A Gartner vice president and analyst said some VMware users may find it cheaper to move to IBM mainframes after Broadcom introduced a subscription-focused licensing policy. He cited cases where shifting from VMware to IBM made business sense when Broadcom requires customers to buy the full Cloud Foundation private cloud stack. He said mainframes offer built-in data synchronisation and high availability and can handle AI workloads.

Generative AI’s role is being overly overestimated in modernisation projects pursued by large organisations aiming to phase out mainframes, some say. Gartner forecast many mainframe retirement initiatives launched in 2026 will fail to deliver expected early results, citing unrealistic expectations that AI can replace complex legacy environments quickly and reliably. It warned vendor hype could raise costs, threaten business process continuity and create long-term disruption and new technical debt.