During an economic crisis, it's difficult to predict what IT projects will take priority in different companies, but one thing is nearly certain: Enterprise IT managers in 2009 will not be ripping out mainframe systems.

Despite the benefits of virtualization and the compact nature of blade servers, many enterprise IT shops won't be able to fully overhaul in their data centers in 2009. A recent HP commissioned survey found that some 20% of 600 technology decision makers plan to initiate a "complete transformation" of their data centers. The remaining 80% intend to implement individual transformation projects including automation (64%), green IT (60%), operations management (59%), virtualization (59%) and business continuity (58%).

Actually, enterprise IT departments might in 2009 look to pull more value out of existing mainframes with management tools that promise to monitor the legacy systems alongside distributed environments to optimize performance and service delivery. Software makers such as BMC, CA, Compuware and IBM continue to invest in their mainframe management tools.

In fact, the strength of mainframe management from the likes of BMC and CA gives industry watchers reason not to count out the smaller companies known as the big four management vendors. (HP and IBM complete the quartet.) Despite years of talk of acquisition around BMC (whose recent product partnership with Cisco makes many wonder if Cisco won't be making a big management purchase in 2009) and CA working to overcome past internal turmoil, the vendors' separate focus on managing mainframes could keep them successful and independent in 2009.

"I honestly don't see BMC and CA being bought out in 2009. They have too much in their mainframe business, which will continue to be critical in the coming year," says Andi Mann, research director at Enterprise Management Associates. "BMC still has a very strong war chest, even after the purchases of Proactive, RealOps and BladeLogic."

Meanwhile HP distanced itself from the mainframe by recounting how the vendor overhauled its own data centers by moving to blades and other energy efficient data center technologies.

"It is almost a bit of a religious point for HP; the company is trying to be the anti-mainframe, but in reality, you are ignoring a big piece of most businesses if you ignore the mainframe," says Glenn O'Donnell, senior analyst with Forrester Research.

Denise Dubie is senior editor with Network World.