DevOps for Mainframe: Agile Development

Can you do DevOps on your mainframe? That might seem like a silly question. DevOps is among the newest trends in IT, and mainframes are an established, “legacy” technology. Pairing the two may appear to make little sense.

A common misconception is that agile development methods and mainframes do not go together. But numerous studies show that mainframe teams can use modern approaches such as DevOps and Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery. Various financial institutions are already using corresponding applications in practice.

This article explains why DevOps on the mainframe is advantageous, and how organizations that have migrated to a DevOps-based workflow can make mainframes part of it.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a set of practices that works to automate and integrate the processes between software development and IT teams, so they can build, test, and release software faster and more reliably. The term DevOps was formed by combining the words “development” and “operations” and signifies a cultural shift that bridges the gap between development and operation teams, which historically functioned in siloes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.

How does DevOps Works?

Under a DevOps model, development and operations teams are no longer “siloed.” Sometimes, these two teams are merged into a single team where the engineers work across the entire application lifecycle, from development and test to deployment to operations, and develop a range of skills not limited to a single function

Why do DevOps on the mainframe?

So far, the conversation has focused mostly on newer programming languages and technologies. Infrastructure platforms, like Docker containers, and modern software development tools, such as continuous integration servers, are the technologies that first come to mind when most people hear “DevOps” today.

Yet this does not at all mean that mainframes should not also be a part of the conversation. As Compuware CEO Chris O’Malley, there are several reasons why bringing DevOps to the mainframe can benefit organizations. They include:

• Lots of business-critical applications depend on mainframes. If you want to deploy and maintain those applications with the efficiency that DevOps offers, you need to make mainframes part of your workflow.
• Although there are some significant differences between mainframes and other platforms – the programming languages are different, for example – mainframes are still just hardware and software platforms at the end of the day. There is no reason they can’t be integrated into a DevOps operation in the same way that any other platform could.
• Mainframes are an ideal location for processing information in a scalable and secure way. This flexibility makes them an excellent resource for organizations seeking to optimize their agility.

“There are 6,900 tweets, 30,000 Facebook likes and 60,000 Google searches per second. The mainframe CICS runs 1.1m transactions per second, which equates to 10bn per day.” 

DevOps for z Systems mainframes:

Mainframes are still critical for managing mobile loads, testing and payment processing. Enterprises need the reliability, security and pure processing power that mainframes provide in a mobile-first world. Despite this, mainframes are often ignored in favor of distributed platforms and services. This is especially true when it comes to developing applications through the traditional DevOps process.

Organizations have the potential to achieve a better and more agile way of mainframe software development and deployment—one that increases collaboration and automation by using a DevOps pipeline and tools.

Why IBM UrbanCode? Deliver better software, faster

Rapidly releasing new digital products and services to market is critical to staying competitive. Agile development teams use build management, deployment automation and release management solutions like IBM UrbanCode? to accelerate and optimize software delivery.

IBM UrbanCode Deploy automates and speeds up software deployment through different environments. It is designed to support the DevOps approach, enabling incremental application changes to be rolled out quickly and in a reliable and repeatable manner. It includes build and test tools that can automate the deployment of applications all the way to mainframe production environments:

Feature of IBM UrbanCode Deploy Tools. 

1. The speed with quality: Increase the frequency of software delivery through automated, repeatable deployment processes across development, test, and production.
2. Reduce deployment failure: Deliver higher-quality application releases with increased compliance through end-to-end transparency, audit-ability and reduced time to feedback.
3. Manage complexity: Simplify the deployment of multi-channel apps to all environments, whether on-premises or in the cloud—public or private, with consistency and repeatability.
4. Reduce silos: Collaborate closely among lines of business, development and IT operations with a lean and agile DevOps software delivery approach.
5. Scale Reliably: Use one centralized server to manage tens of thousands of endpoints to any number of clouds, data centers, or mainframes.

Watch the video below to understand more about IBM UrbanCode Deploy how it can help you to automate the deployments on Mainframes.

Please note: The views expressed are my own - not validated or endorsed by Capgemini, IBM, HCL or customer of Capgemini.