IBM Z is the optimal platform in a hybrid multicloud world
As we try to bring normalcy to our everyday lives, it is encouraging to know that in IT, the need to uncover smarter solutions to IT challenges and opportunities remains consistent. IBM continues to deliver quarterly solution updates designed to promote IBM Z as a platform for continuous innovation in a hybrid multicloud world. This time developers were top of mind.
Cloud-native development
It has been said that “the developer is king.” If that is true, then the enterprise developer’s throne is Wazi! In May, we announced IBM Wazi for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces, and with a slight name change to IBM Wazi Developer for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces (IBM Wazi Developer), we are now delivering a containerized cloud-native development environment for z/OS.
With IBM Wazi Developer, we offer our broad set of choices for integrated development environments . . . from Eclipse and Eclipse Che-based solutions all the way to support for Visual Studio Code. And yes, still supporting popular Z development languages such as COBOL, PL1 and Assembler. IBM Wazi Developer also includes a fully containerized z/OS sandbox that runs on Red Hat OpenShift, which can help improve a developer’s ability to iterate with speed and confidence.
To round out the developer experience, we have introduced version 15 of IBM Developer for z/OS, a premier development environment for z/OS developers, which is included in version 3.3 of Application Delivery Foundation for z/OS, a full workbench for the developer. These tools are designed to modernize the z/OS software development process for coding, debugging and testing for individual developers.
Automated testing
To help you shift left testing and support continuous integration, we have enhanced solutions. IBM Wazi Virtual Test Platform1.1 (generally available Dec 11th) is designed to help developers and testers perform transaction and batch testing earlier in the development process and introduce support for IBM IMS and IBM MQ from batch. This platform will allow you to record transactions and batch jobs, and with the recorded data, execute the test without the need for original middleware or data. This can help empower mainframe shops to modernize, innovate and test their applications early in the development process without impacting existing environments and applications.
For our hybrid cloud developers, the newest version of the Z Development and Test tool is designed to deliver Docker provisioning capability to both support cloud integration and speed up environment provisioning time to private or public cloud.
AIOps
Watson AIOps 2.1 has the ability to ingest IBM Z logs and events and add them to the entire set of data sources available to have a better understanding of what and where potential issues might be, inclusive of Z. Now with more robust visibility into IBM Z systems using log and event data, you can gain back time to tackle issues quickly and get on to the innovative things you like doing best.
Confidential computing with Hyper Protect Services
Confidential computing with IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Servers is key for our customers like Mainboq, which enables digital asset trading and supports more than 30 exchanges, over 30,000 currency pairs, and 10 algorithms.
We also recently announced Bring Your Own Image (BYOI) for IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Servers. This allows you to choose an operating system from a variety of open Linux distributions. You can also bundle your own software with the image and build from the ground up to your specifications. The final image can then be deployed in IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Virtual Servers, enabling customers that have a hybrid cloud setup and are looking to use the public cloud for dev/test of their applications or want to leverage the cloud for high availability.
As noted above, we are all-in on hybrid cloud! Continuous delivery of innovation is what we strive for, and with this next turn of the crank I am proud of the team in fulfilling our vision of making Z the hybrid cloud platform of choice.