the annual report · 2026 edition
The State of
Mainframe Modernization.
One report a year. The estate, the exits, the AI reckoning, and what the next twelve months will demand. The findings below are open — the full edition arrives as a personal reply.
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the open findings
What we can already tell you.
~95% vs ~30%
The AI reckoning arrived: purpose-built, near-deterministic extraction now outperforms generic LLMs by ~65 points on the same programs — and the gap is structural, not a tuning artifact. source: palmbench 2026
33–40%
The cheapest modernization work remains the code you delete: dead-code analysis keeps removing a third or more of estate scope before a single program is converted. source: palm key engagements
2027
The ECC deadline is now the single most common forcing function: S/4HANA programs keep discovering an unscoped mainframe dependency in their critical path. source: the ecc 2027 clock
One hash
Repeatability became the procurement question of the year. Buyers stopped asking "how accurate?" and started asking "will you say the same thing tomorrow?" — the question that decides audits. source: near-deterministic by design
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