This is the second in a series of articles focusing on announcements developments and innovations centered around z Systems coming out of InterConnect 2015. The article dives into API Management and Secure Gateway service in IBM Bluemix custom patterns for Linux on z Systems Utilize Chef and IBM Big Data analytics and Hadoop for Linux on z Systems.

This year IBM merged its Pulse Impact and Innovate events into a single conference that drew around 21000 IT professionals. The week’s main focuses were around mobile the API economy and a new class of hybrid cloud innovations that extend open standards capabilities for the enterprise and analytics.

This article gives you a z Systems perspective of new announcements and what “a new way to think” means to the customers who have major investment in the IBM mainframe.

This series is split into four parts covering the following topics: 

Part 1

• The New z13: Redefining Digital Business Through Integration of Cloud Mobile and Analytics
• Mobile for the Enterprise: Mobile Analytics Bluemix and More for z 

 Part 2

• Hybrid Cloud with z Systems - API Management and Secure Gateway service in Bluemix
• Custom patterns for Linux on z Systems Utilize Chef
• IBM Big Data Analytics and Hadoop for Linux on z Systems

Part 3

• Why You Should Rethink Java on z

Part 4

• WebSphere Liberty on z/OS
• CICS Transaction Server & Transaction Gateway announcements
• z/OS Connect running on WebSphere or CICS liberty
• z Systems Solution Center activities at InterConnect

New announcements at InterConnect

At the opening session at InterConnect IBM made a number of announcements related to Hybrid Cloud including new services that enable developers to quickly effectively and securely connect applications data and services across an open and environment of traditional systems cloud platforms and any device weaving data and services with APIs to compose new applications and services.

Announcements most relevant to z Systems were :

• API Harmony and API Management that allows publishing promoting and managing your ecosystem of APIs in a secure and scalable environment. It can be as a service that runs in Bluemix and lets you define and publish APIs that can then be consumed by Bluemix applications. 
• Secure Passport Gateway which helps you easily and securely connect your APIs existing data and systems to Bluemix in minutes through a simple passport service. It provides a secure connection between the off-premises and on-premises environments.

"Today we are launching a new class of hybrid cloud innovations that extend open standards capabilities for the enterprise. This will help break down the barriers between clouds and on premise IT systems providing clients with control visibility and security as they utilize the public and private clouds” said Robert LeBlanc Senior Vice President. Read the news release here. 

API for z/OS for a Hybrid Cloud

A great presentation on how to implement API for z/OS for a Hybrid Cloud solution was session 3775 “Implementing Hybrid Clouds with IBM z13” presented by John Thomas IBM. The session provided an overview of how IBM Bluemix and IBM z Systems can work together as a hybrid cloud to leverage the agility of DevOps while keeping proprietary mission-critical data securely managed and curated on the mainframe. If your company is not looking into Hybrid Cloud solutions today you may fall behind your competitors. More than 65 percent of enterprise IT organizations will commit to hybrid cloud technologies before 2016 dramatically driving the rate and pace of change in IT organizations (source).

Thomas explained that z Systems play a prominent role in different cloud models particularly in private and hybrid clouds. As enterprises use off-premise clouds to build systems of engagement they find they often need to integrate with on-premise systems of record. For many enterprises around the world systems of record run on z Systems typically in z/OS environments.

Many businesses are moving towards what is often referred to as an “API Economy” by socializing their APIs allowing them to reach new markets and widen their customer base. Developers inside or outside the company can browse what APIs are available and rapidly build applications that access functionality by invoking these APIs. A key architectural concept in this area is the use of REST APIs.

IBM provides a technology called API Management to address these challenges. Client applications call an API as a proxy defined in the IBM API Management server. The product leverages a Datapower Gateway appliance for enforcing security and other policies. API Management brings together API providers and consumers. Developers define test deploy and publish APIs and administrators specify API entitlements and security. Internal and external consumers build apps using published APIs. Business owners monitor API usage and can charge for use.

During development API Manager integrates with z assets for the creation of APIs. It communicates directly with z endpoints like z/OS Connect IMS CICS and discovers services imports metadata and lets the developer create APIs which are then published easily. A Bluemix (or other cloud) application can then invoke the backend services by calling the published APIs.

The chart below shows end-to-end architecture and IT roles in exposing and consuming z assets as APIs utilizing API Management and Secure Passport Gateway.

Custom Patterns for Linux on z Systems

If your company is looking into achieving the same business agility objectives you can get from a public cloud but within the walls of your own data center and behind your corporate firewall than session 4470 “Maximizing Business Agility with a Pattern-Enabled On-Premise Cloud” presented by Mark Figley IBM should be of great interest to you.

This session took a close look at custom patterns for z Systems which just were announced on February 17. See the announcement letter here.

Patterns accelerate the deployment and management of complex deployments drive efficiencies and cost reductions while also improving agility. With custom patterns for Linux on z Systems you can dramatically improve infrastructure agility by reducing environment and workload provisioning times. At the same time you can increase quality through automation reducing the chance of human error when deploying business-critical workloads.

These offerings require a Chef-compatible pattern server and client. Chef implementations are available separately and can be acquired freely or commercially.

Custom patterns for Linux on z Systems are developed to standardize and automate product installation and configuration.

More about custom patterns for Linux on z Systems:

• Utilized across multiple product types within the middleware space which include IBM WebSphere and IBM DB2 product sets.
• Help reduce operating and capital expenses through accelerated deployment.
• Leverage an automated approach that helps reduce errors and the need for specialized skills.
• Help reduce cost through the use of shared infrastructure and global resources.
• Standardize patterns and proven test cases with reporting capability.
• Provide flexible access to highly skilled network server software and middleware resources.
• Enable flexible access to infrastructure to scale test environment as needed.
• Help maintain continuous improvement in service levels.
• Significantly reduce multi-product deployment durations.
• Use installation verification testing to reduce deployment errors and fix durations.

IBM Big Data Analytics and Hadoop for Linux on z Systems

Session 5201 “IT Economics and Best Practices with IBM Big Data Real-Time Decision-Making” presented by Leonard Santalucia Vicom Infinity and Christopher von Koschembahr IBM showed how to define real-time business analytics solutions like anti-fraud CRM and predictive analysis using InfoSphere Streams BigInsights and other IBM products.

IBM Big Data Analytics on zEnterprise provides a truly modern cost-competitive analytics infrastructure with an extensive integrated set of offerings that are primed for delivering on today's business-critical analytics and big data initiatives across all of your data sources. InfoSphere BigInsights for Linux on System z brings the power of BigInsights and Apache Hadoop to the mainframe and allows for investigative analysis of large volumes of differently structure data on a highly secure platform.

 

 vStorm Enterprise solution leverages Linux on z Systems and can deploy a Big Data management platform based on Hadoop that leverages System z security and provides more cost effective total cost of ownership.

The vStorm Enterprise software is a platform that presents DB2 and other z/OS data sources for processing and analytics through Hadoop on Linux.
 

IBM MobileFirst (Worklight on zLinux)  and z Systems

 Session 2896 “IBM MobileFirst and z Systems” presented by  Alan Little and  Mike Baskey demonstrated how you can more easily enable existing z systems to leverage and more confidently support mobile access to existing applications/data along with building and deploying new mobile applications with enhanced security scalability and reliability.

This session covered how the IBM MobileFirst (formerly Worklight) architecture and its lifecycle management can be applied to z Systems and complements its qualities of service while accelerating deployment of mobile solutions in a trusted way. 

See below how you can build a mobile application on z Systems:

 

As you can see InterConnect had many outstanding z Systems sessions on Mobile the new class of Hybrid Cloud innovations API economy and Analytics. My follow up articles will focus on InterConnect sessions on Java on z Systems performance WebSphere Liberty on z/OS CICS Transaction Server & Transaction Gateway z/OS Connect and activities that took place at the z System Solution Center.