IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation on Linux on Z and LinuxONE

We all witnessed the world change right before our very eyes. As a result, companies had to change the way they do business with a greater dependency on automation. As we learn to live with the new normal, we go into 2022 well equipped to support your continuous journey through automation.

When you take app modernization, co-location, and sustainability it creates the perfect recipe to support the evolution of your business model. Both the Covid-19 pandemic and the great resignation have made the IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation on Linux on Z and LinuxONE critical to weathering the day-to-day business challenges. Business automation aids in achieving and retaining faster and more reliable business results.

IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation allows the acceleration of application modernization by offering a set of services and capabilities intended to determine best practices, find blockers or ineffective processes.  These business challenges are resolved by automating and streamlining processes to improve your business productivity and decrease errors.

IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation runs on Red Hat OpenShift, including Red Hat OpenShift on the IBM Linux on Z and LinuxONE platform. By leveraging Red Hat OpenShift, you have the option of easily moving or co-locating the application closer to the data by deploying on Z Linux. The IBM Z platform is renowned for bringing its best-in-class data privacy, security, availability, scalability, resiliency, and sustainability to our client’s hybrid multi-cloud approach.  IBM Z has a twenty-four-year history of improved energy efficiency. The IBM Z’s ability to continue to pivot and enhance the energy-efficiency, power conversion and cooling efficiency is critical to your business model. IBM Z and LinuxONE provide an economical and sustainable path for our clients to run on a cloud native platform with flexible computing to run on IBM Cloud Paks for Business Automation.

The following capabilities for IBM Cloud Paks for Business Automation are delivered as containers that run on Red Hat OpenShift on the IBM Z platform:

Content supports unstructured or semi-structured data comprising documents, text, images, audio, and video. Content services securely manages the full lifecycle of content.

◉ FileNet Content Manager

◉ Business Automation Navigator

◉ IBM Enterprise Records

Decisions provides repeatable rules and policies for day-to-day business operations, allowing you to gather, manage, execute, and monitor decisions.

◉ Operational Decision Manager

◉ Automation Decision Services

Workflow defines how work gets done through a sequence of steps performed by humans and systems. Workflow management is the design, execution and monitoring of workflows.

◉ Business Automation Workflow

◉ Automation Workstream Services

Operational Intelligence business automation insights provides deep understanding of business operations by capturing and analyzing data generated by operational systems. The data is presented in dashboards and made available to data scientists for analysis using AI and machine learning.

◉ Business Automation Insights

◉ Business Performance Center

Low-code Automation is a visual approach to building applications using drag-and-drop components. Low-code tools enable business users and developers to create applications without having to write code.

◉ Business Automation Studio

◉ Business Automation Application Designer

◉ Business Automation Application runtime

The plethora of capabilities offered for Cloud Paks for Business Automation means it’s important to have a reliable platform that provides scalability, resiliency, and sustainability. Running Cloud Paks for Business Automation on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z and LinuxONE helps you automate with ease.

Source: ibm.com

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Increase business agility with IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Center

It’s no secret that digital transformation requires modernization. But the path to modernization can be less clear-cut. Many businesses struggle to identify who they can trust to bring the right approach for their business that is grounded in experience and proven business outcomes.

As digital transformation speeds up and modernization requirements become more urgent, it’s more important than ever to turn to a trusted partner like IBM. Sixty-seven of the Fortune 100 companies rely on IBM Z technology today and in a recent study of 261 decision makers, 74%1 say they “believe the mainframe has long-term viability as a strategic platform for their organizations.” With industry-first investments in AI and data analytics, IBM Z innovates with the clients and industries it supports.

The rise of hyperscalers has led many organizations to consider an application migration approach to public cloud alone, but in many cases it can be a one-way street and lock-in to one public cloud which may have implications on cost, governance and security.

IBM Z takes a more balanced approach to application modernization that brings the best of cloud and IBM Z together.

To help clients choose the best approach for their unique business, IBM today announced the IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Center. The center is a digital front door to tools, resources, training, ecosystem partners and real client examples. It is designed to help clients on their modernization journey and provide support for creating an effective modernization roadmap. The center is the result of collaboration with IBM Consulting and broad ecosystem participation, including global services and technology partners. The ecosystem brings deep expertise in modernization, whether clients are modernizing existing apps and data or integrating cloud native apps and data.

The IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Center helps clients leverage existing investments, rather than committing to a costly one-size-fits all migration strategy. A study done by the IBM IT Economics team shows a 3.2x2 lower annual TCO with IBM Z application modernization vs. application migration to the cloud only. With the expertise and guidance of partners clients can accelerate transformation in their Z environment.

IBM Z clients across industries have begun their modernization journeys, including Garanti BBVA, a Turkish bank that was one of the first to launch mobile banking in Turkey. By taking advantage of tools from IBM to modernize applications, Garanti BBVA estimates increased developer productivity up to 25 percent. This transformation has enabled Garanti BBVA to continue hiring top talent and maintain a competitive edge

To accelerate your modernization journey today, visit the IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Center for access to top industry resources.  Schedule a briefing, connect with a partner, join a workshop, earn digital badges, speak with a domain expert or dive deep with additional in-depth technical resources.

Source: ibm.com

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DevOps for IBM Z Firmware – with Red Hat OpenShift

Red Hat OpenShift is perhaps best known for providing a platform for developing and deploying cloud-native, microservices-based applications.

But when the IBM Z Firmware development team in Germany were looking to modernize their DevOps process, they found the ideal environment in Red Hat OpenShift running on IBM Z.

Scalability and Security

IBM Z systems sit at the heart of many of the world’s biggest companies and most critical workloads. Optimized for performance, security and reliability, IBM Z is designed to handle billions of transactions without missing a heartbeat.

The IBM Z firmware layer sits between the physical hardware and the operating system, and executes many of the low-level operations of the IBM Z system. Creating and maintaining this layer is the responsibility of the IBM Z Firmware development organization, which includes hundreds of developers.

The challenges the team faced were similar to those faced by many large development organizations – flexibility, security, and availability, especially combined with the need to scale. How could existing Jenkins setups be easily extended to add new workers? How could the existing login server be updated to support new security requirements? And how could runtime environments be designed with high availability in mind?

“The DevOps process is based around a large code pipeline, moving from source code management to binary repositories to automated testing, all managed by Jenkins scripts and workers”, commented Ralf Schaufler, IBM Z Firmware Integration Architect. “Supporting this are tools for bug tracking, access control, and backup.”

Technical Solution

The team looked at various options and decided to go with Red Hat OpenShift as this provided a secure enterprise DevOps capability, as well as a CI/CD pipeline. Although most of the IBM Z Firmware artifacts run on the IBM Z architecture (s390x), some run on x86 – and so OpenShift’s support for heterogeneous environments could offer additional benefits in the future.

The next question the team faced was whether to run OpenShift in the cloud or on-premises on Z. They determined that the cloud would be a more expensive option, especially as they have a fairly static environment of hundreds of users. In addition, running OpenShift on-prem on IBM Z enabled them to co-locate the development environment next to the test environments. This dramatically reduced the time taken to transfer IBM Z firmware images between development, simulation, and new hardware – and increased security by locating all these environments in the same protected zone with local access only.

“The first use case we implemented was to migrate their multi-user development server to ‘interactive containers’ running on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z”, said Edmund Breit, Senior IT Specialist, IBM Z Firmware Delivery & Suppprt. “This enabled us to use the access control features of OpenShift and meet the IBM security requirements for developers.”

The next use case they deployed was to use Jenkins for the Continuous Integration and Development (CID) pipeline within Red Hat OpenShift, supporting greater scalability and enabling updates to be packaged and then included in the next driver update. This simplified the pipeline automation, and can also potentially enable future multi-arch support for both s390x and x86 firmware production in the future.

“We’re now looking at further use cases, including supporting virtual machines as well as containers, wider options for persistent storage, and additional CID services”, added Edmund.

“The migration of the DevOps process to OpenShift on Z has proved very successful and delivered a more secure and scalable approach,” continued Ralf. “This has also been helped by the Red Hat OpenShift for Z development team being close by in the IBM Boeblingen lab.”

Source: ibm.com

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IBM Z and the Open Neural Network Exchange

Nearly everyone recognizes the profound opportunity to bring new insights and better decisions to business workloads using AI and analytics. Enabling AI on IBM Z and LinuxONE is a key focus for IBM,  allowing clients to have a reliable, secured, and high performing environment for delivering critical business insights using Machine Learning and Deep Learning applications.

However, with this opportunity there are also challenges, especially those around deploying AI in a production environment. The use of AI in critical business workloads is a growing space, and as with other new technologies, the path to production can be challenging. Key challenges include the need to deploy data science assets without sacrificing production qualities of service (i.e., meet response time goals) in a consistent, repeatable manner.

That is where the Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) comes in. ONNX is an open-source format used to represent machine learning models and is one of the key ecosystem technologies enabling a “Build and Train Anywhere, Deploy on IBM Z” strategy. ONNX helps establish a streamlined path to take a project from inception to production. Models represented in a standard ONNX format can then be implemented by an ONNX backend (i.e., runtime or model compiler), such as on IBM Z.

This journey to production starts with the data scientist, who may use a preferred set of tools to understand a business problem and analyze data. When that data scientist creates and trains a model, they build assets that ultimately need to be deployed in production. Often, however, the deployment platform and production requirements aren’t considered heavily in these early stages. This is where utilizing ONNX in a deployment strategy really shines. Many of the most popular libraries and frameworks, including PyTorch and TensorFlow, support the ability to export or convert a trained model to an ONNX format.

Once a model has an ONNX representation, it can be deployed to run on any platform with an ONNX runtime. This provides several key benefits: the model is now portable, with no runtime dependencies on the libraries or framework it was trained on. For example, an ONNX model that was originally created and trained in TensorFlow can be served without the TensorFlow runtime. Additionally, ONNX allows vendors to create high performing model backends that can optimize and accelerate the model for a specific architecture.

For IBM Z and the mission critical workloads it typically hosts, this combination of portability and optimization makes IBM Z an optimal environment for deploying models. One key example of the use of ONNX is in Watson Machine Learning for z/OS (WMLz), which incorporates an ONNX model compiler technology based on the ONNX-MLIR project. The ONNX model compiler feature of WMLz is focused on deep learning models and produces an executable optimized to run on IBM Z. WMLz allows the user to easily deploy this compiled ONNX model for model serving.

As IBM Z continues to innovate in enterprise AI, ONNX is a key part of IBM’s AI strategy. It allows IBM to build a deployment strategy optimized for the IBM Z architecture, while staying closely aligned with the broader ecosystem.

In August, you may have read that IBM previewed Telum, the next generation IBM Z processor. IBM is now examining opportunities to exploit the on-chip AI accelerator with the ONNX model compiler.

ONNX is part of the Linux Foundation and has widespread support from numerous key vendors that recognize the value it delivers. IBM is an early adopter of ONNX and contributes upstream to the ONNX project.

Be on the lookout for additional updates on how you can leverage ONNX as part of your IBM Z AI story!

Source: ibm.com

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Accelerate application development with Red Hat and IBM Z

How can you accelerate the development and deployment of applications, and then manage them at scale?

This is the challenge businesses are facing around the world in the era of hybrid cloud – including organizations who depend on IBM Z or LinuxONE for their IT infrastructure and are looking to modernize their applications in place.

Back in August, we discussed Red Hat OpenShift’s great momentum on IBM Z and LinuxONE. And the recent announcement of Red Hat OpenShift 4.9 is an excellent opportunity to reflect on what’s been happening in the Red Hat OpenShift ecosystem for IBM Z and LinuxONE over the past few months. An ecosystem that includes not only Red Hat and IBM software, but a wide range of open-source projects and ISV applications.

Next steps

Red Hat OpenShift continues to expand and gain new features. One of the most interesting developments in OpenShift is its transformation from just x86 to multi-architecture diversity. This includes IBM Z and LinuxONE, but also Arm and IBM Power which are increasingly important for the emerging edge computing market as well as the cloud and datacenter.

Red Hat OpenShift 4.9 for IBM Z and LinuxONE includes support for multiple network interface cards (Multi-NIC) which can improve performance internally and externally, provide separation of networks, and enhance the fail-over capability.

One of the strengths of IBM Z and LinuxONE is advanced security features, with the IBM Crypto Express card providing fast hardware cryptography, as well as protecting keys in a Hardware Security Module. Red Hat OpenShift support for the Crypto Express card is planned to be provided through a Red Hat certified container, available later this year. The unique combination of Red Hat OpenShift plus the IBM Z cryptographic hardware creates a highly differentiated, security-rich solution.

Data and AI

The latest version of IBM Cloud Pak for Data on IBM Z and LinuxONE, available from October, includes IBM Watson Studio. This enables machine learning models to be built and deployed on IBM Z and LinuxONE. Introducing artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to OpenShift applications on Z and LinuxONE is a major step forward and can help organizations to reduce fraud and unlock the value of their data.

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation for IBM Z and LinuxONE 4.8, available from September, provides persistent storage and other data services such as object storage, dynamic provisioning, disconnected install, and DASD support for cloud-native mission-critical workloads on IBM Z and LinuxONE.

Integration

IBM Cloud Pak for Integration has been updated to the latest version (2021.3.1) and includes updated support for IBM Z and LinuxONE.  Building on Red Hat OpenShift, this enables applications to connect asynchronously using technologies such as IBM MQ and MQ Advanced, Platform Navigator, App Connect, Aspera High Speed Transfer Server, and the Kafka-based Event Streams.

Management

As OpenShift workloads on Z and LinuxONE scale, the need increases for management tools which can also scale.

Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes has been able to manage clusters and containers on IBM Z in “manage-to” mode since version 2.2 – meaning that the management console would run on an x86 system. Now with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management 2.4 (aligned with Red Hat OpenShift 4.9) the management console can run on IBM Z as well, adding “manage-from” mode. This helps enable seamless hybrid cloud management, with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management on IBM Z managing OpenShift clusters running on x86, IBM Power, and public cloud infrastructures, as well as on IBM Z.

Complementing this, IBM Cloud Pak for Multi Cloud Management provides a consistent management experience across multiple clouds for managing virtual machines and enabling cloud automation on IBM Z and LinuxONE in “manage-to” mode.

Instana, IBM’s recent acquisition for discoverability and management of applications, now supports IBM Z and provides Observability from Mobile to Enterprise. Instana can monitor OpenShift applications running on IBM Z or LinuxONE, also in “manage-to” mode.

Finally, IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center, which manages the IBM Z and LinuxONE infrastructure for both traditional and cloud workloads, can now use IBM Spectrum Scale for block storage provisioning, as well as introducing fabric zoning support for IBM z/VM virtual machines.

Ecosystem

The ecosystem of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and application providers supporting Red Hat OpenShift running on IBM Z and LinuxONE continues to expand.

This includes Temenos, who announced the availability earlier this year of their next-generation core banking solution, Temenos Transact, on OpenShift on IBM Z and LinuxONE. By combining Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z and LinuxONE, banks can deliver new services to their customers while leveraging existing infrastructure.

Several other solution partners applications are also enabled on Red Hat OpenShift for IBM Z and LinuxONE, including:

◉ Core banking applications such as Technisys and Infosys Finacle

◉ Digital banking engagement applications including Backbase

◉ Relationship-based pricing and product applications such as Zafin and SunTec Xelerate

◉ Payments applications including Vestigo and Fiorano

◉ Database management applications such as Fujitsu Enterprise Postgres

Source: ibm.com

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Cloud Pak for Data on IBM Z: extending the reach of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be a highly transformative technology and is becoming an essential part of the technology industry impacting everything from our personal lives to the way we conduct business. But as AI computing becomes standard practice, enterprises are looking to differentiate themselves by utilizing tools that will allow them to get the most value and insight from their AI. One such tool is IBM Cloud Pak® for Data and in this blog I will explain how it provides organizations with an end-to-end enterprise insights platform for their data and AI needs and how IBM Z® can also play a vital role.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data, Watson® Machine Learning for z/OS® and open-source technologies are a part of a comprehensive software and hardware strategy that solidifies IBM Z as a first-class AI platform. IBM recently publicly discussed the new Telum processor which features on-chip acceleration specifically for AI deep learning processing.

Read More: C9560-680: IBM Control Desk V7.6 Fundamentals

To get the most value from their AI efforts, organizations need to establish an information architecture. At many large enterprises, data resides in different formats across multiple platforms. Because of this complex data landscape, many organizations have found it difficult to collect and structure data in a form useful for AI. The lack of an information architecture within these complex environments can be a primary factor in impeding AI implementation. To help establish an information architecture that can unlock the value of data and accelerate the journey to AI, IBM has developed a prescribed approach we call the “AI Ladder.” It features four sequential steps; collect, organize and analyze data so that AI models can be infused within business processes.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data

IBM Cloud Pak for Data addresses the challenges of delivering analytics and AI using a single, open platform to infuse AI into business applications. Cloud native by design, the platform unifies market-leading services spanning the entire analytics lifecycle. It helps eliminate the need for costly, and often competing, point solutions while providing the information architecture you need to successfully implement AI. Core to an enterprise insights platform is the ability to store and manage data in support of analytics and AI. Modernizing your data infrastructure via a cloud native, containerized approach, such as with IBM Cloud Pak for Data, can significantly simplify your data management efforts. And leveraging existing IBM Z infrastructure and skills can help you reduce implementation risk, complexity, and cost.

IBM Cloud Pak for Data on IBM Z and IBM Watson Studio

IBM Cloud Pak for Data on IBM Z debuted in November 2020 with a focus on modernizing data infrastructure in support of analytics and AI. It brings the capabilities of IBM Cloud Pak for Data including the Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform and pre-integrated, certified software to your existing IBM Z infrastructure. The initial release included IBM Cloud Pak foundational services, IBM Db2® Management Console and IBM Db2 Warehouse. Also available are IBM Db2 Advanced Enterprise Server Edition and IBM Db2 for z/OS® Data Gate.

IBM is now incorporating IBM Watson® Studio within IBM Cloud Pak for Data 4.0.2 on IBM Z so that organizations can build AI models where data often originates. IBM Watson Studio is designed to empower data scientists, developers, and analysts to build, run and manage AI models, and optimize decisions anywhere IBM Cloud Pak® for Data runs.

These recent enhancements help organizations to confidently leverage their IBM Z platform and enterprise data to build and deploy ML/AI models on Linux® on IBM Z and LinuxONE. Organizations can also build AI models on IBM Cloud Pak for Data on IBM Z and deploy those models within the z/OS environment through Watson Machine Learning for z/OS. By unlocking the value of their IBM Z data in new ways, organizations can drive additional revenue, control costs, help reduce fraud, and improve customer satisfaction while making minimal changes to their core business applications.

Source: ibm.com

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Flexible, agile, and secure: modernizing applications with IBM Z

Priorities have changed over the last two years for IT executives. From business as usual to a rapid shift toward digital transformation, the impact of the pandemic cannot be overstated. With this shift to digital in mind, the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) surveyed 200 IT executives and discussed changing marketplaces and the role of IT in transformation in “Application Modernization on the Mainframe.”

Read More: C2090-312: IBM DB2 11 DBA for z/OS

Much of this change is attributed to the rise of cloud-based applications. But where does this leave mission-critical mainframe applications? A knee-jerk reaction may be to say the only way forward is to rearchitect IT environments exclusively on the cloud. However, 71 percent of IT executives surveyed say that mainframe-based applications are central to their business strategy. These workloads power essential business processes; with 93 percent of companies using the mainframe for financial management and 73 percent for customer transaction systems.

Digital transformation will require workloads to run where they make the most sense, necessitating a hybrid cloud approach. In three years, close to 70 percent of leading organizations expect their operations will include unique configurations of data and computing environments, including on-premise data center, mainframe, private cloud, public cloud, and edge computing.

By embracing a hybrid cloud approach, IT leaders benefit from the stability and security of the mainframe and extract maximum value from cloud investments. To ensure that applications are connected across platforms, it’s important to modernize mainframe applications. Modernizing mission-critical mainframe applications can help transform development culture, enabling adoption of DevOps and other agile practices that promote flexibility and innovation.

Enterprises in the financial services industry, like BNP Paribas, are re-thinking the way that they approach product development by modernizing their mainframe development environment. BNP Paribas deployed an integrated development environment backed by open-source tools. Driving both cost savings and quality development, the modern environment enables more efficient development and testing, which also helps attract new developers. It boosts developer engagement and code quality by offering greater autonomy and tool standardization.

BNP Paribas is just one of many enterprises taking advantage of modern mainframe tools and technology that deliver lower total cost of ownership and increased agility. The IBM Z ecosystem offers innovative solutions that drive enterprise transformation across the globe. The release of IBM z/OS V2.5, the next generation operating system on IBM Z, introduces high performance AI capabilities and new capabilities that support rapid product development on the platform.

Recognizing the need for continual innovation, 86 percent of IT executives say that their organizations need to accelerate digital transformation to stay ahead of changing customer expectations. By modernizing mainframe applications and integrating them with new applications in a hybrid cloud environment, enterprises can develop or maintain a competitive advantage and avoid costly re-architecture plans.

The first step of any modernization journey is to build an iterative plan. To learn more about application modernization on IBM Z, click here

Source: ibm.com

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Mission-critical efficiency and resilience at a reduced IT cost

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted business at a global scale. Organizations face new challenges to ensure sustained performance, seamless integration to hybrid cloud environments, data privacy and continuous delivery of business operations and services. At the same time, they need to find new ways to significantly reduce costs and complexity. Given this environment, organizations are embracing digital transformation to allow them to meet customer expectations and satisfy the needs of new markets more efficiently.

Amidst all the changes that we have experienced in technology because of the pandemic, IBM Z® and IBM DS8000 have remained the most stable and secure platform to support the most demanding IT workloads for mission-critical applications. Together, they provide a trusted foundation to elevate the customer experience while delivering the reliability and security expectations of today’s world.

IBM z15 Model T02 is the newest entry model into the IBM Z family of servers. It provides an air-cooled single frame with a low entry cost that can easily coexist with other platforms in a data center. The IBM DS8910F provides the same enterprise capabilities offered in the larger IBM DS8900F systems at a lower cost and can be integrated in the same frame of the IBM z15 Model T02, delivering a powerful and affordable end-to-end solution in a single 19-inch industry-standard rack. This unique IBM integration is the result of years of research and collaboration between the IBM server and storage teams, working together to provide unmatched business value:

◉ Improve the customer experience with ultra-low application response times. IBM zHyperLink technology accelerates the access to data, allowing the processing of huge volumes of IBM Z transactions faster, while unlocking the unmatched value for mission critical workloads with storage latencies as low as 18 microseconds. This represents a 10x improvement compared to high-performance FICON (zHPF). In addition, zHyperLink can be integrated with IBM HyperSwap to meet the needs of high performance in high-availability environments.

◉ Maximize the uptime of IBM Z enterprise servers with “seven 9’s” availability and multi-site replication for disaster recovery. HyperSwap technology provides automatic failover with no-data-loss capabilities within metropolitan distances, and at more than 1,000 miles, IBM Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS®) enables fast recovery of business operations with 2 to 4 seconds RPO and less than 60 seconds RTO.

◉ Significantly reduce the adverse impact of cyberattacks and other data corruption incidents. IBM Z® Cyber Vault combines analytical, diagnostics and recovery tools with IBM DS8000 Safeguarded Copy and services to deliver a unique end-to-end data resilience solution that no one else can provide in the industry. Specialized software is enabled to constantly monitor data, detect corruption and isolate data that is compromised. Continuous protection of clean point-in-time copies are stored in a logical partition that is isolated from the production environment, providing the ability to quickly recover from logical corruption events with confidence using this air-gapped trusted source of data.

◉ Reduce CAPEX and OPEX by consolidating transactional, cloud-native and business intelligence workloads in a single rack. This is especially important for smaller customers in co-location data centers as they explicitly pay for each tile of floorspace that they are using.

Flexibility, responsiveness and cost reduction drive the development of innovative solutions that accelerate digital transformation. By integrating the IBM z15 Model T02 with IBM DS8910F in a single frame, organizations now can get to the market faster and quickly adapt to changing situations, while avoiding security risks and more complex migration challenges.

Source: ibm.com

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IBM Z Virtual Test Platform takes big stride forward with version 2.0

The growing need for digital transformation has driven organizations to aggressively transform themselves and adopt DevOps to enable accelerated application delivery, which is a key part of the transformation. While it’s great to see the adoption rate growing significantly for DevOps, testing remains a major bottleneck to a continuous software development lifecycle.

Read More: C2090-424: IBM InfoSphere DataStage v11.3

The recent survey results from Gitlab on DevSecOps confirm just that.

“Testing remains tough — for the third year in a row, a majority of survey-takers resoundingly pointed to testing as the area most likely to cause delays. The other bottlenecks include planning, code development, and code review, again reflecting what we’ve seen in our 2019 and 2020 surveys.”

In our continuous and sincere effort to address this issue, last year we announced the general availability of IBM Z® Virtual Test Platform V1.0, which fundamentally changed the game by providing testing capabilities that allow application integration, transaction and batch testing to be shifted earlier in the development cycle on a fully virtualized test platform.

For the first time, developers were able to test complete application integration before the code is even deployed to production while automating testing as part of their build process in a CI/CD pipeline. With this week’s V2.0 release, we have further strengthened the solution, incorporating key feedback from our clients by providing an html-based test results viewer and the ability to effectively version control your test case and results ensuring auditability and pipeline integration.

Further with ZVTP V2.0, we are taking a big stride forward in adding test automation and deep integration testing capabilities with IBM Distribution for Galasa. Based on the open-source project ‘Galasa’, the solution allows you to test applications at scale regardless of platform — including z/OS. Galasa enables deep integration testing across platforms and technologies within a DevOps pipeline. Galasa is designed to support repeatable, reliable, agile testing at scale across your enterprise.

IBM distribution for Galasa is not simply about providing the ability to write a test and run it in automation. It extends that to enable you to understand and manage your tests. This makes it easy to schedule the right tests to run at the right time and Galasa support is provided with VTP.

We will continue to strengthen our testing capabilities and you can look forward to some exciting and new capabilities coming up in our subsequent releases.

Source: ibm.com

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Empowering a new generation of IBM Z developers

Every day, billions of transactions occur online. Many of them are processed by a mainframe. The mainframe has proven to be an integral part of the world’s economy, enabling global financial, medical and retail institutions to drive their businesses forward. And the platform continues to evolve with open standards and support of modern developer languages, toolchains, and management practices.

Cultural and social changes are driving digital transformations, opening up opportunities for more roles in IT infrastructure. In a recent Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Deloitte, most companies view their mainframe as a strategic component to hybrid cloud environments and 91% of the business interviewed identified expanding mainframe footprints as a moderate/critical priority in the next 12 months.  These new roles and opportunities in IT Infrastructure are being filled by a new generation of computing talent.

Here at IBM we are committed to inspiring, educating and supporting new generations as they begin their computing careers. Recently, IBM wrapped up the 16th annual Master the Mainframe competition. Twelve winners emerged from high school and university students competing across the globe in a “coding obstacle course” with three levels of challenges. The coding challenges offered participants a chance to use and build skills in VS Code, Zowe, Python, JCL, REXX, and COBOL. And it was all completed on the mainframe—a platform new to many students but leveraging a suite of developer tools consistent with current computer science curriculums.

“The mainframe really has a huge impact on your life,” said Melissa Christie, a North America regional winner. “It’s a hidden entity that controls a large number of things in your day to day, from medical records to transactions. It’s really interesting that this thing that we have in our society does everything, but most people don’t even know about it.”

The mainframe continues to be a highly secure, resilient and reliable platform for mission-critical applications. Today, enterprises are optimizing these applications for hybrid, multicloud environments, while maintaining stability, security and agility. IBM Z allows developers to have control over the full life cycle of application development, no matter where the application is running. And new developers are taking notice. Pierre Jacquet, a 2020 Master the Mainframe Grand Prize winner, said one of the highlights of the contest was the ability to work with multiple coding languages.

“I mainly learned about the new development environment for the mainframe,” said Jacquet. “Discovering the development environment with Zowe was really cool and was a way to be more agile to facilitate development. I was quite impressed by the smoothness of the tools.”

For enterprises to continue successful digital transformations, there needs to be a talent pool familiar with the platform and who have been exposed to career roles within the Z environment. The entire Z community is teaming to bring these opportunities to students and the future workforce. M&T Bank recently shared their transformation story with CIO.com, focused on their collaboration with IBM and investment in the future workforce.

For employers looking to fill IT roles, IBM created Talent Match, an online platform that enables employers to find skilled workers. There are additional employer resources available on the IBM Z Employer Hub. While the student competition is over, the Master the Mainframe remains open to the public as a learning platform year-round for anyone interested in developing their skills to prepare for an enterprise computing career. Students can continue learning and networking at the IBM Z Global Student Hub and explore all of the IBM Z education initiatives.

Source: ibm.com

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Expanding our DevOps portfolio with GitLab Ultimate for IBM Cloud Paks

In the era of hybrid cloud, our clients are facing constant pressure to adapt to and adopt new models for application development and IT consumption in order to unlock the speed and agility of hybrid cloud. With even tighter budgets and more pressure to transform given the impact of our new normal, there is no better time to reimagine the way mission-critical workloads run on IBM Z.

Many clients such as State Farm, RBC and BNP Paribas have benefited by adopting DevOps on IBM Z which allows them to unlock new potential for increased speed and agility, directly influencing their digital transformation initiatives. Clients are able to leverage their investments in and the strength of their existing IT infrastructure, clouds and applications in a seamless way with people, platforms and experience they already have on hand.

Over the past year, IBM Z has taken significant strides to bring new DevOps tools to the platform, with seamless hybrid application development including IBM Wazi Developer for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces and Red Hat Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z, as well as a series of new hybrid cloud container offerings for Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z and LinuxONE.

Today IBM announced GitLab Ultimate for IBM Cloud Paks, expanding our DevOps offerings across the business allowing clients to get a comprehensive solution with a DevOps toolchain for modernization.  This is another significant milestone for IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE clients, bringing even more choice with cloud-native development on IBM Z.

This is a significant step forward for IBM Z clients and is designed to unlock their software innovations by reducing the cycle time between having an idea, seeing it in production and monitoring it to ensure optimal performance. It provides an innovative, open and hybrid solution for DevOps.

With GitLab Ultimate for IBM Cloud Paks, developers will be able to compose their DevOps solution using GitLab, write in any language they want and deploy it in any hybrid cloud environment they choose. Developers will also be able to take advantage of GitOps and GitLab’s orchestration automation technology, which can be used in conjunction with GitLab pipelines.

Source: ibm.com

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Taiyo Life innovates with IBM Z Automatic Binary Optimizer

Taiyo Life Insurance, established in 1893 with over 120 years in the business, entrusts its IT services to T&D Information Systems. Unlike other major life insurance companies, Taiyo Life Insurance provides insurance for family members in each individual household through personalized consulting services. A sales representative visits the customer and designs an optimized insurance plan by identifying insufficient protections within the current insurance plan.

Enhancing customer experience

Taiyo Life Insurance updated their insurance contract supporting system in 2012 achieving completely paperless procedures. This enabled sales representatives to sign onto their mobile devices to complete applications of insurance contracts which, until then, had been done manually. Mobile devices were further enhanced in 2018 and are currently used as “Taiyo Life Concierges”. Taiyo Life Concierge enables sales representatives to respond to various requests from customers immediately through a variety of new features, delivering convenience for customers and an evolution of its services.

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To realize the benefits of this innovative system, the IT infrastructure and tools supporting the core of the business require top performance. For a long time, Taiyo Life Insurance has relied on IBM Z, featuring high availability and processing performance, as a foundation for its core business applications.

Taiyo Life Insurance recently upgraded our production environment to IBM z14. This time, to realize the new features of Taiyo Life Concierge, we needed to optimize about 3,000 actuarial calculation modules using the IBM Automatic Binary Optimizer for z/OS(ABO).  These modules, which calculate insurance premiums, would then be able to take advantage of ABO performance and enhanced response time of Taiyo Life Concierge improvements on the IBM z14. The actuarial calculation modules were developed by T&D Information System using Enterprise COBOL V3R4. We decided to introduce ABO since the development period is limited and wanted to avoid the costs and complexities of re-compiling all the actuarial calculation modules using the latest COBOL compilers.

Unleashing the power of IBM Z with ABO

After initial testing, we applied IBM Automatic Binary Optimizer for z/OS to the 3,000 actuarial calculation modules. As a result, we obtained about a 20 percent CPU time reduction on z14. This greatly improved the response time of Taiyo Life Concierge for our customers, and was better than our expectations.

By using ABO and IBM z14, we have improved the efficiency of resources used in the production environment, and enhanced delivery of services to our clients through improved response time.

We anticipate continued performance improvement for scalability through the evolution of the IBM Z architecture in conjunction with ABO.

Source: ibm.com

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