Futureproofing the legacy backbone Virtualizing mainframes with Microsoft Azure

Big changes are coming to a segment of IT that has hardly changed since before personal computers were invented.Mainframes, first developed in the 1950s and controlled by punch cards or magnetic tape, evolved through the computing eras of the 1960s, 70s and 80s and are still used by enterprises and long-lived SMBs to process transactions and data or run mission critical apps. While the mainframe's best days are long past, tens of thousands of organizations still rely on these systems. But a shifting security landscape and changing skillsets as well as the cost and performance benefits of cloud are steering a growing number of organizations to virtualize their mainframes.A specialized group of partners, often "born" in the heyday of mainframes are stepping into the void and helping to virtualize them on Azure, creating big opportunities to improve the performance and cost effectiveness of these IT departments.