System z Architect
As many organizations have been diligently working to enable a mobile, work from home (WFH) workforce, the awareness and emphasis on Enterprise Modernization appears to be gaining traction again. The interest uptick in Enterprise Modernization may likely be a result of existing z Systems meeting the increased business demands, via its architectural advantages such as Capacity on Demand, or enabling existing (unused) processors built into the hardware. The reality that the existing infrastructure can be “dialed-up” for additional compute power, without having to perform a hardware installation, hardware refresh, or have additional equipment purchased and delivered reinvigorated the awareness of the flexibility, scalability, and reliability of the z System platform.
Enterprise Modernization is not just a project. It is a journey. It encompasses the entire datacenter and Information Technology organization from Application Development to Operations.
Enterprise Modernization is not just about tooling, programming languages, or cloud. It is about finding the best integrations and solutions to enhance adoption and technology delivery. It is a continuous process to identify, implement, and refine people processes, infrastructure, and procedures to deliver leading edge Information Technology solutions to the business.
They key focus areas for any Enterprise Modernization journey are grounded in four pillars: Data Management, Infrastructure Optimization, Application Development, and Process Integration.
Data Management
At the very heart of any business is the corporate data. It is essential that the organization have a highly developed understanding of the value of data, data usage, data security, and data gravity. Cyber-breaches continue to raise awareness of the criticality of protecting the data and reducing the unnecessary duplication, extraction, and exposure of data.
Previously, operational data was maintained and stored in structures (IMS, Adabas, IDMS, etc.) that could be difficult to access and may have had limited methods, tooling, and technologies for accessing the data outside of z/OS. However, with a prevalence of core, operational data being maintained and secured within Db2 on z/OS and the API enablement of z/OS infrastructure, many of those factors have dramatically changed. With technologies like Db2 Connect, zOS Connect, web services, and API interfaces, there is minimal need to extract, transform, and load (ETL) Db2 z/OS data to other non-z/OS platforms. Gone are the days when the data on z/OS was siloed and isolated from the enterprise.
The ETL and movement of data is time consuming, expends a tremendous amount of unnecessary compute cycles, and creates inherent data integrity and currency issues. Every instance where the data is copied to another physical data structure outside of Db2 z/OS can also create additional exposures for data security and a possible data breach.
Some items to consider:
- Analytics have placed tremendous pressure on organizations to provide timely and accurate access to data that may have resided in legacy systems built upon more proprietary data structures.
- Duplication and replication of this data may pose additional constraints on performance and accuracy of data, along with delays and potential inconsistencies, if a cloned repository is established.
- Significant challenges may develop if the legacy data schema should change, requiring extensive re-work of the downstream Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) processes.
Organizations need all applications to have real-time accuracy in their queries, updates, operations, and analytics. Retaining centralized storage and control over the data, in a Db2 z/OS relational data store provides for highly scalable storage, retrieval, security, and data recovery. For those organizations needing more intense complex query performance, the IBM Db2 Analytics Accelerator (IDAA) can be seamlessly and transparently integrated into the z System, making accelerated, complex queries execute against real-time data from the transactional and operational data store (Db2 z/OS).
Infrastructure Optimization
Organizations typically take the z System infrastructure for granted. Maintaining currency in the operating system (whether zVSE, zVM, zOS, or zTCP) is essential to leverage the latest hardware and software advances. Every generation of the z System hardware has implemented major technology advances and the operating system—when kept current for the respective hardware—exploits those technologies.
Optimizing the hardware also requires optimizing the operating system. Upgrading zOS and maintaining its currency provides newer levels of function, efficiencies, and improved diagnostics. Utilizing a current operating system that is designed for the latest hardware inherently provides efficiencies as the operating system leverages any changes to the instruction sets, chip memory management, encryption technologies, and processor multithreading. Various subsystems, such as CICS and Db2, when properly maintained and upgraded will also provide significant performance and functionality improvements for the very same reasons.
An often-overlooked item, the COBOL compiler, has been regularly ignored for many years. However, upgrading and implementing the latest COBOL v6 compiler over the prior COBOL v4.2 can provide upwards of a 25-35% performance improvement when running on current z System hardware and zOS software. COBOL v6 is enabled to leverage the additional instructions built into the z chipsets—resulting in dramatic improvements when working with packed decimal data.
Summary
Enterprise Modernization does not happen overnight. Proper planning, tooling, inventory analysis, application awareness, and a strategic IT direction are essential to maintaining a peak development organization. IT leadership must ensure that essential legacy systems continue to add value to the bottom line, and do not create a bottleneck for the future of the organization.
More Information
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