Developers 'need more mainframe security guidance'

More than 70 percent felt there was insufficient security guidance for application and deployment models just as the various 'as-a-Service' platforms associated with cloud computing, mainframe, virtualization, mobile and Rich Internet Applications.

Incumbent innovation for organisations

Rotibi said that mainframe research is all in all very much an incumbent innovation for organisations, for instance, in the public sector.

"For decades to come, cloud computing will be another way of running applications we use to do business. It will be part of the hybrid IT infrastructure, which means that existing applications will somehow have to be integrated with this new cloud innovation. And we will see new research appear on mainframes as then.