February 15, 2022
IBM
made key developments to help clients accelerate transformation
with a series of new capabilities designed to modernize
applications across hybrid cloud environments. These include
plans to deliver IBM Z as-a-service on IBM Cloud for development
and test, as well as additional tools for developing hybrid
applications.
According to the IBM Institute for Business Value study,
"Application Modernization on the Mainframe," 71 percent of
responding executives say mainframe-based applications are
central to their business strategy. Four out of five respondents
say their organizations need to rapidly transform to keep up
with competition, which includes modernizing mainframe-based
applications and adopting a more open approach.
"Today's IBM is focused on helping our clients across every
industry apply hybrid cloud and AI to transform the way their
businesses work. IBM recognizes that there is no
one-size-fits-all approach to modernization, said Tarun Chopra,
Vice President, IBM Z Hybrid Cloud. "By leveraging both IBM Z
and IBM Cloud, clients can benefit from a hybrid cloud approach
that allows them to capitalize on the innovations, technical
advancements, security, resiliency of each platform. With hybrid
cloud, you keep your workloads where they need to be—in the
cloud, on premises, and at the edge—to help reduce risk and
improve time to market."
z/OS Development and Test as-a-service in the Public Cloud for
the First Time
Available as a closed experimental today, IBM plans to deliver
IBM Wazi as-a-Service (Wazi aaS), bringing z/OS capabilities to
IBM Cloud for the first time, expected to be generally available
in 2H 2022, with on-demand access to z/OS, available as needed
for development and test. This will provide z/OS developers with
the agility of a public cloud development environment with the
ability to use a variable amount of resources, and
pay-as-you-go, matching burst and business demand. Consistent
with the regulated workloads of many IBM Z clients today, IBM
Wazi aaS will enable self-provisioning of a z/OS Virtual Server
Instance on IBM Z in a logically isolated, highly-secured
private space running in IBM Cloud.
With this announcement, IBM has significantly reduced the time
to get access to z/OS development and test environments from
days or weeks down to 6 minutes or less1. According to internal
IBM benchmarks, z/OS development on the IBM Cloud performs up to
15x faster than comparable x86 development and test
alternatives2.
Wazi aaS is being designed to help developers:
Increase speed and agility with on-demand access to z/OS for
development and test
Accelerate DevOps practices with predictable and flexible
consumption-based pricing
Reduce the need for specialized skills with a consistent
cloud-native development experience
IBM is also working with ecosystem partners such as TCS and BMC
to help IBM Z clients accelerate the modernization of their
applications, data and processes in an open hybrid cloud
architecture.
"We believe that IBM Wazi aaS will be a significant value add to
our mainframe applications modernization solutions and services.
It will accelerate speed to market for new and modernized
systems and on-demand access to z/OS dev and test. Leveraging
TCS' cloud solutions and accelerators along with the security
and reliability of IBM Cloud, we are helping clients accelerate
their hybrid cloud modernization journeys and business
transformation," said Arun Prabhakar, VP & Global Head,
Alliances, TCS.
"IBM's approach to the Hybrid Cloud with Wazi as-a-Service
recognizes the critical need for organizations to modernize the
mainframe developer experience. Research shows that modern
mainframe tools can increase developer output and productivity
by as much as 175%," said John McKenny, senior vice president
and general manager, Intelligent Z Optimization and
Transformation at BMC. "BMC is pleased to partner with IBM as we
jointly help enterprises accelerate Mainframe DevOps in their
digital transformation initiatives."
Modern Tools for Modern Applications
IBM is also announcing the IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack,
expected to be generally available on March 15, to jumpstart or
accelerate application modernization and take a standardized
approach to IT automation across a variety of common use cases.
This delivers the first set of capabilities in support of the
IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Center, which was announced in
December, to help clients increase agility and accelerate their
transformation including support for popular open source
projects.
The
IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack is designed to help clients:
Simplify access to applications and data through secure API
creation and integration in minutes;
Leverage agile enterprise DevOps for cloud native development
with open tools and rapid application analysis; and
Standardize IT automation to empower developers with access to
open source environments such as Kubernetes.
