Cloud native technologies are the new normal for application development, and with IBM Wazi for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces, the new normal applies to z/OS development
In this rapidly evolving world of hybrid and multicloud systems, development processes and tooling have to move quickly for organizations to take full advantage of the speed, power, flexibility, and scalability of new hybrid platforms. Development shops that have Z as part of their hybrid setup are faced with a unique challenge, however. Their traditional Z development tools do not support the modern workflow needed for this new hybrid world, making it hard to align with non-Z platforms, collaborate with other developers, leverage containerized development, adopt modern processes like Lean, Agile or SAFe®, and create a unified, orchestrated, platform-agnostic pipeline for building and deploying their applications. To meet this steep challenge, a choice must be made between bootstrapping legacy tools and switching to new tools that fully support this new development paradigm.
What can cloud native tools do for hybrid multicould development?
In order to properly exploit a hybrid platform incorporating IBM Z, development teams require tools that are designed to work. Specifically, they need tools that can naturally handle z/OS applications. This allows these developers to work alongside their colleagues developing for the cloud and its associated containerization, orchestrated deployment, flexibility, and availability.
To that end, IBM has strengthened its existing suite of Z DevOps tools to reduce the barrier to entry and embrace cloud native development. The newly announced IBM Wazi for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces (IBM Wazi) brings robust z/OS development tools to accelerate hybrid cloud development and provides personal z/OS sandboxes for development and test that are optimized to run on Red Hat OpenShift. This groundbreaking new product allows z/OS application developers to fully leverage hybrid platforms while providing first-class development capabilities for native z/OS development.
What is IBM Wazi?
IBM Wazi is a productive development environment that fully integrates into a standard, enterprise-wide DevOps pipeline. Developers can choose from on-premises or browser-based Eclipse or VS Code IDEs for their development needs, while using a personal z/OS sandbox environment on Red Hat OpenShift for development and test.
What do developers gain from a standard DevOps toolchain across platforms?
IBM Wazi successfully demonstrates that you don’t have to compromise to develop applications for IBM Z in this new hybrid cloud reality. All the tools z/OS application developers need to be productive are available, including an interactive debugger and an intelligent build tool that identifies, manages, and uses dependencies to optimize builds. Coupling this with integration into a true parallel development SCM like Git allows developers to effectively take advantage of Agile, Lean, or SAFe®.
IBM Wazi provides developers with a containerized, z/OS sandbox environment for development and test on Red Hat OpenShift running on x86 hardware. This enables developers to code, build, and test their applications with independence and flexibility. No longer tied to the mainframe and insulated from the impacts of communal testing and single stream development, z/OS developers can be more agile and productive. These applications can then be deployed into production on native z/OS running on IBM Z hardware.
With IBM Wazi, developers can embrace true parallel development on z/OS with Git. This enables them to participate in and leverage a standard CI/CD pipeline. IBM Wazi empowers organizations to have common processes across their development platforms, allowing Z and non-Z developers to work together harmoniously and productively. Combine this with the ease with which development environments can be set up, and IBM Wazi radically smooths the journey to hybrid cloud.
With IBM Wazi for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces, IBM has evolved application development on the IBM Z platform to make Z a first-class CodeReady Workspaces-enabled platform. This allows Z organizations to accelerate their move to the hybrid cloud, while also empowering them to rapidly maintain and evolve their legacy portfolio in this new exciting reality.
To find out more, visit the IBM Wazi website.