AI aiding mainframe upkeep
ISG research says U.S. public‑sector organisations are applying AI tools to modernise and sustain mainframe environments, framing modernization as 'modernise and sustain' rather than wholesale replacement. The report positions AI as a tool for analysis and support of legacy code and operations rather than a simple migration shortcut. (morningstar.com)
Mainframes are the big back-end computers that still run taxes, benefits and other government workloads, and a new Information Services Group report says United States agencies are using artificial intelligence to keep them running longer. (morningstar.com) Information Services Group published the 2026 Provider Lens report on April 14, 2026, and said agencies are shifting from “replace it” plans to “modernize and sustain” strategies. The firm tied that change to a December 2026 deadline to liquidate pandemic-era funding. (isg-one.com) The report says agencies are balancing mission-critical systems against pressure to cut costs, improve efficiency and keep services running. Nathan Frey, an Information Services Group partner who leads its United States public-sector practice, said artificial intelligence is helping agencies address talent gaps without disrupting essential services. (finance.yahoo.com) Mainframe modernization usually does not mean lifting decades-old code and dropping it somewhere else overnight. International Business Machines defines it as updating or transforming legacy applications so they can work with newer tools, lower costs and improve developer productivity. (ibm.com) That matters in government because many of the oldest systems still handle health care, critical infrastructure, tax processing and national security work. The Government Accountability Office said in 2025 that federal agencies spend about 80 percent of their information-technology budgets on operations and maintenance, including legacy systems with higher costs and cybersecurity risks. (gao.gov) The technology itself has also shifted. International Business Machines said its z16 mainframe includes on-chip artificial-intelligence inferencing, and in April 2025 it introduced the z17 as a system built around artificial intelligence across hardware, software and operations. (ibm.com, ibm.com) Information Services Group made a similar point a year earlier. Its 2025 United States public-sector mainframe report said artificial intelligence was already making mainframes easier and less expensive to maintain, while agencies reconsidered cloud migration and reengineering plans. (businesswire.com) Some agencies are still retiring old systems outright when they can. United States Customs and Border Protection said in November 2023 that it completed the final retirement of a legacy mainframe after first moving the physical system to a cloud-based mainframe service in 2019. (cbp.gov) The new report’s through line is narrower than the usual “move everything to the cloud” pitch: use artificial intelligence to read old code, support scarce specialists and keep core systems stable while funding and staffing stay tight. (morningstar.com, isg-one.com)
