Kyndryl is rolling out new AI-powered, agentic AI-enabled services for IBM z/OS mainframes to accelerate development, boost agility, and unlock deeper business insights by expanding AI use on mainframe platforms.

The agentic AI framework works with Kyndryl Bridge, orchestrating agents and workflows to enable proactive issue resolution, smarter decision-making, and faster responses to opportunities and threats.

In collaboration with IBM Z software leadership and using IBM watsonx Assistant for Z, Kyndryl aims to enhance intelligent automation and lifecycle management across mainframe infrastructure and applications.

The move mirrors industry trends with rivals like Rocket Software and AWS Transform pushing AI-enabled modernization of legacy workloads.

Customers can expect smarter decision-making, proactive issue resolution, improved reliability and lifecycle compliance, and faster responses to opportunities and threats to create more resilient IT environments.

Key benefits highlighted include faster decision-making, increased reliability, access to deep mainframe expertise, and strengthened resilience of modernized IT environments.

Additional benefits cited include leveraging internal knowledge, proactive issue handling, and quicker responses to opportunities and threats in modernized IT ecosystems.

A 2025 State of Mainframe Modernization Survey shows 88% of respondents are using or plan to use AI on the mainframe, with expected gains in business agility, faster repeatable operations, and cost savings, though talent gaps persist.

The same survey projects AI on the mainframe could yield about $12.7 billion in cost savings and $19.5 billion in increased revenues over three years, with top use cases in performance/resource allocation, fraud detection, and security/threat assessment.

Kyndryl emphasizes AI-infused delivery within mainframe modernization to reduce latency and boost performance in use cases like real-time fraud detection, insurance claim processing, and customer behavior analysis.

The initiative brings AI inferencing close to mainframe data by leveraging Kyndryl’s transformation expertise and cloud hyperscaler partnerships to improve latency and performance.

Quotes from leadership—Hassan Zamat and Skyla Loomis—highlight the emphasis on agentic AI-enabled delivery and collaboration with IBM for AI capabilities on core systems.

The offerings integrate with the Kyndryl Bridge open integration platform to enable intelligent automation, predictive analytics, and insights across mainframe infrastructure and applications.

The plan aligns Bridge with cloud partnerships and global collaborators to drive innovation and transformation in mainframe environments.

Kyndryl positions itself as leveraging mainframe transformation expertise and open integration via Bridge to deliver intelligent automation and predictive analytics across mainframe ecosystems.