Mainframe

Harnessing mainframe power: How Kyndryl helps customers tap into z17's advanced capabilities

Article Apr 11, 2025 Read time: 1 min

By Petra Goude, Global Practice Leader for Core Enterprise and zCloud at Kyndryl

Many leading enterprises are modernizing their mission-critical IT infrastructure and applications for future success. Despite relying on mainframes, they face skills attrition and integration challenges in their hybrid cloud environments, often needing assistance with their transformation journey.

The IBM z17 system was unveiled this week. Z systems have been the backbone of enterprise computing due to their reliability, availability and security. The z17 is a leap forward in mainframe technology, offering enhanced performance, AI integration, security and efficiency. This new generation is a crucial asset for businesses navigating the modern digital landscapes.

As a leading provider of mission-critical enterprise technology services, Kyndryl has decades of mainframe expertise and thousands of mainframe professionals with extensive skills in running and transforming these enterprise systems. We understand the challenges of modernizing and upgrading a hybrid IT environment to the latest mainframe technology. Here are a few new advancements and the reasons businesses should upgrade now.

Innovations on the mainframe platform

The z17 is powered by the Telum II processor, which boosts computational power, cache size and data processing efficiency. Its second-generation AI accelerator offers intelligent workload routing, enhanced quantization and matrix operations, making it capable of handling demanding AI tasks like fraud detection, tax document processing and financial document summarization.

Security is a key feature of the z17, with fully homomorphic encryption, AI-powered security strategies and enhanced quantum-safe systems designed to predict, protect and evolve against cybersecurity threats. It simplifies and centralizes system security, making data management easier. Additionally, the z17 enhances infrastructure management through infrastructure-as-code, allowing businesses to adapt to changing requirements more efficiently.

Woman IT professional explaining her mainframe modernization concept during an office meeting

How to modernize your mainframe environment

As a leading organization, you can tap into the advanced capabilities of the z17 as a key part of your hybrid cloud environment. Upgrading to the z17 requires specific expertise, particularly when transitioning from older Z platforms. This process involves careful planning and may necessitate the modernization of existing applications and infrastructure. Additionally, modernizing the storage environment to benefit from new technologies might require upfront application updates.

With decades of mainframe expertise, Kyndryl is well-positioned to support your organization in modernizing your mainframe environment. The z17 offers significant improvements in AI capabilities, and Kyndryl is committed to leading the deployment of AI, having trained and certified more than 5,000 of its mainframe experts in AI. By leveraging Kyndryl Bridge, our AI-powered open integration platform that supports Open Telemetry (a new z17 software feature), we can provide consistent enterprise-wide observability across the entire IT environment.

No matter how you approach the transformation, it is important to work with a trusted advisor on this journey. Kyndryl Consult experts can help advise, implement and manage the z17 as part of your modernization initiative.