Wrap-Up: 2026 Arcati Mainframe User Survey

The 2026 Arcati Mainframe User Survey reinforces a consistent picture of IBM Z as a durable system-of-record platform operating inside mature hybrid environments. Across business dependence, platform currency, workforce structure, tooling investment, security posture, economics, and AI expectations, the dominant pattern is controlled evolution. Organizations continue to rely on the mainframe for high-impact workloads, while deliberately modernizing, selectively integrating, and managing risk through discipline rather than speed.

1) You Can’t Call it Legacy if it Runs the Money.

The concentration of revenue on the mainframe remains undeniable.

• 36% say more than half of business revenue runs on mainframe applications
• 21% say more than 75% of business revenue depends on IBM Z

What runs on the mainframe isn’t fringe workload, either. It’s batch processing, event-driven execution, and high-volume transactions — the systems that move global money and enforce data integrity. The mainframe isn’t nostalgic infrastructure. It’s economic gravity.

2) Modernization is Disciplined, Not Reactive.

Mainframe environments aren’t frozen, nor are they chaotically modernizing. Changes to release editions are disciplined and sequenced.

• 34% are on the current z/OS release
• 40% run the previous release
• Only 3.2% plan decommissioning over the next three years

Most organizations plan to maintain or modernize in place rather than migrate away. Upgrades follow operational readiness and risk tolerance—not release-versioning hype. This is modernization through good governance.

3) Security Is Embedded and Incidents are Stable — For Now

In a year defined by cybersecurity headlines, the mainframe data tells a quieter, more positive story.

• 31% report a moderate decrease in incidents
• 30% report no change

That’s impressive considering that only 20% use MFA, 22% use Privileged Access Management, and 23% use SIEM/security monitoring integration. While raising questions of complacency, the data suggest that mainframe environments remain controlled-risk domains, even as hybrid complexity increases.

4) Hybrid Is the Operating Model, and Observability Is the Pressure Point.

Hybrid isn’t a transition phase. It’s the existing state, though it’s not perfected.

• 30% operate in a highly integrated hybrid model
• 39% report limited integration
• 43% cite observability/performance monitoring as the top hybrid challenge

Nearly 70% are actively integrating across platforms. This means the friction point isn’t “move off Z.” Rather, it’s visibility, coordination, and governance across distributed environments. As the mainframer already knows, complexity lives at the integration boundary, not at the system of record.

5) AI Expands Integration. It Doesn’t Replace Z.

Wary of overpromising and underdelivering, AI expectations are pragmatic rather than disruptive.

• 49% expect minor impact over the next 3–5 years
• Only 8% expect major change
• Top use cases: 29% anomaly detection and 26% security monitoring

Execution may shift toward public cloud or hybrid hosting, or remain as is. But organizations believe AI workloads will still depend on mainframe data. Admittedly, AI increases integration pressure, but it doesn’t eliminate the platform that holds the data.

Closing Perspective

Taken together, the 2026 Arcati results describe organizations optimizing within constraints: maintaining business-critical stability, modernizing in controlled steps, investing in tooling and automation where it reduces friction, and treating security and governance as embedded operational disciplines. The story is not about “mainframe vs cloud.” Instead, it is about “mainframe in context,” in which IBM Z remains central, and change is introduced in ways that preserve continuity while expanding integration and modern capabilities.