Listening to Greg Lotko (SVP and GM, Broadcom Mainframe Software) at the Broadcom Mainframe Software Division’ (MSD) 2025 Analyst Relations Forum (June 2025, in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an interesting experience – this forum is genuinely a two-way meeting of minds; this was the second of them and Greg intends them to continue, as long as analysts want to come to them. Besides, they’re a good excuse for a party and networking on the first evening of the event.
Greg has no ambitions for his division to be the cheapest supplier of mainframe software but he does want it to offer the best value, exemplified by the availability of no-cost product training and the addition of new capabilities to an existing license (you are not forced to buy a new license for each new product you need). He also has no expectations (realistically) of being the only software supplier in the mainframe space for his customers – which is probably why his division is so supportive of Open Mainframe and Zowe APIs.
Broadcom’s divisions have considerable independence and Greg says, more or less, that his objective is simply to deliver happy Broadcom customers on the mainframe, without losing money or wasting resources.
As well as the importance of value delivery, Greg’s messaging included the importance of partnership – for a customer, he said, choosing the right partner is as important as choosing the right technology. He sees the modern mainframe as a central part of a hybrid environment, a unified platform with a single shared purpose. As I would put it, developers, operators and the rest of the team (and not just on the mainframe) should be delivering business outcomes, not technology, which may necessitate management of cultural change, for many IT groups, and closer communication with the business.
Greg emphasizes that you shouldn’t be thinking of a “legacy” or “heritage” mainframe technology but of an entire environment, part of which will be existing, part under development for the future. You should be abstracting away from the technology and focusing on business value delivery. This environment will be infused by what is, misleadingly, called Artificial Intelligence (AI), as part of a continual modernization process. This will be AI enabling business decisions and supporting humans (see my blog “using agentic AI safely”), for the foreseeable future anyway. We still need humans in the loop, as far from being an “intelligence”, AI doesn’t understand context and can invent things, remarkably stupidly; but it can also help humans deal with the complexity and amount of information they increasingly face.
As for product innovation, customers need new skills not just new products – the need to go “beyond code” – and they don’t want to have to jump through hoops to get the innovation they need. Hence, new capabilities can be added to existing licences, with no-cost training available (as we’ve already said), so no procurement bottleneck is involved. Broadcom’s proactive AIOps Watch Tower then offers full observability, based on Open Telemetry, for the new tech.
And note that Broadcom is supporting IBM’s new z17 mainframe (which has more power, but is particularly useful for smaller installations, because it is resources-efficient and it can be rack-mounted rather than free-standing) from launch, not just from GA (general availability) – what Broadcom calls Day 1 Support. In addition, Broadcom will help mainframe clients plan for changes to the environment, inclusive of changes to Broadcom’s own mainframe software products and/or with products or technology already in the ecosystem – at no extra cost. I do find the business value message quite persuasive – no doubt Broadcom’s prices are rising a bit, but it seems that the value being delivered from its mainframe division may be rising even faster.