Stream: Magny-Cours
Time: 11:15 - 12:00
Most modernisation programmes begin with a migration plan and end with a data residency challenge. As regulation tightens across financial services, the public sector, and defence — including the FCA/PRA/Bank of England Critical Third-Party regime under FSMA 2023, the PS21/3 operational resilience rules, and the UK crypto asset regime — organisations running IBM Z are discovering that the platform they were once encouraged to modernise away from may be the platform best suited to solving the sovereignty problem. This session presents a practical architecture pattern for mainframe modernisation that treats the platform not as a legacy liability to be replaced, but as a hardware-anchored trust boundary. We will explore: Why “lift and shift to the cloud” and “sovereign by design” are often in tension, and how those objectives can be reconciled. How hardware-enforced trust — including secure execution, confidential computing, and integrated cryptographic services — can provide the foundation for a federated data layer rather than a monolithic core. How policy-as-code can be used to enforce data residency and access controls for data in motion, at rest, and in use, without requiring duplication of data across jurisdictions. The focus is on practical modernisation: retaining the strengths of IBM Z while enabling cloud integration, regulatory compliance, and sovereign control of critical data. Attendees will leave with a reference pattern they can apply regardless of vendor stack, plus a framework for evaluating when to federate versus when to genuinely migrate. Learning outcomes - Understand the architectural distinction between "modernise by replacing" and "modernise by federating" Learn how hardware trust anchors (secure execution, HSM-backed key ownership, quantum-safe crypto) map to regulatory sovereignty requirements See a benchmarked comparison of federated mainframe-anchored data access vs distributed cloud patterns Take away a vendor-neutral decision framework for sovereignty-driven modernisation projects
There is currently no attachment for Sovereignty by Design: Modernising the Mainframe Without Moving the Data