Re:IBM Announces Strategic Collaboration with Arm
by progmetaldev on Friday April 03, 2026 @01:12AM
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I think a large number of people seem to forget the trust that companies have built on IBM over decades. The mainframe market is IBM, where IBM already had a hold. People want to believe that dropping such a large company could be done with a rewrite, but as long as IBM is there to support what they already have in place, it makes it unlikely for companies to move away. Obviously a team that has experience moving away from IBM technology to something more "modern" could go with another platform running on different hardware, but you don't hear about those migrations too much because they are rare (for a reason, IBM also offers support that companies love to cling on to).
I don't blame companies that already tied up in IBM tech for sticking with what they already have. As boring and dated as IBM tech might be, it's still running a ton of infrastructure, and you don't get to be that kind of company without being solid and reliable. That's what companies want, even if a development team wants to flex their skills in something new and not tied to IBM.
Have their own Java implementation, with capabilities like AOT before OpenJDK got started on Leyden, or even Graal existed, for years had extensions for value types (nowadays dropped), and alongside Azul, cluster based JIT compiler that shares code across JVM instances.
IBM i and z/OS are still heavely deployed in many organisations, alongside Aix, and LinuxONE (Linux running on mainframes and micros).
Research in quantum computing, AI, design processes, one of the companies that does huge amounts of patents per year across various fields.
And yes a services company, that is actually a consortium of IBM owned companies many of each under a different brand (which is followed by "an IBM company").