Extending the life of its mainframes yet again, IBM Corp. announced today that it is bringing machine learning to its traditional mainframe customers, and, eventually, to any computing processes located inside data centers. This will allow the mainframes to take advantage of data in a more modern machine-learning context and extend the useful life of the mainframe platform.

In doing so, IBM is providing data scientists with the same types of machine learning capabilities in a mainframe environment that they are used to finding in the cloud. The goal is to automate the tedious work of creating, testing and deploying analytical models, freeing scientists to give more thought to the quality of their queries.

“We’re now entering the ‘Cognitive Era’ with the advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence,” said Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio.

Vellante and co-host Stu Miniman (@stu) kicked off the IBM Machine Learning Launch Event, held in New York, NY. They discussed the implications of IBM’s machine learning announcement and how this new feature fits into IBM’s overall data strategy. (*Disclosure below.)

The evolution of big data

What we are seeing today is an ongoing evolution of big data, according to Vellante and Miniman. While the early days of big data were all about offloading the data into data warehouses and forming data lakes, today’s machine learning and AI tools are allowing organizations to use all of their stored information, providing new opportunities and revenue streams.

“IBM has been at the center of this and looking at the higher-level pieces of not just storing data, but leveraging it up the stack,” said Miniman.

Machine learning up the stack is a natural progression for IBM, following its work on Hadoop and Spark, Vellante and Miniman discussed. IBM has made many acquisitions to ensure it has a strong position in many areas: in cloud, with Bluemix; in services; in machine learning that leverages Watson; and on-prem with the z Systems and Power Systems solutions.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Machine Learning Launch Event 2017 NYC. (*Disclosure: TheCUBE is a media partner at the conference. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE