IBM Cloud will extend the IBM Z portfolio to z/OS Dev & Test and Linux on Z.

The future is often unpredictable, with both unexpected challenges and possibilities. To grow and build profitability, organizations have to be flexible to embrace change. This is the case for all businesses — from global enterprises redefining their business models to start-ups creating new markets. To address these opportunities, especially in highly regulated industries, businesses must become more agile and flexible while also providing the security, privacy and resiliency to address compliance demands and deliver a 24/7 secured digital service.

IBM intends to help you re-envision IT for the era of hybrid cloud. Together with IBM Cloud and IBM Z, enterprises will be able to leverage the best of both worlds, allowing them to build, test, extend and protect without compromise.

Develop and test without compromise

Organizations are under more pressure than ever to deliver new digital experiences to their customers, partners and employees. However, enterprises often face issues like a dearth of specialized skills, manual tasks and a lack of rapid access to the resources they need. To help address these issues, IBM introduced IBM Wazi to bring a cloud-native experience to developers.

IBM Cloud is expanding z/OS dev/test capabilities with IBM Wazi-as-a-Service — as a closed experimental today, expected to be generally available in 2H 2022 — is designed to provide z/OS developers with on-demand access to z/OS resources and enable them to do the following:

• Do dev/test, including quality testing, on demand.
• Leverage the agility of a public cloud development environment.
• Use a variable amount of resource and only pay for what they use.

Tests run in the IBM Cloud Tokyo Multi-Zone Region show about 15x faster compilation for Java applications, about 12x for C applications and about 8x for COBOL/FORTRAN apps through IBM Wazi aaS, as compared to Z Development and Test environment (ZD&T) on x86. ­­[1]

Consistent with the regulated workloads of many IBM Z clients today, IBM Wazi aaS will allow self-provisioning of a z/OS Virtual Server Instance on IBM Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) — a logically isolated, highly-secured private space running in IBM Cloud.

Extend without compromise

For IBM customers who have mission-critical applications running on IBM LinuxONE and Linux on Z, IBM will soon introduce IBM LinuxONE Bare Metal Servers, an option to use additional capacity off-premises, on-demand, without sacrificing performance and security standards.

LinuxONE Bare Metal will allow customers to do the following:

• Dev/test without the need to purchase additional hardware.
• Accommodate unexpected spikes in usage with ability to provision additional capacity.
• Take advantage of the ability to deploy in various regions for disaster recovery.

LinuxONE Bare Metal Servers are designed for workloads that require high-performance and single-tenancy compute and are designed to help clients speed up time to market, provide a consistent customer experience, and meet sustainability initiatives.

Build without compromise

Businesses are looking to accelerate delivery of new value to their customers. Combining the agility and portability of the Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform and IBM Cloud Paks® with the security, scalability and reliability of IBM Z and LinuxONE, clients can build new cloud-native apps, modernize existing applications and co-locate applications with the organization’s core data. Red Hat OpenShift and IBM Cloud Paks are designed to help do the following: 

• Improve developer productivity.
• Reduce time to market.
• Co-locate cloud native apps on IBM Z so they are next to mission critical data.

A growing number of clients and service providers are using Red Hat OpenShift for Z and LinuxONE to build today’s business applications more seamlessly. Read more in the blog post “Accelerate application development with Red Hat and IBM Z.”

Protect without compromise

IBM Z® is at the forefront of security and resiliency technologies and is an integral part of risk mitigation for regulated industries. IBM Cloud is designed to deliver the same industry-leading confidential computing security found in IBM Z. Delivered via IBM Cloud® Hyper Protect Services, it features ‘Keep Your Own Key’ encryption capabilities backed by the highest level of security certification commercially available. [2]

This also enables financial institutions to manage a range of end-to-end digital asset management use cases like cryptocurrency custody, trading, tokenization, smart contract management and decentralized finance (DeFi).

The best of both worlds

When extending IBM z/OS and IBM LinuxONE capabilities to the IBM Cloud, IBM will be continuing to enhance its value proposition to the market so now clients can embrace change while leveraging existing investments.

• Read the press release.
• Visit the IBM Wazi-as-a-Service via IBM Cloud page.
• Visit the IBM LinuxONE page.

[1] Performance results based on IBM internal tests running application compiles on an experimental IBM Cloud z/OS V2R4 Virtual Server Instance (VSI) with profile mz2o-2×16 versus on IBM ZD&T EE V13.3 running in an IBM Cloud x86 VSI with profile mx2-2×16. IBM ZD&T was running on Ubuntu 20.4 on a x86 Production VSI with a Cascade Lake Intel Xeon Platinum CPU @ 2.4GHz. Both z/OS VSI and ZD&T were configured with 2 vCPUs, 16GB memory, and 1 TB Block storage with 10 IOPS/GB. The following applications were compiled: a Java application that processes SMF records, a C application that processes IBM Z hardware diagnostic data, a COBOL application that creates and updates records on a file and a FORTRAN statistical application. Results may vary. 

[2] FIPS 140-2 Security Level 4 provides the highest commercial level of cloud security defined in this standard. At this security level, the physical security mechanisms provide a comprehensive envelope of protection around the cryptographic module with the intent of detecting and responding to all unauthorized attempts at physical access. See https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/cryptographic-module-validation-program/standards and https://csrc.nist.gov/Projects/cryptographic-module-validation-program/Certificate/3410.

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.