IBM executives Ray Jones and Paul DiMarzio told Computerworld Philippines in a roundtable discussion Thursday that mainframes, which process much of the world's most strategic information and applications, could serve as a 'hub' for SOA or for Internet-based computing.

Jones is IBM vice president for worldwide zSeries software sales, while DiMarzio is an IBM consulting software product design professional. SOA, they explained, refers to a framework that allows companies to reuse existing technologies, resulting in greater efficiencies, cost savings and better productivity.

Jones said part of IBM's plan include the creation of next-generation mainframe developers, as well as making the mainframe easier to run.

'We are evolving the mainframe to make it more open and consistent with open standards so that customers can modernize and port their workloads around in a matter of weeks, as opposed to years, or never,' he said.

The IBM officials reported there has been a growth in mainframe usage in the past three years brought about by an explosion of interconnected business processes such as cross-checking inventory and shipping across retailers, wholesalers and suppliers that flow through interconnected applications.