Mainframes have been in existence since the 1950s and a decade later, were partly responsible for putting man on the moon. It was one small step for computing, and one giant leap for organisations. 

Since then, mainframes have been the central nervous system that has underpinned many large organisations and as a result, have been involved in processing large volumes of transactions. However, the financial services industry is currently at a tipping point where mainframes need to be modernised and more cost effective to meet the needs of today’s customers. This is where the cloud comes in. 

Mainframe modernisation has become an essential, but ever evolving topic of discussion within all financial institutions embarking on a cloud journey or executing on the cloud. At the start of the century, banks were questioning the importance of the cloud and how to establish an adoption strategy around the technology. When Covid-19 hit, financial institutions needed to look beyond long-term success to enable progress at a faster, better, and cheaper rate. 

At a recent Finextra webinar, ‘Mainframe modernisation: Overcoming hurdles to achieve agility’, in association with Accenture and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the panel explored how ultimately, mainframe modernisation is now an element of risk management. This event report outlines the findings from that session. 

Get the report