’s experience working with its clients. The six quadrants that will be covered are:

Mainframe Modernization Services, covering providers offering legacy application modernization, introducing code repositories such as GitHub, DevOps integration and testing automation, including security testing. Modernization keeps the original programing language, such as Cobol, adding architecture optimization and documentation to enable agility. After the modernization is completed, clients can embrace Agile methodologies in the development and maintenance of applications running on mainframe systems.
Mainframe Transformation Services, assessing application development and maintenance service providers that have evolved their application modernization methodologies to assess and rewrite legacy programming language applications written with Cobol, RPG, Fortran, PL/1, Natural, and others, that typically run on mainframes. Typical target programming languages may include Java, .Net, C# and others, enabling the same logic and business rules to run on any platform, including the public cloud.
Mainframe-as-a-Service, examining infrastructure service providers that offer shared IBM Z mainframes under a pay-per-use contract model. Services include facilities, hardware, connectivity, mainframe network management, licensing, operating system and sub-systems, tools, and all maintenance services required to keep mainframe workloads running according to the expected performance.
Mainframe Operations, assessing traditional outsourcing providers that offer mainframe services. Typical participants employ experienced practitioners to cover legacy mainframe technologies as well most recent mainframe releases. Mainframe operation service providers offer skilled teams to keep clients’ mainframe running. Services can be delivered in any hosting facility.
Storage-as-a-Service, covering vendors of storage solutions with the commercial option of pay per use. These vendors enable clients to free their capital invested in storage systems and adopt new storage appliances or cloud-hosted storage options, or both. Vendors promise significant cost savings to clients that modernize their storage methods, with tools that dynamically move data to the most appropriate storage device and location.
Mainframe Modernization Software, enabling legacy application code assessments and code conversion. Mainframe modernization software includes reverse engineering, business logic mapping, business rules extraction, code review and inspection, documentation, emulators, frameworks and application development tools that can accelerate code and application modernization.
The report will cover the global mainframe market and also examine products and services available in the U.S. ISG analysts Pedro L. Bicudo Maschio and Srinivasan P.N. will serve as authors of the report.

A list of identified providers and vendors and further details on the study are available in this digital brochure. Companies not listed as mainframe service providers can contact ISG and ask to be included in the study.

ISG Provider Lens™ Research

The ISG Provider Lens™ Quadrant research series is the only service provider evaluation of its kind to combine empirical, data-driven research and market analysis with the real-world experience and observations of ISG’s global advisory team. Enterprises will find a wealth of detailed data and market analysis to help guide their selection of appropriate sourcing partners, while ISG advisors use the reports to validate their own market knowledge and make recommendations to ISG’s enterprise clients. The research currently covers providers offering their services globally, across Europe and Latin America, as well as in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland, the U.K., France, the Nordics, Brazil and Australia/New Zealand, with additional markets to be added in the future. For more information about ISG Provider Lens research, please visit this webpage.

A companion research series, the ISG Provider Lens Archetype reports, offer a first-of-its-kind evaluation of providers from the perspective of specific buyer types.

Starting this year, each ISG Provider Lens™ study will include a Global Summary to help enterprise subscribers better understand provider capabilities across all geographic markets covered by that study. All ISG Provider Lens™ reports also will now include an Enterprise Context feature to help executives quickly identify key insights related to their roles and responsibilities.

ISG

ISG (Information Services Group) (Nasdaq: III) is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. A trusted business partner to more than 700 clients, including more than 75 of the world’s top 100 enterprises, ISG is committed to helping corporations, public sector organizations, and service and technology providers achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm specializes in digital transformation services, including automation, cloud and data analytics; sourcing advisory; managed governance and risk services; network carrier services; strategy and operations design; change management; market intelligence and technology research and analysis. Founded in 2006, and based in Stamford, Conn., ISG employs more than 1,300 digital-ready professionals operating in more than 20 countries—a global team known for its innovative thinking, market influence, deep industry and technology expertise, and world-class research and analytical capabilities based on the industry’s most comprehensive marketplace data.

A Partnership Built on Joint Engineering

In the hybrid cloud space, the relationship between VMware and Amazon Web Services has produced one of the more substantive vendor partnerships in recent memory. VMware Cloud on AWS is not simply a reseller arrangement — according to Mark Lohmeyer, VMware’s SVP and GM of the Cloud Platform Business Unit, hundreds of engineers on both sides are actively optimizing VMware software to run as a managed service on top of AWS infrastructure.

The practical result for customers is that the heavy lifting of hardware upgrades and VMware software lifecycle management shifts away from their own teams. VMware handles those operational concerns, while customers retain access to the broader AWS service ecosystem alongside their familiar VMware tooling.

“I think both VMware and AWS believe strongly in understanding what customers are looking for and making sure we’re delivering that value to them.”

— Mark Lohmeyer, SVP & GM, Cloud Platform Business Unit, VMware (VMworld 2019)

Traction at VMworld 2019: Growth Metrics

At VMworld 2019, Lohmeyer shared adoption figures comparing the service’s status year-over-year at the time of the event:

• 4x increase in the number of customers on VMware Cloud on AWS
• 9x increase in the number of virtual machines (VMs) running on the service

Lohmeyer noted that the VM figure is particularly telling: it shows not just new customer acquisition, but existing customers significantly expanding their footprint — a signal of growing confidence in the platform for production workloads.

Compressing Migration Timelines

One of the more striking claims from Lohmeyer concerns migration velocity. Historically, moving enterprise VMware workloads to a public cloud required re-factoring and re-platforming applications upfront — a process that could consume three or more years before any meaningful cloud benefit was realized.

VMware Cloud on AWS changes that calculus by allowing workloads to be lifted and shifted to the cloud without requiring application changes first. Because the underlying infrastructure is still VMware-based (vSphere, NSX, vSAN, and vCenter), existing VMs migrate without modification. Lohmeyer cited the ability to compress what was previously a three-year migration project into a matter of months.

“We could take a migration project that would have previously taken three years, and we could do it in a few months.”

— Mark Lohmeyer, VMworld 2019

Migrate First, Modernize at Your Own Pace

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger framed the strategic choice at the VMworld 2019 keynote as: “Modernize and migrate, or migrate and modernize.” Both orderings are intentional — the platform supports either path.

The traditional cloud adoption model pressures teams to modernize applications before migration, forcing a large upfront engineering investment. VMware Cloud on AWS enables an alternative sequence:

1. Migrate quickly — move existing VMware workloads to AWS without application refactoring, using live migration capabilities.
2. Operate in a familiar environment — continue using vCenter, NSX networking, and existing VMware operational tooling in the cloud.
3. Modernize incrementally — adopt AWS-native services (databases, machine learning, serverless, containers) on a schedule driven by business need rather than migration deadlines.

The “live migrate” capability Gelsinger highlighted refers to the ability to move running VMs between on-premises VMware environments and VMware Cloud on AWS with minimal disruption — a key differentiator from approaches that require downtime or application-level re-architecture.

Solving the Multicloud Management Problem

One of the harder questions in enterprise cloud strategy is how to maintain consistent operations across a heterogeneous mix of private cloud, multiple public clouds, and edge environments. Lohmeyer described VMware’s answer as operating on two tracks:

1. Consistent Operations

Management tooling that works across environments regardless of the underlying infrastructure. VMware’s CloudHealth platform was cited as an example — it provides visibility into cloud spend across multiple cloud providers and enables cost optimization over time. This layer is designed to function whether workloads sit on VMware-based infrastructure or on native cloud services.

2. Consistent Infrastructure

Delivering the same VMware Cloud Foundation stack (compute, network, storage) consistently across on-premises data centers, multiple public clouds, and edge locations. The goal is to eliminate the operational fragmentation that arises when each environment requires distinct tooling and skillsets.

Together, these two tracks represent VMware’s answer to the “multicloud paradox” — the desire to use best-of-breed services from multiple providers without sacrificing unified governance, security, and compliance posture.

What This Means for DevOps and Platform Teams

For teams managing VMware-heavy on-premises estates, the VMware Cloud on AWS model offers a practical migration path that avoids the organizational risk of a forced modernization project. Key operational implications include:

• Existing skills transfer: vCenter, NSX, and vSAN administrators can manage cloud-hosted VMs using the same tools and processes they use on-premises.
• Reduced migration risk: No application refactoring is required to move to the cloud, reducing the chance of regression or performance issues introduced during migration.
• Access to AWS services: Once workloads are in VMware Cloud on AWS, teams can integrate with AWS-native services (RDS, S3, Lambda, EKS, and others) without a full re-platform.
• Hardware lifecycle offloaded: VMware manages underlying host upgrades and software patching, reducing operational burden on internal infrastructure teams.

Context: VMworld 2019

This interview took place at VMworld 2019 in San Francisco. The growth metrics, product capabilities, and partnership details described here reflect the state of VMware Cloud on AWS as communicated at that event. The service has continued to evolve since 2019; readers evaluating the platform for current use should consult VMware’s and AWS’s current documentation for up-to-date specifications and pricing.