Guest: John Mertic (LinkedIn, Twitter)
Project: Open Mainframe Project (LinkedIn, Twitter)

The Open Mainframe Project (OMP) focuses specifically on how the mainframe can interact with the rest of enterprise IT and helps build open-source projects, community solutions, and collaborations that help tackle that problem. In this episode of 2023 Predictions, John Mertic, Executive Director of the Open Mainframe Project, shares what he sees happening within the mainframe ecosystem this new year.

In 2023, Mertic predicts the following:

• More and more mainframe people are considering open source. 70% of mainframe customers are actually looking at Zowe with an eye towards the future.
• More and more companies, particularly those that already have mainframes, will expand their use of open mainframes to the rest of their business.
• More and more “general” folks will have mainframe on their radar as a technology to play with, and maybe even have a career.

This year, OMP will focus on:

• Getting its mainframe online so that not only the project communities that it’s hosting, but any open source project out there can come and use it to help support it.
• Working with some of its partner foundations such as the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) and the Continuous Delivery (CD) Foundation.

The economic hardships are inevitable, but there are also opportunities ahead:

• The OMP can be an outlet for companies that are looking at open collaboration as a way to reduce costs, reduce R&D, but still be able to execute at a high level.
• Companies can revisit their strategies, e.g., maybe this is a time to implement Zowe, or standardize unit testing, or look at CloudStack.

This summary was written by Camille Gregory.