Platform choice is not an all-or-nothing decision: Many IT managed services providers (MSPs) and hosting companies try to reduce a customer’s choice of platform—and really, anything technology-related—to a simple question: Do you want to modernize and move forward, or do you want to stand still?

The main modernization option offered for mainframe is getting off of it, transitioning away from the mainframe altogether. But these choices are not necessarily simple and don’t always represent a fork in the road that requires an all-or-nothing, choose-a-single-path decision. Much like life in general, it’s complicated.

Some choices are false choices. For example, it’s very hard to find a single application today that isn’t somehow already part of the hybrid cloud. So, when an MSP says, “move to the cloud,” what they really mean is, “let us host you.” Similarly, the term “modernize” has too often been used as code for “let us move everything you do to a new platform, rewrite your working applications, and charge you a lot for doing that—as well as fixing them when they break.”

So, why choose to modernize at all?

The truth is, mainframe remains the best platform for many mission-critical applications and workloads and in many cases, belongs at the core of a successful cloud transformation journey. Mainframes support nearly every tool, language, and process that other platforms can and typically do so at a lower cost, with less complexity and a smaller carbon footprint.

Want to read more? Click here to download the entire white paper.