Yes, I really did name my dog Z. In February of this year, I started my new job on the IBM Z Ecosystem team, and I bought a new labradoodle and named her Z. Anyone that knows me knows that I’ve always embraced my career passionately, and I find ways to intertwine my work passions with my life passions. #geekalert!
Did you know that IBM Z was named for the systems’ availability? Z stands for zero downtime. Just like a puppy who has boundless energy!!
I started my IBM career working in ecosystem marketing for the Systems side of things - - PCs, laptops, enterprise and midrange servers – and moved on to work on initiatives across our software brands, AI applications and blockchain. Now, I’m back into the IBM Systems Group, and it couldn’t be at a more exciting time. As our CEO shared in IBM’s Annual Report, IBM Z revenue grew in 2020, with the z15 now shipping the largest capacity in the platform’s nearly sixty year history. Its longevity is due to the new integrations and on-going innovations as technology has continued to evolve.
Application modernization and the ability to migrate an existing footprint by using open sourced technology to create new applications to meet evolving needs is alive and well. As the IBM Newsroom recently noted: “It was 20 years ago that IBM took the radical step of opening its most proprietary computer technology—IBM Z—to the Linux open-source operating system. 5 years ago, IBM built on that legacy by providing rock-solid security in a Linux server with LinuxONE. 1 year ago, IBM added Red Hat OpenShift to IBM Z and LinuxONE, enabling clients to modernize applications for the hybrid cloud. With these anniversaries, we celebrate the trends helping enterprises accelerate their digital journeys to the future.”
Clients, large and small, are trying to optimize their businesses and determining the Cloud strategy that fits best for their organization. Corporations running sensitive and mission critical applications need the reliability of IBM Z family infrastructure. With the latest dialogue around Hybrid Cloud and AI, businesses gain greater flexibility by moving workloads between environments. IBM Z puts the hybrid in hybrid cloud with the flexibility that is paramount to meet evolving needs.
Living in my new parallel world, there is much I’m learning as a new dog owner and as someone new to Z. I am discovering the amazing similarities between these new “Z” aspects of my life.
- Agile: With new open source application development, enterprises can have agile mainframe transformation. IBM Z is made for start-ups or enterprises and public, private or hybrid cloud.
- Intelligence: Leverage application and data investments to efficiently deliver new services with built-in intelligence.
- Trustworthy & dependable: Encrypt data affordably, with high performance, and without application changes.
- Fiercely protective: IBM z15 is designed for cyber resilience to ensure isolation of workloads at scale, protect against insider and outsider attacks, deliver continuous service and mitigate downtime.
- Scalability: The ideal platform to efficiently deliver high-quality services at speed and at scale, in the form factor that meets your business needs. (Okay, maybe this one doesn’t have the best dog analogy! But as our puppy grows and gets more training, our lifestyle with her as part of the family gets more efficient. )
If you are an ISV working in this space, my team’s mission is around ISV advocacy and amplifying the cutting edge solutions you are bringing to modernization, scalability, and resiliency.
- Leverage this new ISV User Group Community to highlight your solutions
- Engage with us to share use cases that we can amplify together
- Check out our new IBM Expert TV series launching in May called Z/Now, with our inaugural episode featuring Guy Muller of Rocket Software, “Using Analytics with Mainframe Data.”
After about sixty days into my “Z world,” I conclude that all of these attributes and proof points indicate that - just like having a dog makes you happy - having a reliable, scalable, and secure IBM Z platform will keep every system administrator, business executive, and customer happy too!