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SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Until recently, CTOs and data center managers rarely put the terms “mainframe” and “cloud” into the same sentence, let alone combine them in a workload solution. Historically, there has been quite a bit of separation between those two IT genres; in many people’s minds, they represent old-school vs. new-school.
This isn’t necessarily true anymore, because the relationship between the cloud and mainframes is evolving into a closer union. CA Technologies and IBM, for two major IT players, have been demonstrative about this.
To extend the reach of IBM’s new zCloud, the two longtime partners on June 5 announced a strategic agreement to provide cloud services for enterprises and their mainframes—no matter how legacy they may be.
CA, which made the deal public at its second annual Built to Change Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., said the partnership includes updated mainframe software management solutions, a new development toolset and improved operational efficiencies for zCloud users.
Mainframes a Mainstay in IT Ops Worldwide
In this, the Cloud IT Era, a lot of people forget that nearly 80 percent of corporate data is still managed on mainframes, according to a majority of industry analysts. In fact, 92 of the top 100 world banks use mainframes because there are regulatory reasons to provide a reliable environment that is updatable, secure and scalable. zCloud was built to ensure that IBM users have the managed services and capacity when required, under any circumstances.
IBM and CA will provide clients with a mainframe software platform that aims to:
- help develop core applications using state-of-the-art development tools and make the platform easily accessible to the emerging generation of developers;
- test and modify applications in place, making it easier for companies to do MF test and development in the cloud;
- monitor applications in the cloud and integrate into existing digital performance management solutions; and
- access regulatory compliance services to make it easier for clients to protect their clients personally identifiable information.
CA Releases Freely Available Brightside
Along with this announcement, CA released to general availability its CA Brightside toolkit, a new-gen suite of development tools that enables clients to control, script and develop on the mainframe using similar tools and processes as they would use in any other cloud platform. The Brightside Community Edition is a freely available download.
CA Brightside works with best-in-breed developer tools, including Visual Studio, to integrate the mainframe into a company’s enterprise DevOps initiatives. The company said that this will become available first to clients using the IBM Cloud.
CA and IBM said they will continue to partner on operational capabilities to imrpove zCloud efficiencies. These initiatives include streamlining client onboarding, automating operations and speeding the provisioning process for new environments.
Using this relationship, the companies are architecting new ways to enable clients to develop, run and manage mainframe applications in the cloud. User can access development, testing, application management and regulatory compliance services to deliver operational efficiencies and workforce agility, CA said.
The software and services are available today to all IBM Cloud Managed Services on z Systems client environments in North America and will be rolled out globally throughout the rest of 2018, the companies said.
For more information, go here.