Today's pain

The mainframe runs the business. And the bills, and the risk.

Mainframe workloads at large enterprises typically cost millions of dollars per year to maintain — software, hardware, specialized staffing, and facilities. The applications were often written in COBOL, PL/I, Natural, or assembler decades ago. The original developers have retired. The institutional knowledge is walking out the door.

The traditional answer: keep paying. Run it until the wheels fall off. Hope nothing breaks before someone finally migrates. The 2026 answer is different. Retire the mainframe application. Preserve the data in a modern, governed Preservation Zone. Make decades of records accessible through natural-language queries — without the staffing, the MIPS bill, or the security risk.

The mainframe-specific economics

  • Operating cost typically scales with workload; retirement caps the bill.
  • Mainframe-skilled staff are leaving the workforce — replacement cost is rising fast.
  • z/OS and Unisys environments running "for read-only" are increasingly hard to keep patched.
  • Decades of preserved business records are an AI training asset most enterprises haven't tapped.
Why mainframe retirement matters in 2026

Four forces driving mainframe modernization.

1

Cost containment

Operating cost, specialized hardware, and aging facilities make mainframe total cost of ownership (TCO) unsustainable for the workloads that no longer need it.

2

Skills attrition

Mainframe expertise is leaving. Every retirement makes the remaining environment harder to operate. Knowledge walks out the door.

3

Security imperative

Legacy mainframe environments running unpatched are an open attack vector. Retirement closes the surface, harvests the savings.

4

AI value of mainframe history

Decades of transactions, balances, claims, policies, accounts — the most-complete historical record many enterprises have. AI fuel.

The reframe

Mainframe data is no longer a cost center. It is an AI-activated strategic asset.

Decades of business history — preserved with its meaning intact through an Application Knowledge Graph (AKG) — becomes training fuel for enterprise LLMs and grounding context for digital workers. The historical depth that competitors can't replicate.

The workflow

Connect → Migrate → Enable AI.

Connect to the mainframe

Connect to the mainframe

Solix Connect supports z/OS, Unisys, and OS/400. EBCDIC translation, VSAM, IMS, DB2 extraction. Bulk loading, change data capture, batch and online connectors.

Migrate to the Preservation Zone

Migrate to the Preservation Zone

Data lands in a governed, modern repository. Quality validation, retention management, legal hold from day one. The mainframe can finally power down on schedule.

Enable AI Access

Enable AI Access

Custom AKG construction for the bespoke applications running on the mainframe. Solix Data Sense Builder + Professional Services accelerate AKG creation for COBOL/PL/I/Natural systems where no pre-built AKG exists.

The mainframe AKG approach

Custom AKGs for bespoke systems.

Most mainframe applications are bespoke. Solix Data Sense — agentic AKG construction — analyzes the schema, the data dictionaries, the existing reports, and the COBOL copybooks to build a working AKG. Professional Services completes the work for the most complex environments.

Need help retiring a mainframe?

Application Retirement Services with mainframe-specific extraction expertise. 20 years of services depth.

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Where does the data live?

SolixCloud Preservation Zone — multi-tenant, single-tenant, on-premises, or hybrid.

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Available today. See it on your mainframe.

A guided walkthrough on your specific mainframe workloads — z/OS or Unisys, COBOL or PL/I or Natural. The retirement path, the AKG approach, the AI-activated access end-to-end.

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