Better together: Systems of innovation (part four)

12 April, 2017
David H. Deans
IBM

We’ve been redefining digital business over the last decade, but there’s a whole spectrum of optimized application development opportunities yet to explore. This is the fourth and final part of this series. We can help you apply your IT infrastructure as the catalyst for creating innovative new digital ventures or business models and enhancing your current lines of business.

Compelling virtualization advantages

Virtualizing your IT environment on a z Systems mainframe is a proven way to establish a more responsive platform for collocating the diversity of essential applications, while avoiding the predictable high costs associated with maintaining and expanding a typical distributed server solution.

A z Systems platform running Linux technology can assist when applications and systems need to access data at incredible speeds. It also integrates tightly with other platforms to increase the efficiency with which your data is used, and creates enterprise-wide economies of scale.

IBM Linux OS on z Systems takes advantage of the powerful z Systems mainframe platform. It’s designed to let you grow capacity inside the mainframe without affecting the running environment. In addition, z Systems technology offers extremely low latency from one operational virtual machine to another, for even greater responsiveness and productivity gains.

Just-in-time resource provisioning

With open-source Linux on z Systems, you can consolidate and deploy diverse new workloads alongside your existing applications while capitalizing on the mainframe’s ability to share resources — including processor, memory, network, input/output (I/O) and truly unique cryptographic features.

Plus, those workloads can also be deployed and scaled quickly because you can create new virtual servers on demand in minutes to more efficiently and cost-effectively handle unexpected peaks and valleys in user demand.

Utilizing the Linux OS on the reliable, security-enhanced z Systems platform puts mainframes squarely in the middle of the open source arena of enterprise DevOps, platform as a service, application development and APIs.

Fueled by the adoption of a comprehensive stack of open-source components including the operating system, hypervisor and application runtime layers, z Systems technology can help clients develop and deploy new applications with significant responsiveness using some of the latest approaches and tools.

Better app portability and performance

Porting diverse workloads over to a z Systems mainframe and running them in Linux OS instances can give you the operational simplicity and efficiency of a single server with the powerful scalability and responsive flexibility of a massive server farm.

The result is a reliable, mission-critical framework able to address the workload needs of even your most data-intensive applications and processes. However, the power of Linux on z Systems to transform workloads doesn’t stop there.

Rapid deployment, straightforward configuration and easy management of virtual servers can help to provide massive scalability at a moment’s notice, so you can cope with potential surges in traffic. The system can even be configured to intelligently manage server resource allocation based on workload needs.

Meanwhile, built-in resiliency analytics that drive near-real-time diagnostics can be used to address IT problems quickly, minimize availability lapses and intervene before IT problems become severe. With capacity to handle such demands, it’s easy to see why Linux on z Systems is an ideal way to support multi-application workloads.

Example workload integration benefits

Many of our valued clients have already utilized the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) processors within their z Systems servers. We asked researchers at IDC to perform an assessment of how these capabilities are being applied in the enterprise. They concluded: “It is instructive to look at how some organizations have collocated their systems of record with their systems of engagement on the mainframe by deploying the former on z/OS and the latter on IFLs with Linux side by side.”

Read the insightful IDC white paper, then reach out to an IBM representative or business partner to learn more. Discover how you can gain a “systems of innovation” advantage. And go back to the beginning and read part one of my series here.

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