Unlocking Value: How to Externalize Data from IBM Z

At the cornerstone of enterprise IT infrastructures worldwide you’ll find IBM Z, the gold standard for unmatched reliability, scalability and security, outstanding in a field of its own.

IBM Z systems remain unmatched in reliability, scalability, agility and security. These powerful mainframes safeguard vast reservoirs of mission-critical business data — from real-time financial transactions to comprehensive customer profiles — deeply embedded within long standing applications and databases. But in a world where cloud computing, real-time analytics, and app development drive innovation, surfacing, unlocking and integrating this data with the mainframe is no longer optional — it’s essential.

Bridging IBM Z with ecosystems means externalizing its invaluable data to fuel seamless integration, advanced analytics, and accelerated innovation across cloud and on-premises environments. In addition, organizations benefit when IT and Business teams can harness hidden insights, boost agility and transform traditional environments into dynamic, hybrid platforms without compromising robustness.

Here, based on specific scenarios facing customers, we explore practical strategies and cutting-edge technologies currently empowering organizations to efficiently replicate and share IBM Z data,

We listen to and work with our customers.

We had the good fortune to work closely with a new Informatica customer, an Educational Institution, based in the Texas area of the USA. Being new to Informatica, they reviewed all our offerings, especially around the connectivity to the IBM Z as they were established IBM Z users. Their preferred backbone database is Software AG’s ADABAS. Prior to Informatica, they used another vendor to replicate changes from ADABAS to the Cloud Infrastructure used by their staff and students for course curriculum activities. While the existing solution was suitable, there were concerns internally relating to its reliability and overall cost. Upon learning that Informatica could access ADABAS on the IBM Z, they were intrigued to compare it to their existing solution, and to discover whether it might be a viable alternative. Together, Informatica and IBM Z provide customers with the security, performance, and availability essential for enterprise operations.

Informatica PowerExchange: Enabling Advanced ADABAS Integration and CDC

Informatica PowerExchange is a trusted, enterprise-grade data integration powerhouse, delivering real-time data extraction and Change Data Capture (CDC) capabilities across a wide spectrum of source systems — including mission-critical mainframe environments including Software AG’s ADABAS database. While PowerExchange’s proven architecture provides a solid foundation for data replication and synchronization, early implementations faced challenges in capturing changes from ADABAS with minimal latency. Specifically, change detection for PowerExchange was dependent on the “pre” transfer of updates from ADABAS’ Active Log to Secondary Log files before CDC could occur, causing latency delays between the moment data changed in the ADABAS database and when those changes were reflected in downstream systems.

Despite these nuances, PowerExchange continues to be a vital bridge for organizations aiming to keep mainframe data in lockstep with analytical and operational environments. Supporting both on-premises and cloud strategies, its CDC capabilities enable businesses to maintain synchronized, near real-time data copies, essential for timely analytics, decision-making, and reporting — fuelling hybrid architectures where long standing IBM Z robustness naturally integrates with shifts in architectural agility.

PowerExchange doesn’t provide what the customer needs

Due to the limitations of the current PowerExchange offering — specifically its lack of support for true real-time CDC (Change Data Capture) from Software AG’s ADABAS database — the customer expressed interest in understanding the current and future capabilities of IDMC within the Cloud Data Ingestion and Replication service. As part of Informatica’s broader cloud modernization strategy, there may also be opportunities to include ADABAS, potentially enabling lower-latency options for CDC activities.

Expanding Data Ingestion Horizons: Informatica Adds Support for Software AG’s ADABAS

Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) continues to lead the way with its powerful Cloud Data Ingestion and Replication (CDIR) capabilities, designed to help organizations seamlessly extract, load, and synchronize data across any environment. Built to serve IT professionals, developers, data architects, and business users, CDIR modernizes data workflows by simplifying access to critical information — all while delivering enterprise-grade security, scalability, and operational ease.

A cornerstone of CDIR’s strength lies in its deep and native integration with IBM’s flagship mainframe ecosystem, including premier databases such as Db2 for IBM Z and Db2 for IBM i. This native support enables businesses to unify mission-critical IBM Z data with cloud and on-premises environments, ensuring a truly hybrid data architecture that powers agility and innovation.

The latest CDIR enhancements introduced Software AG’s ADABAS — an increasingly important high-performance, non-relational database used extensively across finance, insurance, government, and education — addressing a long-standing challenge around the latency issues associated with the Informatica PowerExchange solution for ADABAS Change Data Capture.

The addition of Software AG’s ADABAS to CDIR’s connector portfolio empowers Informatica enterprises running IBM Z environments to externalize their ADABAS data more efficiently, accelerating analytics, cloud modernization, and AI/ML initiatives without compromising the reliability and security of their core systems.

Crucially, this integration supports both initial bulk data loads and “real-time” Change Data Capture (CDC) by leveraging ADABAS’ Active Logs, ensuring real-time capture of data as it happens in the ADABAS database. This will dramatically reduce latency and open new possibilities, such as:

·       Delivering real-time analytics and operational reporting across hybrid environments

·       Enabling cloud data lake population to fuel AI and ML workloads

·       Seamlessly integrating mainframe data with any downstream applications or platforms

·       Supporting modernization journeys by decoupling critical data from proprietary, monolithic stacks

For enterprises leveraging IBM Z and Software AG’s ADABAS, these advancements represent a pivotal step toward the ability to synchronise data to the many supported targets in “real-time”, expanding data democratization, and fully embracing the modern hybrid data landscape — where legacy robustness and cutting-edge technology harmoniously coexist.

Customer working with Informatica on the CDIR development

This ADABAS CDC option, introduced under the CDIR capabilities, appears to be much more appealing to the customer, especially as it now supports true “real-time” capabilities for getting changes to the target data store as soon as the change is made to the ADABAS database. From the customer perspective, it may very well provide a viable alternative to what they are currently using for ADABAS replication.

As part of the customers current strategy, they are working through a validation process with Informatica to ensure that the new CDIR solution for ADABAS replication does what they need it to do, as well as to ensure that it is reliable and scales to the extent required for current and future production workloads.

What Is IDMC Cloud Data Ingestion and Replication?

Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) offers a comprehensive Cloud Data Ingestion and Replication (CDIR) solution designed to simplify and accelerate the process of moving data from diverse sources into cloud environments, data lakes, warehouses, or analytics platforms.

Key Features and Benefits:

·       Broad Connectivity: CDIR supports a broad ecosystem of connectors for various databases, applications, files, and streaming platforms, enabling seamless integration with both traditional enterprise systems and modern cloud-native technologies.

·       High-Performance Data Movement: Whether it’s an initial bulk data load or ongoing incremental updates via Change Data Capture (CDC), CDIR ensures efficient, reliable, and near-real-time data replication, minimizing data latency and operational overhead.

·       Scalability and Flexibility: Built on a cloud-native architecture, CDIR scales elastically with your data volumes and workloads, allowing organizations to manage bursts of data effortlessly.

·       Security and Governance: With built-in data security, encryption, and metadata management, CDIR helps maintain compliance with data governance policies, ensuring that sensitive data stays protected whether in-transit or at-rest.

·       Simplified Management: The unified cloud platform provides a user-friendly, no-code/low-code interface for data professionals to design, monitor, and manage ingestion pipelines, reducing dependency on specialized coding expertise.

For organizations with IBM mainframe environments, CDIR’s existing support for IBM Db2 for IBM Z and IBM Db2 for IBM i has been instrumental in bridging legacy databases to modern data ecosystems. The latest addition of Software AG’s ADABAS enhances this capability by extending ingestion and replication to a widely used non-relational mainframe database, thereby broadening the scope of data modernization initiatives whether on-premises, Cloud or Hybrid.

Please contact your Informatica sales team for more information around the new IDMC Cloud Data Ingestion and Replication service connector to Software AG’s ADABAS and when it will be Generally Available.