Overview of WML for z/OS

IBM Watson Machine Learning for z/OS (WML for z/OS or WMLz) is an enterprise machine learning solution that runs on IBM® Z. You can run WML for z/OS as a standalone solution or infuse it into your enterprise AI capability as a scalable platform.

WML for z/OS provides a web user interface (UI), various APIs, and a web administration dashboard. It provides a powerful suite of easy-to-use tools for model development and deployment, user management, and system administration. These tools simplify the machine learning operations for your key personas, including system administrators, machine learning administrators, data scientists, and application developers. For example, while system administrators can use the administration dashboard to keep the services up and running, machine learning administrators can deploy machine learning models as services to CICS®, Java™, and other applications on Z. As a result, application developers can utilize these services in their applications to make real-time predictions.

Figure 1. WML for z/OS architecture
Begin figure description. WML for z/OS architecture. End figure description

WMLz runs on IBM z/OS and leverages proven IBM machine learning capabilities on Z, including IBM Open Data Analytics for z/OS (IzODA). IzODA serves as the data processing cluster for WML for z/OS and delivers advanced data analytics through z/OS Spark (Spark), z/OS Anaconda (Anaconda), and Mainframe Data Service (MDS). While Spark provides the best-of-breed analytics engine for large-scale data processing and Anaconda supplies a wide range of popular Python packages for model training, MDS connects those data processing engines to your enterprise data sources on Z, such as Db2®, IMS, VSAM, and SMF.

In short, as an enterprise-grade machine learning solution on Z, WML for z/OS provides the following unmatched capabilities:

  • Secure Z platform for running machine learning with data in place
  • Enterprise grade performance and high availability
  • Flexible choice of machine learning languages
  • Full lifecycle management of models
  • User-centric UIs for model development and management, user management, and system administration
  • Developer-friendly APIs for applications on the Z

With these capabilities, WML for z/OS helps you maximize the value of your mission-critical data. By keeping your data where it originates and your AI capabilities where your applications run, WML for z/OS helps significantly reduce the cost, security risk, and time to turn your raw data into valuable insights.