The News: Yesterday BMC announced the latest updates and rebranding of its Mainframe-focused software portfolio. BMC is a market leader in the Mainframe development and operations space through its vast software portfolio that has been deployed at many of the world’s largest enterprises and government agencies. Read the full announcement from BMC here.

BMC Reimagines Mainframe Portfolio

Analyst Take: BMC operates as one of the largest privately held software companies in the world and they do so without much fanfare. However, this lack of publicity and buzz shouldn’t mean that they are not seen as vital to the operations of some of the biggest enterprises and government agencies on the planet.

Forty percent of BMC’s revenue comes from its position as a global leader in software solutions for the mainframe platform. The company’s AMI mainframe portfolio offers a range of solutions that help organizations manage their mainframe environments with greater efficiency and agility. Earlier this week, BMC Software made several announcements about its AMI mainframe portfolio.

BMC announced a newly branded portfolio of software, under the BMC AMI DevX moniker and a raft of their updates, that endeavor to empower developers to create mainframe applications easier and at scale. The new tools seek to:

Intensify Developer Productivity – Shorten the time it takes for developers to find mainframe programs and discover critical dependencies when making changes or debugging code.
Streamline Development – Enable concurrent mainframe development in the VS Code environment with Agile source code management (SCM) that empowers developers to safely edit, build, test, and promote mainframe code.
Enhance Debugging – Automate IBM CICS debug configurations to speed the debugging process and eliminate the risk of human error.
Improve Resilience – Speed up mean-time-to-recovery (MTTR) for newly deployed applications with alerts that deliver root cause analysis reports directly to Slack and Teams.
Boost Operations Productivity – Operations managers can quickly identify mainframe application failures that are impacting multiple users, and receive notifications when identical failures hit a specified threshold.
Apply Machine Learning – DBA and application development managers can leverage machine learning-based dashboards to measure how database changes are integrated into the DevOps process.

I had the chance to chat with Dave Jefferies, VP of Research and Development and the developer-focused product management team from BMC recently at SHARE in Atlanta to get the inside track on the announcements and why these are significant to BMC’s clients. The key takeaway from these discussions and the announcements this week is that the company has made big strides to democratize the mainframe developer experience and position the mainframe as just another platform that the modern developer works with. The recent focus on DORA metrics, VS Code and a wider focus on how to radically improve the Agile DevOps experience on the platform are to be applauded and are starting to gain traction with clients who want to modernize their mainframe code base without the risk of refactoring or re-platforming.

We also recently published a research brief on the power of DevX tools, which you can read here.

Looking Ahead

BMC Software’s AMI mainframe portfolio continues to evolve, with the recent announcements of the newly re-branded DevX platform. These solutions provide organizations with a robust range of capabilities that can help them manage their mainframe environments more efficiently and effectively while also radically improving the overall developer experience. By leveraging advanced analytics, machine learning, and automation, these solutions can help organizations improve mainframe availability, reduce costs, and optimize resource usage. As the mainframe market continues to evolve, solutions like those offered by BMC Software will become increasingly important for organizations that rely on mainframe systems to support their business operations.

Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.

Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.