DEVOPSdigest

IBM announced 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.

"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, VP, 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."

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 less. According to internal IBM benchmarks, z/OS development on the IBM Cloud performs up to 15x faster than comparable x86 development and test alternatives.

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.

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

- Standardize IT automation to empower developers with access to open source environments such as Kubernetes