“Mainframe are on borrowed time”, “COBOL is a dead language”. These are very common phrases for us who work in this area, and we heard it at least once.

This is the kind of mindset that keep us thinking about our carrer (for those like me, who are starting now) in this area, and from what I saw so far, they could not be more wrong. We are living the digital era (I know, this sounds cliché), where everything, including our interactions, happens in the virtual world. Now a days, most of the people, and you may identify yourself, change some part of the real for the virtual, and, in this example, to be more specific, I am talking about money. Other day I saw the best term to describe what we are living: “The CASH FREE era”, we are using less physical Money (banknotes and coins ) and using more virtual transactions.

Even in the transports area happened a significant change, today it is possible to recharge your electronic ticket, for bus, subways and trains with your own cellphone, through transactions like debit card payment or bank transfer, and it is not just that, but with all the new cellphone apps, a lot of transactions are done through them, the Money on the online world never circulated so fast and so efficient as of these days, bringing more comfort and convenience to us all.
Some time ago I also saw some ideas/initiatives, to replace all of our documents and Ids for a single one, digital, that would have all of our informations and records. Think about the number of consults and transactions to deal with these sheer volume of data for a country like Brazil! This greater number of transactions, reflect directly in our area, to accommodate all this evolution and expansion we will need more hardware, better softwares and a better control of both.

Following these steps, the Mainframe environment is still very strong in the business area, and, if I was going to compare it with some kind of person, I would say that it is like a recently graduated person with a promising future.

What about you? Do you agree with me? Do you have any example of a possible expansion to the mainframe that you would like to share?