What's new in the current release

IBM Automation foundation

This new offering enables the creation, deployment, and optimization of enhanced automation and AI features.

• Deploys robotic process automation (RPA) capabilities

  This integration option enables the deployment of RPA features for screen scraping and metadata inference that extract data from legacy applications.

• Adds ability to use Process Mining

  In the many integrations deployed in Cloud Pak for Integration, which comprise multiple steps, there may be opportunities for improvement. However, it can be difficult to understand where inefficiencies exist. Process Mining is an additional component that can identify areas where inefficiencies exist and can suggest improvements.

• IBM Automation Foundation assets (Automation Assets)

  Previously known as IBM Cloud Pak for Integration Asset Repository, this capability offers the same convenient service for asset sharing and reuse and can still be installed and accessed in the Platform Navigator.

Socialize your Kafka event sources with Event Endpoint Management

Create an AsyncAPI document to describe your application that produces events to Kafka topics, and publish it to a developer portal. Application developers can discover the event source and configure their applications to subscribe to the stream of events.

"Common services" is now "foundational services"

IBM Cloud Pak foundational services, which are shared across the Cloud Paks, now offer audit logging, features for managing users and user profile settings, and a streamlined UI. There are also improvements to monitoring, licensing, and identity and access management. For a complete list of updates, see What's new in the foundational services

API test generation leveraging AI

API test generation uses automation, AI, and machine learning to generate potentially hundreds of new tests that reduce the potential for API users to encounter errors. This capability can help provide higher quality solutions, with lower impact on development resources and time.

Enhancements and additions to DataPower Gateway Virtual Edition entitlements

Organizations using Cloud Pak for Integration entitlements to deploy DataPower Gateway Virtual Edition benefit from additional enhancements in the new release. Organizations can now deploy DataPower Integration Module—when running DataPower Gateway Virtual Gateway Edition—outside of Cloud Pak for Integration (standalone). While doing so, they can also deploy the Application Optimization module and the B2B module, if required.

Additional storage options supported in Storage Suite

IBM Storage Suite for Cloud Paks is now supported across all the Cloud Pak for Integration capabilities and runtimes. Select the appropriate storage provider from Storage Suite based on the requirements of the particular capabilities and runtimes. For example, IBM Spectrum Virtualize is available for capabilities and runtimes that require Block/RWO storage, and IBM Spectrum Scale is available for capabilities and runtimes that require File/RWX storage, as documented in Storage.

For the entitlement to Storage Suite now included with IBM Cloud Paks, some capabilities and runtimes now support IBM Spectrum Virtualize and IBM Spectrum® Scale as storage options.

Red Hat OpenShift Container Storage continues to be supported across all integration capabilities and runtimes.

Early access (evaluation use only) to a new high-availability option for MQ Advanced deployments in Cloud Pak for Integration

Isolate deployment in a namespace

Kubernetes namespaces are a way to partition a cluster and to divide that cluster between multiple users. It is now possible to deploy Cloud Pak for Integration in a specific namespace in a cluster and to isolate it to that namespace without requiring elevated security permissions.

Additional smart connectors

Aspera Enterprise Platform add-on

For more information, see Aspera Enterprise.

API Calls add-on

The API Calls add-on to Cloud Pak for Integration provides deployment of the API Management integration capability, priced by measured API Call volumes or Virtual Processor Cores (VPCs). This add-on includes entitlement to OpenShift for the deployment of the API Management integration capability. For more information see Tracking API volume for auditing and compliance.

New operator for demos

• System requirements are now located in the Planning section.
• Information on deploying capabilities and runtimes (like App Connect and MQ) are co-located with the other installation content.
• The Operations Dashboard Web Console guide has been moved out of the System administration section and is now under Tracing transactions with Operations Dashboard.