BMC Software has expanded the use of purpose-built AI across its mainframe product set, adding new tools aimed at developers, operators, and security teams as enterprises contend with a widening skills gap. The company said the latest release is designed to bring application intelligence and institutional knowledge directly into day-to-day workflows, rather than forcing teams to hunt across disconnected systems for answers.
The announcement centres on a new capability within BMC AMI zAdviser Enterprise called Application Analysis, which combines source code analysis, BMC AMI DevX telemetry, and development productivity data into an AI-generated narrative report. BMC said that should give leaders a clearer view of production stability, code complexity, application risk, and modernisation priorities. The company said the need is becoming more urgent as experienced mainframe specialists retire and fewer teams hold deep historical knowledge of critical systems.
John McKenny, senior vice president and general manager of Intelligent Z Optimisation and Transformation at BMC, said: “The mainframe industry is at a crossroads where decades of institutional knowledge is walking out the door even as CIOs are pushing greater use of AI to move modernisation agendas forward.” He added: “By embedding purpose-built AI directly into the tools these teams use every day, BMC is removing the mystery of how mission-critical applications work and empowering mainframe professionals – regardless of their experience level – to react faster and make changes with confidence.”
BMC also said its AMI Assistant capability is now more pervasive across the AMI portfolio, using Knowledge Hub and Knowledge Expert Chat to draw on sources such as runbooks, tickets, log files, and earlier resolutions. Alongside that, the company introduced BMC AMI Digital Certificate Management, which it described as an automated certificate management solution purpose-built for mainframe environments. BMC said the new product is intended to help customers prepare for the planned reduction in SSL/TLS certificate lifespans from 398 days to 47 days by 2029.
The update extends beyond core mainframe tooling. BMC also announced Control-M Archive Service, a cloud-native repository for archived job logs and output data intended to support auditing, compliance, and post-execution analysis across hybrid environments. Steve Dickens, CEO and principal analyst at HyperFRAME Research, said BMC’s latest releases show “a profound understanding of the mainframe’s evolving role” by using AI to retain and scale institutional knowledge. For BMC, the wider message is that AI in the mainframe estate is moving from insight generation towards more coordinated execution across development and operations.
