1 in 3 ANZ CIOs outsource mainframe app development

One in three CIOs from Australia and New Zealand outsource application development and testing to overcome industry compliance challenges, new research shows.

When legislative or regulatory changes require compliance tweaks to an organisation's mainframe applications, one third of CIOs in the region choose to outsource the development, according to a global survey conducted by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Micro Focus.

This is necessary because half of IT leaders in ANZ indicate that it is highly likely or certain that the original knowledge of their mainframe applications is lost to the organisation. And three in four confirm that supporting documentation is incomplete.

Nearly one in four CIOs believe they lack the capability to do application compliance change work in house.

“In order to support compliance requirements, organisations need to change and update their core business applications,” Micro Focus director of product marketing Derek Britton said.

“The complexities of missing code documentation, constrained resource pools and data privacy risks mean companies are frequently turning to the outsource market for this work.”

IT leaders are also looking to outsource to mitigate compliance risks. Half of ANZ CIOs contractually pass the  legal responsibility for meeting new data protection and privacy requirements to their mainframe application outsourcing partner, and a further 18% wish to do so.

The survey polled 590 IT decision-makers in nine countries, including 35 in Australia and 15 in New Zealand. The other markets covered were the US, the UK, France, Germany, Brazil, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Image courtesy of Flazingo Photos under CC