Unicode, an industry standard, is a 16-bit character set intended to represent text and symbols in all modern languages and I/T protocols. Mainframes (using EBCDIC for single-byte characters), PCs, and various RISC systems use the same Unicode assignments.

Unicode is maintained by the Unicode Consortium.

There is increasing use of Unicode in mainframe applications. The latest zSeries® mainframes include a number of unique hardware instructions for Unicode. At the time of writing, Unicode usage on mainframes is primarily in Java™. However, z/OS® middleware products are also beginning to use Unicode, and this is certainly an area of change for the near future.