The Evolution of Data Replication: IBM Data Replication IMS for z/OS Remote Source and New Features

Written by Caroline Garay

Today, enterprises are dependent on data for a variety of use cases, such as high quality decision making, artificial intelligence (AI), insights and analytics, customer experience, fraud detection, and many more. Without a data-driven business model, organizations risk losing their competitive edge. Yet, many struggle with data accessibility, with nearly?50% of data analysts' time is spent working retroactively trying to find or access data . Without proper data access at the right time, enterprises could face impact to their bottom line.

Data accessibility obstacles will only compound as data volume grows—expected to increase by 250% by 2025. As a result, organizations need effective solutions to manage and access their data efficiently.

Enter?IBM Data Replication , the key component of?IBM’s Data Fabric ?architecture that helps unlock and deliver data across diverse environments. It supports high-volume, near-real-time data transfer with low latency, high throughput, and minimal impact on core systems.

By synchronizing critical data in a hybrid cloud environment, organizations can:

1?? React in near real-time: Enhance customer experiences and decision-making with up-to-date data.?

2?? Improve insights: Feed data into analytics platforms and ETL for better reporting.?

3?? Ensure continuous operations: Prevent downtime and disasters with reliable data synchronization.

IBM Data Replication continues to modernize, delivering new updates that improve customer access to accurate, reliable data. The team is excited to announce the launch of IBM Data Replication IMS for z/OS Remote Source in addition to new features such as sourcing from Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) enabled SQL Server databases and delivery to CockroachDB. These new updates demonstrate the evolution of IBM Data Replication: customers now have improved access to data storage systems for downstream use cases with minimal impact, low-latency, and enhanced performance.

IBM Data Replication IMS for z/OS Remote Source rounds out the trifecta of the remote source offerings, which include?IBM Data Replication VSAM for z/OS? Remote Source ?and?IBM Data Replication Db2? for z/OS Remote Source . With the ability to remotely replicate IMS source data via a lightweight container that is installed on a virtual machine, customers can access transactional data and deliver data to distributed targets for analytics and AI with reduced resource contention, low-latency, and high efficiency.?

For customers interested in analyzing and building AI models from data originating on IBM Z, they can leverage?IBM Data Gate for watsonx ?to synchronize IBM Z data to the lakehouse. With Data Gate for watsonx, users can synchronize select IBM Z data sources including Db2 for z/OS, IMS and VSAM data to the Iceberg open-source table data format in watsonx.data. watsonx.data is built on an open lakehouse architecture, enabling them to capitalize on the?high performance and usability of a data warehouse as well as the flexibility and scalability of a data lake. With IBM Data Gate for watsonx, customers can unlock and use the most up-to-date transactional data in machine learning or AI models.

Additionally, IBM Data Replication expanded its capabilities to support new sources and targets, including CockroachDB and TDE-enabled SQL Server databases. This allows clients to easily deliver data to CockroachDB with minimal impact and high throughput, and access protected data from TDE-enabled SQL Server databases, optimizing data accessibility and satisfying new use cases.

CockroachDB is a cloud-native distributed SQL database built for high availability, scalability, and consistency, automatically rebalancing and repairing itself to maintain performance. With IBM Data Replication, clients can now deliver data to CockroachDB from any CDC supported source empowers customers to enjoy all the benefits of the database while also unlocking hard to access data for downstream purposes. In addition, IBM Data Replication now supports sourcing from TDE-enabled SQL Server addressing historical challenges of synchronizing protected data with the ability to access encrypted databases.

Finally,?with our recent acquisition of StreamSets, we have added real-time data streaming for our customers by extending the depth and breadth of IBM’s Data Fabric and Data Integration capabilities. Users can now leverage IBM Data Replication to replicate data to Apache Kafka, for example, where IBM StreamSets can then subscribe to Kafka topics and consume messages, allowing it to process and integrate real-time data streams from Kafka into various downstream systems or further process them within the pipeline.?

Building an open and trusted data foundation is core to scaling and accelerating AI. Data Replication, along with the rest of components of?IBM's Data Fabric ?architecture, enhance the quality of organizations' data to improve customer experiences, optimize business decision making, and produce trustworthy outputs.?IBM Data Replication meets the evolving needs of customers and aligns to their data strategy, as evidenced by its latest updates so that customers can seamlessly integrate and replicate data across multi-cloud environments and unlock data for downstream use cases.

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