Mainframe upsurge puts pressure on training and management

FutureSoft CEO and co-founder Tim Farrell also says that if businesses are to reap the benefits they need to invest in training and technology. "Mainframes and associated technologies, such as terminal emulation, are making a huge comeback. However, with new developments and products over the years, many have forgotten how best to take advantage of these tried and tested technologies," he says. "Businesses need to bridge the skills gap. We need more IT professionals who understand and can use mainframe technologies – but we also need to make mainframes easier to use and more efficient," he adds. Putting meat on the bones, Farrell claims that FutureSoft and its UK partners have seen a 175% rise in the take up of their terminal emulation product, Dynacomm Connectivity Series 9, over the past year. Farrell believes that to be the result of long-term changes in business computing requirements – notably due to spiralling overheads of other computing models while skilled IT managers become an ever scarcer resource. "We have been witnessing a quiet revolution in business computing. More and more people are using mainframes, and in smaller and smaller organisations," he asserts. "This is partly due to an increase in back-office transactions and partly because of the economies of centralised computing. IT support has become more and more expensive."