Use generative AI for accelerated and simplified modernization
Transforming mainframe applications
Mainframe application modernization empowers organizations to create agile, cost-effective and scalable solutions by using modern technologies. This approach unlocks new value from existing investments, keeping applications competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Modernizing outdated components, improving code quality, and streamlining architecture reduce technical debt, making maintenance easier and future enhancements more efficient.
Organizations gain the flexibility to adapt quickly to changing needs, optimize development cycles, and enable seamless integration and data sharing in hybrid cloud environments.
Equipping developers with modern tools and technologies boosts creativity and accelerates exceptional application development, with generative AI playing a key role.
Adopting modern security frameworks and automated compliance checks strengthens data protection, mitigates risks, and ensures adherence to regulatory standards in hybrid and cloud environments.
Use cases
Explore the "entry points" outlined in the "Mainframe application modernization guide" that provide targeted approaches for organizations to modernize their mainframe environments based on their unique goals and challenges.
Entry point: Enhance and extend applications
Organizations seeking to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market can focus on enhancing and extending their mainframe applications to deliver new value and capabilities. This involves modernizing existing applications by adding new features, improving performance and integrating modern interfaces like web and mobile. Also, businesses can extend their applications by incorporating new technologies such as microservices, APIs and cloud-based services. By enhancing and extending these applications, companies can better meet customer expectations, quickly respond to market demands and open up new revenue streams, all while leveraging the stability and power of their existing mainframe infrastructure.
IBM watsonx Code Assistant™ for Z helps you understand, refactor and transform applications using an AI-assisted cloud-native experience. Use it to:
- analyze existing COBOL code and suggest optimizations
- automate many aspects of the code transformation process
- integrate mainframe applications with modern technologies
- minimize the risk of manual coding errors
- empowers development teams by providing them with advanced tools
Entry point: Integrate across hybrid cloud
For organizations looking to leverage the benefits of both on-premises and cloud environments, integrating mainframe applications across a hybrid cloud is crucial. This involves modernizing applications to help ensure they can seamlessly interact with cloud services and other modern technologies through APIs and other integration methods. Hybrid cloud integration allows businesses to achieve greater flexibility, scalability and efficiency by enabling their mainframe applications to function as part of a broader cloud ecosystem.
By using IBM z/OS® Connect, organizations can use open APIs and event-driven architecture to integrate hybrid applications. Use it to:
- simplify the creation of APIs that expose mainframe functionalities
- allow data on the mainframe to be accessed and used by cloud services
- integrate mainframe applications into microservices-based architectures
- reduce the complexity of moving workloads and integrating mainframe systems into hybrid cloud environments
Entry point: Simplify information sharing and data access
Organizations that need to simplify information sharing and enhance data access can focus on data modernization. This involves transforming legacy data structures and interfaces to make data more accessible and usable across various platforms and by different stakeholders. By modernizing data access, businesses can improve collaboration, enable real-time data sharing and harness advanced analytics, leading to more informed decision-making and operational efficiency.
With IBM Z® Digital Integration Hub, you can enable fast, real-time information flow between your systems of record and hybrid cloud applications. Use it to:
- get real-time, low-latency access to mainframe data for modern applications
- simplify data access by offloading query workloads
- consolidate data from multiple sources into a unified view
- simplify and standardize data sharing across the enterprise
- easily extend data integration capabilities without disrupting existing operations
Entry point: Adopt Enterprise DevOps and observability
To improve agility and accelerate time-to-market, businesses can adopt enterprise DevOps practices and enhance observability in their mainframe environments. This involves modernizing the application pipeline to support continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), automating testing and increasing visibility into application performance. By integrating DevOps practices, companies can streamline development processes, reduce errors and deliver updates more quickly, resulting in faster response times to market demands.
The IBM Z DevOps portfolio provides a comprehensive set of tools and solutions to facilitate this transformation:
- Application Delivery Foundation for z/OS for CI/CD
- Test Accelerator for z/OS for automated testing and quality assurance
- Instana Observability for IBM Z for end-to-end monitoring capabilities
- DevOps Deploy for continuous delivery of any application to any environment
Entry point: Make AI-driven decisions at scale
Organizations looking to use AI for business insights can modernize their mainframe applications to support AI-driven decision-making at scale. This involves integrating AI and machine learning capabilities with mainframe data and applications to automate complex decisions and predictions. By focusing on AI-driven decision-making, businesses can enhance their operational efficiency, improve accuracy in forecasting and drive innovation by making data-driven decisions faster and at a larger scale.
The IBM Z AI portfolio helps uncover insights and gain trusted, actionable results quickly without requiring data movement:
- IBM Machine Learning for z/OS for real-time AI inference and decision-making
- AI Toolkit for IBM Z and LinuxONE for high-performance AI processing
- IBM Db2 AI for z/OS for enhanced data utilization and model accuracy
- IBM Z Deep Learning Compiler for scalable AI model training and deployment
- IBM Z Operational Decision Manager for AI-driven operational insights and automation
Entry point: Automate and standardize IT
For organizations seeking to improve operational efficiency and reduce manual errors, automating and standardizing mainframe workflows is a key modernization approach. This involves implementing automation tools to handle routine tasks and standardizing processes across the mainframe environment. By automating and standardizing, businesses can increase productivity, reduce operational costs and help ensure consistency in their operations, leading to higher reliability and faster execution of business processes.
With Red Hat® Ansible® Certified Content for IBM Z, connect IBM Z to your more comprehensive enterprise automation strategy through the Ansible Automation Platform. Use it to:
- access prebuilt Ansible playbooks to automate repetitive and complex tasks
- enforce consistent configurations across their mainframe systems
- integrate with existing CI/CD pipelines
- scale automation across large and diverse mainframe environments
- reduce operational time and costs by automating routine tasks
- automate compliance checks and security configurations
Entry point: Optimize existing applications while gaining cost efficiency
Organizations aiming to reduce the high costs associated with maintaining and operating legacy mainframes can start by optimizing their existing applications. This involves replatforming or rehosting applications to more cost-efficient and scalable infrastructure, such as cloud environments, while maintaining or improving performance. By focusing on optimizing existing applications, companies can achieve significant cost savings, improve resource utilization and extend the life of their critical systems.
Use current software and hardware and take advantage of performance optimization tools, specialty processors and newer cloud-like consumption-based pricing models:
- IBM z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) can help with cost reduction for specialized workloads and increase throughput and efficiency
- Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) provide a cost-effective solution for running Linux applications on the mainframe and help optimize resource utilization
- Tailored Fit Pricing for IBM Z allows organizations to align their mainframe pricing with actual workload usage and performance requirements
Products
Provides a bridge between traditional mainframe systems and modern cloud-based applications. IBM z/OS Connect allows organizations to expose mainframe assets, such as COBOL programs, CICS® transactions and IMS services as RESTful APIs. These APIs enable mainframe applications to communicate and interact with cloud services, web applications, mobile apps and other systems in a standardized and secure way.
Deploy and run AI models directly on IBM Z, enabling real-time inference and decision-making. By bringing AI models closer to where the data resides (on the mainframe), businesses can reduce latency and make instant, AI-driven decisions, such as fraud detection, risk assessment and customer personalization.
Connect IBM Z systems to your wider enterprise automation strategy through the Ansible Automation Platform ecosystem. This certified content enables organizations to automate and standardize their mainframe IT operations, improving efficiency, consistency and reliability across their mainframe environments.
Provides a bridge between traditional mainframe systems and modern cloud-based applications. IBM z/OS Connect allows organizations to expose mainframe assets, such as COBOL programs, CICS® transactions and IMS services as RESTful APIs. These APIs enable mainframe applications to communicate and interact with cloud services, web applications, mobile apps and other systems in a standardized and secure way.
Deploy and run AI models directly on IBM Z, enabling real-time inference and decision-making. By bringing AI models closer to where the data resides (on the mainframe), businesses can reduce latency and make instant, AI-driven decisions, such as fraud detection, risk assessment and customer personalization.
Connect IBM Z systems to your wider enterprise automation strategy through the Ansible Automation Platform ecosystem. This certified content enables organizations to automate and standardize their mainframe IT operations, improving efficiency, consistency and reliability across their mainframe environments.
Case studies
M&T Bank enabled seamless, real-time data flow between core banking and cloud applications by using Z Digital Integration Hub.
Atruvia AG modernized core banking apps to support over 30,000 ATMs across Germany by using IBM Z for a low-risk, high-volume solution.
BBVA Francés optimized its IBM Z platform to deliver faster, more responsive retail banking services to customers.
BNP Paribas revamped its IBM Z environment to reduce costs, enhance quality and accelerate software development.
