IBM Concert® for Z is an AI-powered mainframe resiliency platform that helps organizations simplify operations & proactively manage risks by unifying siloed data into actionable insights thereby ensuring uptime, trust, and customer confidence. With the introduction of a new AI agent, the IBM Operations Agent for Z, which is powered by IBM watsonx Assistant for Z, users can now leverage the integrated chat interface to accelerate troubleshooting capabilities and root cause analysis.
The Operations Agent for Z enhances mainframe operations by enabling operators to investigate anomalous events through natural language interactions, eliminating the need for complex manual queries.
Operators can quickly analyze Workload Manager (WLM) performance issues, understand impacts on service class priorities and goals, and gain valuable insights into CICS transaction performance and region health. This accelerates root cause analysis, improves decision making, and enables proactive issue resolution, ultimately enhancing system reliability and service quality.
Key benefits for using Operations agent:
- Natural Language Investigation
Operators can investigate anomalous events conversationally, eliminating complex manual queries.
- Real-Time WLM Performance Insights
Get insights on service class performance issues, including priorities and goals, to assess business impact.
- Accelerated Root Cause Analysis
Quickly identify and analyze performance deviations to enable faster issue resolution.
- Improved System Reliability
Proactive anomaly detection and resolution reduce downtime and enhance service quality.
- CICS Transaction & Region Health Monitoring
Access detailed anomalous events on transaction status and region health for proactive action.
Below illustrates a sample scenario using the Operations Agent for Z to troubleshoot issues related to CICS transaction.
Operations Agent for Z can interpret natural language queries and answer questions accordingly, whether it's understanding an error code, terminology or help in troubleshooting. The agent can also help in providing suggestions to a certain query and propose steps to resolve an issue.
Let's take an example of a scenario.
"It’s early morning, July 11th, 2025. At around 5:30 AM, the customer support desk reports that the credit check application is failing.
The Application Support team traces the slowdown to the ABOE transaction, which is either running very slowly or failing outright. Since this is tied to credit approvals, the issue quickly escalates to the CICS System Programming team.”
Instead of manually combing through logs or dashboards, the sprogrammer team uses the IBM Operations Agent’s conversational interface to start investigating live system data.
Below are sample questions a system programmer can ask:
To summarise, in just a few minutes, using natural language with IBM Operations Agent for Z, the team traced the incident directly to a Short-on-Storage condition in CICST11D of PLEX11 at 5:38 AM.
Instead of hours of log analysis or waiting for expert availability, the root cause was confirmed almost instantly.
This empowers the team not just to fix the issue, but to take proactive measures, whether tuning memory thresholds, reviewing workload spikes, or preventing future Short-on-Storage (SOS) events.
That’s the power of conversational troubleshooting with the IBM Operations Agent, making mainframe operations faster, smarter, and more resilient.
Architecture of Operations Agent for Z
SMEs can simply type or ask questions in natural language. Their request flows into IBM watsonx Orchestrate, which acts as the central hub. Within Orchestrate, we have the watsonx Assistant for Z extension, orchestrator agents, and other AI assistants that understand intent and manage workflows.
Under the hood, these requests are powered by foundation models like Llama, running on x86 infrastructure. That’s what gives the Assistant its natural language understanding. The orchestration layer then connects to IBM Z-specific components, such as the and the RAG plus data ingestion module, which lets organizations bring their own documents to enrich the AI context.
We have the Operations Agent container and Concert for Z feeding real-time operational insights from the mainframe. All of this is deployed on Red Hat OpenShift with the Software Hub infrastructure, ensuring scalability and security.
Conclusion
IBM Concert® for Z introduces Agentic AI through the Operations Agent for Z, powered by watsonx Assistant for Z, redefining mainframe operations with intelligent automation and natural language interaction.
This innovation enables operators to investigate anomalies conversationally, analyze WLM and CICS performance in real time, and resolve issues proactively, reducing downtime and improving service quality. In one example, a Short-on-Storage (SOS) issue was diagnosed within minutes using the agent’s conversational interface, eliminating hours of manual analysis.
Under the hood, watsonx Orchestrate acts as the AI hub, supported by foundation models for natural language understanding, AIOps integration, and Concert for Z insights, all deployed on Red Hat OpenShift for scalability and security.
In essence, Agentic AI in Concert for Z makes mainframe operations faster, smarter, and more resilient through the power of conversational AI and real-time analytics.
Want to Learn More?
Want to learn more about IBM Concert for Z our integration with watsonx Assistant for Z, or to request a custom demonstration of how Operations Agent for Z elevates your performance team to improve reliability and optimize performance, visit our website here:
IBM watsonx Assistant for Z: https://www.ibm.com/products/watsonx-assistant-for-z