IBM Mainframe application modernization on AWS: Modernize to fuel growth and innovation

This blog post provides an overview of IBM mainframe application modernization on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and highlights the new product and feature launches and announcement at AWS re:Invent 2022.

Importance of mainframe application modernization

We are experiencing monumental shifts across industry verticals following the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Everest Group's Combating COVID-19 Through Infrastructure-led Transformation:

“Enterprises are grappling with unprecedented challenges in the wake of the pandemic, including demand cuts, supply chain disruption, business and service continuity challenges, and cybersecurity risks, among others. The need of the hour is to identify relevant infrastructure transformation opportunities across workplace, cloud, network, and security. While infrastructure will play a key role in rescuing enterprises from this crisis, enterprises will have to take a holistic view and focus on evolving the services delivery model, seek efficiency and optimization measures, push forward modernization and digitalization initiatives, pivot to new business models, and invest in the talent of the future.”

Achieving new business models and innovating on behalf of customers requires organizations to contemplate how they can accelerate modernization efforts and digitally transform businesses across industries through technologies that unlock how applications, people, and systems interact with one another.

These business transformation efforts are forecasting rapid adoption across infrastructure and data center services. According to the IDC report COVID-19's Impact on Enterprise Cloud Spending, within cloud computing, “38% of companies expect to have spent 5% more on cloud in 2021 than was originally budgeted for. 31% of these directly blame the pandemic, while almost 20% blamed complexity.” Within mainframe computing, according to Forrester’s Infrastructure Survey, 2020, 53% of surveyed participants state that they plan to increase their use of mainframe over the next two years.

Enterprises are adopting public cloud and mainframe products at astronomical rates, and often these same organizations are interested in leveraging these technologies together to achieve their modernization goals. Developing systems, software, and operating systems, and integrating them together across a broad set of public, private, and edge environments, is the foundation of IBM’s Hybrid Cloud strategy.

IBM zSystems on AWS

IBM zSystems offers customers a powerful and secure platform that enables businesses to create, innovate, and build for the future. IBM zSystems, together with public cloud providers like AWS, can accelerate transformation by simplifying hybrid cloud adoption and application modernization while keeping data safe, encrypted, and resilient. IBM zSystems is optimized for core business transaction processing, and provides these capabilities through systems, software, and operating system products.

Supporting IBM’s hybrid cloud strategy requires industry-differentiated partnerships with public cloud providers, to drive new product offerings and thought leadership that helps integrate our industry-leading offerings with the breadth and depth of cloud services.

IBM Z Cloud and Modernization Stack on AWS

Earlier this year, IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) came together to help businesses achieve their mainframe modernization goals, enabling customers to leverage IBM and AWS together.

At IBM we are focused on listening to our customers, and they have shared that they want solutions that help them accelerate mainframe application modernization and leverage the strengths of both IBM zSystems and AWS.

Customers have shared their interests around mainframe modernization on AWS. They have indicated that an ideal strategy would allow them to embrace cloud-native development standards, languages, and AWS Services. These customers want to innovate rapidly within their mainframe environments without significant re-architecture or significant refactoring, and extend this innovation into the cloud with value-added services. They indicate that leveraging both AWS and IBM mainframes together would optimize investments, resources, or project risks for modernization efforts. Doing so would allow them to continue to leverage compliance certifications and accreditations in their data centers, which can often take years and considerable bandwidth to achieve. Finally, they want to focus on open standards-based integration and interoperability for simplified and secure access to mainframe applications and data by AWS services.

Today, we are excited to announce the launch of IBM Z Cloud and Modernization Stack on AWS and in AWS Marketplace. IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack on AWS helps you accelerate your mainframe modernization journey on AWS, and provides a range of capabilities from IBM that can be deployed on Red Hat OpenShift Cloud Platform on AWS.

IBM Z Cloud and Modernization Stack provides:

• Mainframe augmentation with new channels and digital apps -- Customers can simplify access to applications and data with z/OS Connect to create secure APIs on AWS with security network connectivity to z/OS in minutes. Exposing these APIs on AWS enables microservices transformation for enterprises with mainframes. Users can select to use the no-code API creation capability and manage APIs on Amazon API Gateway, IBM API Connect, or other third-party API management platforms with swagger support.
• Cloud-native development for z/OS applications with choice of programing languages -- Customers can achieve enterprise agility with DevOps leveraging industry-standard open tools. IBM zSystems enables customers to develop in new programming languages including Python, Node.JS, and GoLang. They can build new apps with these languages, or edit, build, and debug existing z/OS applications with COBOL, PL1, Java, or Assembler using a broad set of industry-leading Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) . They can integrate code changes into AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeCommit , and AWS CodeBuild. They can develop and test z/OS applications in an AWS sandbox, powered by Red Hat OpenShift Cloud Platform on AWS, with Wazi sandbox. They can achieve rapid application and dependency analysis to refactor code using Wazi Analyze.
• Enterprise automation across z/OS and AWS environments -- Customers can empower developers to test on demand and embrace enterprise automation across z/OS and AWS. They can do this by automating the provisioning of z/OS resources with Ansible cookbooks to achieve GitOps and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) standards deployed on Red Hat OpenShift Cloud Platform on AWS. Centralizing AWS and IBM z/OS automation enables enterprises to focus on rapid-value creation, and mitigates the need for additional tooling across hybrid cloud environments.

Use cases

We have seen broad interest in mainframe application modernization across industries, including banking, automotive, aviation, insurance, stock-trading, and energy and utilities. These organizations have a large presence within the mainframe, and have localized mainframe infrastructure, often in close proximity to critical business functions. Leveraging the IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack enables these organizations to digitally transform and build new customer experiences with cloud-native APIs; accelerate innovation by embracing DevOps, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and GitOps practices; and embrace cloud-native programming languages that are easy and cost effective to develop.

Within the banking industry, we have a customer who wanted to build and deploy digital solutions (mobile and web apps) using Java, Node, Swift, and GoLang to securely connect to existing mainframe applications and data. This customer needed access to common tools that don’t require mainframe skills to implement the integrations. Using the API enablement capabilities available in the IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack (now available on AWS Marketplace), developers can create secure, fully RESTful z/OS APIs using OpenAPI standards to interact with mainframe data and resources. As a result, the customer achieved operational effectiveness for developers to create no-code APIs in minutes versus days or weeks. Next, they were able to enable AWS applications to securely interact with mainframe applications and data. Finally, they were able to minimize changes to existing mainframe applications to reduce business risk.

Within the automotive industry, we have a vehicle manufacturer that needed to quickly provide reproducible z/OS environments to match production systems. They were able to deploy a sandbox or target an existing z/OS system and drive repeatable automation and testing to the customer environment as needed. Doing so allowed the customer to create reproducible dev-and-test environments for their new application development. As a result, the client can use the provided tools to rapidly create and delete environments on z/OS.

AWS architecture

The architecture diagram in the following diagram shows you how to architect the IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack on AWS Infrastructure, integrate with AWS Services, and create secure network connectivity to IBM mainframes. For a deeper dive into the architecture, please review our detailed architecture and software development demo around Open Banking with the IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack on AWS in the links below.

Summary and next steps

To learn more, visit the IBM Developer AWS hub and check out the AWS Marketplace to review our mainframe application modernization offerings.

• Review the associated IBM Developer article "Enable modern applications to communicate with IBM Z systems using AWS services," which explores the capabilities of IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack that can help you accelerate your application modernization journey on AWS.
• View the IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack AWS Marketplace listing and deployment template.
• And check out the IBM Developer Amazon Web Services (AWS) hub to learn more about IBM and AWS.
• Contact your IBM representative to get a product overview, demo, or a deep dive.

About the IBM AWS partnership

For companies looking to enable and accelerate their customers' hybrid cloud journey by leveraging AWS’ cloud platform, IBM brings leading-edge technologies and expertise on AWS through a unique combination of IBM Consulting, Software, and as-a-service capabilities. From concept to scale, our end-to-end solutions and proven methods help companies modernize their applications and infrastructure with speed and consistency so businesses stay ahead of the curve.