The most obvious technical argument for hosting cloud services in an Australian data centre is the improved latency. Yet when it comes to making that choice, concerns over data sovereignty and whether data will be accessed by US governments remain a key issue.
If you're running a mainframe (and many enterprises still are), then one of your biggest expenses will be the monthly licence charges (MLCs) imposed by IBM. Reducing those costs could make a considerable difference, but making those calculations can be tricky.
In large organisations, contacting the help desk for support or new services is rarely a pleasant experience. Is consumerisation via tablet apps the way to solve that problem? Only if you also have the right resources.
Cloud computing promises us flexible and reliable service delivery based on charging for what we use, but that's a model which mainframe computing has been using for decades. How will the use of mainframes evolve in the future?
