Digital data is increasingly framed as the basis of contemporary economies, representing an important new asset class. As organisations look to extract the full value of their digital data to help keep their businesses successful there is also the realisation of the spread of digital data; often making it difficult to identify or even extract. Digital data exists in pretty much every corner of every business – ranging from simple excel spreadsheets to mainframe-maintained data.
Everybody knows that Informatica is a market leader in Data Management, as attested to by being leader in multiple Gartner™ “Magic Quadrants” for multiple years. However, did you also know that part of that highly acclaimed Data Management capability allows Informatica Customers to work seamlessly with both I.B.M. z/Series™ and i/Series™ platforms to provide access to Files and Databases residing on them? In-fact, Informatica has provided mainframe integration of various mainframe data sources over the last two decades through its PowerExchange™ portfolio of connectivity components. PowerExchange Mainframe & Change Data Capture (CDC) connectivity components allow for cost effective exchange of data, in most cases, allowing read, write and CDC capabilities to the I.B.M.™ platforms whilst still ensuring maximum data protection. Helping integrate all enterprise layers of data, no matter where the data resides, into uniformed, sanitised and trusted data stores through Informatica Data Management solutions enables that data to be consumed by new business applications driving growth and profitability.
Informatica Customers have benefited from this unparalleled addition of “one-shop” mainframe data sourcing to the overall breadth of Informatica connectivity; helping maximise the reach into the entire enterprises data landscape. Access to the digital data is provided through simple, intuitive and speedy Graphical User interfaces helping users quickly extend their reach for data into the complexities of the mainframe data without being mainframe experts. Furthermore, Informatica provides the technology for intelligent data transfer, that is rather than having to perform complete data refreshes when needing to update Data Repositories PowerExchange can simply identify the changes to the source data, using PowerExchange Change Data Capture technology, and simply transfer the delta updates since it was last refreshed. This saves not only time but also reduces the costs associated to extracting and transferring the data to where it is needed. Change Data Capture does not need to have special content added to any of the data stores, it operates in the main, by looking at the log files generally provisioned for the data stores own recovery or restore purposes.
PowerExchange Mainframe Change Data Capture components enable the access to the most common data stores on the I.B.M. z/Series and I/Series platforms including:
z/Series
Adabas (Software AG)
CA Datacom (Broadcom Inc.)
CA IDMS (Broadcom Inc.)
Db2 (I.B.M.)
IMS (I.B.M.)
VSAM: ESDS, KSDS & RRDS (I.B.M.)
Sequential File (I.B.M)
i/Series
Db2 (I.B.M.)
Member Files
PowerExchange also interacts with the most common mainframe security applications in use, namely RACF, ACFII and TopSecret to ensure high levels of security are maintained.
PowerExchange Mainframe and CDC can be consumed by several Informatica Data Management solutions, whether on-premises or now that many customers are looking to Cloud services, also within Informatica Intelligent Cloud Services.
PowerExchange Mainframe and CDC components simplify connecting to and extracting data from I.B.M. mainframe platforms.
In my next blog “Mainframe: Contributing to Customer Cloud Modernisation Journey” I’ll explain how PowerExchange Mainframe and CDC, as part of Informatica Data Management Cloud, is also helping Customers to provide additional data to their new Cloud based Data Warehouse/Data Analytics services.