The IBM® mainframe remains a widely used enterprise computing workhorse, hosting essential IT for the majority of the world's top banks, airlines, insurers and more. As the mainframe continues to evolve, the newest IBM Z® servers offer solutions for AI and analytics, blockchain, cloud, DevOps, security and resiliency, with the aim of making the client experience similar to that of using cloud services. Many organizations today face challenges with their core IT infrastructure: Complexity and stability An environment might have years of history and be seen as too complex to maintain or update. Problems with system stability can impact operations and be considered a high risk for the business. Workforce challenges Many data center teams are anticipating a skills shortage within the next 5 years due to a retiring and declining workforce specialized in the mainframe, not to mention the difficulty of attracting new talent. Total cost of ownership Some infrastructure solutions are seen as too expensive, and it's not always easy to balance up-front costs with the life expectancy and benefits of a given platform. Lack of speed and agility Older applications can be seen as too slow and monolithic as organizations face an increasing need for faster turnaround and release cycles. Some software vendors suggest addressing these challenges with the "big bang" approach of moving your entire environment to a public cloud. But public cloud isn't the best option for every workload, and a hybrid multicloud approach can offer the best of both worlds. IBM Z is constantly being developed to address the real challenges businesses face today, and every day we're helping clients modernize their IT environments. There are 4 strategic elements to consider when modernizing your mainframe environment: Infrastructure Applications Data access DevOps chain This paper focuses on these four modernization dimensions.

Cloud computing is the most significant technology development of our lifetimes. It has made countless new businesses possible and presents a massive opportunity for large enterprises to innovate like startups and retire decades of technical debt. But making the most of the cloud requires much more from enterprises than just a technology change. Stephen Orban led Dow Jones's journey toward digital agility as their CIO and now leads AWS's Enterprise Strategy function, where he helps leaders from the largest companies in the world transform their businesses. As he demonstrates in this book, enterprises must re-train their people, evolve their processes, and transform their cultures as they move to the cloud. By bringing together his experiences and those of a number of business leaders, Orban shines a light on what works, what doesn't, and how enterprises can transform themselves using the cloud.

Modernization of enterprise IT applications and infrastructure is key to the survival of organizations. It is no longer a matter of choice. The cost of missing out on business opportunities in an intensely competitive market can be enormous. To aid in their success, organizations are facing increased encouragement to embrace change. They are pushed to think of new and innovative ways to counter, or offer, a response to threats that are posed by competitors who are equally as aggressive in adopting newer methods and technologies. The term modernization often varies in meaning based on perspective. This IBM® Redbooks® publication focuses on the technological advancements that unlock computing environments that are hosted on IBM Z® to enable secure processing at the core of hybrid. This publication is intended for IT executives, IT managers, IT architects, System Programmers, and Application Developer professionals.

Today, organizations are responding to market demands and regulatory requirements faster than ever by extending their applications and data to new digital applications. This drive to deliver new functions at speed has paved the way for a huge growth in cloud-native applications, hosted in both public and private cloud infrastructures. Leading organizations are now exploiting the best of both worlds by combining their traditional enterprise IT with cloud. This hybrid cloud approach places new requirements on the integration architectures needed to bring these two worlds together. One of the largest providers of application logic and data services in enterprises today is IBM Z, making it a critical service provider in a hybrid cloud architecture. The primary goal of this IBM Redpaper publication is to help IT architects choose between the different application integration architectures that can be used for hybrid integration with IBM Z, including REST APIs, messaging, and event streams.

How do you start? How should you build a plan for cloud migration for your entire portfolio? How will your organization be affected by these changes? This book, based on real-world cloud experiences by enterprise IT teams, seeks to provide the answers to these questions. Here, you’ll see what makes the cloud so compelling to enterprises; with which applications you should start your cloud journey; how your organization will change, and how skill sets will evolve; how to measure progress; how to think about security, compliance, and business buy-in; and how to exploit the ever-growing feature set that the cloud offers to gain strategic and competitive advantage.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication discusses the real world experience of an enterprise that developed and implemented IBM z/OS® cloud services. This book shares the experience of a team at Walmart Technology, Walmart Stores, Inc.® and some of the decisions they made to create business critical cloud services. These experiences and approaches relate to the z/OS platform, and might not apply to other hybrid cloud approaches. This book highlights the strengths and characteristics of z/OS that led the Walmart infrastructure and software engineers to use this platform as they transitioned from a traditional IT deployment to a cloud model. Embarking on a cloud strategy can be overwhelming. No shortage of approaches to cloud computing exists. This book focuses on a pragmatic approach for enterprises that are struggling to take advantage of their business assets in the cloud. This book introduces the basic cloud concepts as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Each chapter explains the importance of a particular NIST characteristic, the z/OS role in accomplishing the characteristic, and how it was implemented by the Walmart Technology team. This book is intended for IT professionals who are considering extending their IBM z SystemsTM environment to a hybrid cloud by unleashing the power of cloud services on z/OS. For information about creating cloud services that are hosted in IBM CICS®, see How Walmart Became a Cloud Services Provider with IBM CICS, SG24-8347.

Despite the buzz surrounding the cloud computing, only a small percentage of organizations have actually deployed this new style of IT—so far. If you're planning your long-term cloud strategy, this practical book provides insider knowledge and actionable real-world lessons regarding planning, design, operations, security, and application transformation. This book teaches business and technology managers how to transition their organization's traditional IT to cloud computing. Rather than yet another book trying to sell or convince readers on the benefits of clouds, this book provides guidance, lessons learned, and best practices on how to design, deploy, operate, and secure an enterprise cloud based on real-world experience. Author James Bond provides useful guidance and best-practice checklists based on his field experience with real customers and cloud providers. You'll view cloud services from the perspective of a consumer and as an owner/operator of an enterprise private or hybrid cloud, and learn valuable lessons from successful and less-than-successful organization use-case scenarios. This is the information every CIO needs in order to make the business and technical decisions to finally execute on their journey to cloud computing. Get updated trends and definitions in cloud computing, deployment models, and for building or buying cloud services Discover challenges in cloud operations and management not foreseen by early adopters Use real-world lessons to plan and build an enterprise private or hybrid cloud Learn how to assess, port, and migrate legacy applications to the cloud Identify security threats and vulnerabilities unique to the cloud Employ a cloud management system for your enterprise (private or multi-provider hybrid) cloud ecosystem Understand the challenges for becoming an IT service broker leveraging the power of the cloud