Sounds like the cheapest way of upgrading hardware for the IRS is to write an emulator that can understand IMF assembler and stick it in a virtualised environment. Given the server it is running on is now underpowered, a medium sized server could handle what it does at a fraction of the cost.
> The System z family maintains full backward compatibility. In effect, current systems are the direct, lineal descendants of System/360, announced in 1964, and the System/370 from the 1970s. Many applications written for these systems can still run unmodified on the newest System z over five decades later
To be able to hire cheaper talent. There are a million college graduates who can churn out good-enough Java out there. Good Assembler programmers who are willing to learn the quirks of an obscure platform might be able to find higher-paying jobs.
No, it is the other way around and it surely has a business case.
Instead of throwing out the investment done in years in the mainframe hardware, because juniors cannot grasp old technologies or don't feel like using them, bring them into the mainframe, while keeping the investment into the existing working stack.
Instead of writing a REST API in RPG, which doesn't know anything about Web APIs, used to create the customer support application, make use of JEE/Spring instead to provide a SOAP/REST API.
Just a possible business case, that is actually used in production for Java applications on IBM mainframes.
