Artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly, and so are organizations’ approach to its use. In April 2026, BMC released a statement of direction on the integration of AI into the BMC AMI suite of mainframe solutions. In The Next Evolution in Enterprise AI is Purpose Built, BMC mainframe Senior Vice President and General Manager John McKenny discusses the shift from generative AI (GenAI) to agentic AI and our intent to embed agentic AI across the BMC AMI portfolio.
While the statement of direction explains how we’re moving into the future with agentic AI workflows, over the past two years we have developed purpose-built AI for the mainframe, offering in-context expertise through BMC AMI Assistant. With Knowledge Expert Chat, practitioners can harness the power of AI to find the answers they need when and where they need them, increasing the quality and efficiency of their work. Each quarter, we have added to what mainframe professionals can accomplish while increasing integration of BMC AMI Assistant across the BMC AMI portfolio.
The April 2026 release of enhancements to the BMC AMI portfolio focuses on this advancement of mainframe GenAI as well as the open integration of the platform with the broader enterprise IT ecosystem.
GenAI powered by organizational intelligence
Even as we increase the use of agent-driven automation on the mainframe, the efforts to improve GenAI assistance continue, including this quarter’s General Availability of Knowledge Hub, which surfaces institutional knowledge from across the organization to offer contextual information and answers at the moment of decision through BMC AMI Assistant Knowledge Expert Chat.
Knowledge Hub works behind the scenes, ingesting provided institutional knowledge from past issue resolutions, operational insights, and information from runbooks, tickets, and shared files, then combining it with BMC mainframe expertise to create Knowledge Expert Chat responses that are contextually aware and tailored to user’s mainframe environment. These responses are available directly in workflows using existing BMC tools, enabling quicker decisions made with expert-level confidence, regardless of the user’s experience level.
AI-generated application analysis reports
Just as Knowledge Hub captures institutional knowledge to inform assistance provided by Knowledge Expert Chat, a new feature in BMC AMI zAdviser Enterprise adds hard-won institutional knowledge to zAdviser’s collection of development tool and toolchain data to help development managers and their developers understand the applications they are modifying.
BMC AMI zAdviser Enterprise gathers BMC AMI tool usage data and DevOps metrics to give development managers a clear picture of development effectiveness. With new application analysis reports, they now get a single AI-generated view of how their applications work, where the risk is, and where their team’s time is going, accelerating modernization decisions and cutting weeks off of developer onboarding.
BMC AMI zAdviser Enterprise’s Application Analysis turns tribal knowledge into organizational knowledge before it walks out the door. The narrative assessments capture the knowledge of experienced developers, sharing that expertise with development managers and developers, creating more efficient application review, planning, and optimization.
Beyond a greater understanding of individual programs, these application analysis reports provide a clear picture of which programs are attracting a disproportionate share of developer attention because of failures and modifications. By correlating failure history with code complexity and maintenance patterns, they enable development teams to target problem applications with proactive remediation, improving system resilience and development efficiency.
Standardizing enterprise security
Manual management of security certificates decreases efficiency and weakens system security. For some time, security teams have been able to automate certificate management on distributed systems using third-party tools.BMC revolutionized mainframe security management with BMC AMI Enterprise Connector for Venafi. This April, we introduce BMC AMI Certificate Manager, a new product within BMC AMI Security that gives customers more choice and flexibility in integrating enterprise security solutions with the mainframe.
Designed to integrate with IBM Z® enterprise security management (ESM) environments, including RACF®, ACF2™, and Top Secret® for z/OS to automate the full certificate lifecycle without the need for infrastructure changes, BMC AMI Certificate Manager extends leading enterprise certificate management platforms to the mainframe. This gives CISOs and security teams the ability to use the same vendor solutions for distributed and mainframe certificate management, further integrating the mainframe with—and simplifying—enterprise security efforts.
BMC AMI Certificate Manager currently integrates with Venafi® and Keyfactor®, with further integrations to follow in future releases. With this unified integration layer between enterprise certificate management tools and IBM Z® ESMs, organizations can automate certificate issuance, renewal, and enforcement with one BMC solution while supporting multiple vendors.
Breaking down silos with new technology
This quarter’s enhancements further BMC’s commitment to optimizing what is possible on the mainframe through open integration of the platform and continuous improvements to AI capabilities. With the addition of organization-specific knowledge to AI engines, Knowledge Hub empowers mainframe professionals to make the right decisions as they do their jobs, regardless of their experience and skill levels. Application analysis reports in BMC AMI zAdviser Enterprise combine development and application performance data with system telemetry to provide a clear picture of how applications are performing and where attention and efforts should be focused. And the new BMC AMI Certificate Manager enables security teams to employ certificate management policies across platforms without the need for separate tooling.
Each of these enhancements improves the productivity and efficiency of mainframe teams, a goal BMC is committed to pursuing with each of our quarterly releases. Make your mainframe the engine of faster, better, and smarter answers. When you BMC First.
These are just a few of the innovations included in the April 2026 release of BMC AMI features. To learn more about everything included in the release, visit the What’s New in Mainframe Solutions webpage.
Whitbourne, M. (2026, April 8). A mainframe future built on AI and open integration. BMC. https://www.bmc.com/blogs/mainframe-future-ai-open-integration/