To thrive and innovate in today’s rapidly changing digital environment requires a different mindset from the one which has traditionally governed work on the mainframe. There is a need to think in terms of business resiliency not only in the context of operational cost optimization and stability, but to consider how quickly your systems can respond to change while maintaining the critical attributes of uptime and security.
This responsiveness can be achieved with the adoption of a DevOps mindset that moves towards treating your IT systems as a “product,” striving toward continuous improvement, rather than treating their evolution as a “project” with a fixed endpoint. A key aspect of this approach is the formation of a backlog which balances continual maintenance and technical debt with the development of features that provide increasing value to your customers. This requires the ability to quickly analyze requirements, then code, test and promote changes while taking into account the perspectives of the people who make those changes happen, from application developers to database administrators to reliability engineers.
Innovating on the mainframe cannot be treated as a separate, special case. Just as development and operations teams can no longer exist in separate siloes, each with unique tools and practices, the mainframe must be brought into the enterprise DevOps toolchain and treated just like any other platform within the IT ecosystem.
The New BMC AMI DevX
The combination of BMC AMI DevX application development solutions and the operational capabilities of the BMC Automated Mainframe Intelligence (AMI) portfolio gives organizations the power to strengthen enterprise DevOps by holistically addressing the needs of digital transformation, erasing the lines between the mainframe and the rest of the IT ecosystem to create a simplified, cross-platform environment. This open-borders approach, with best-in-class multi-platform tools operating seamlessly on the mainframe, enables organizations to quickly deliver new customer experiences required for their businesses to compete at the pace of today’s digital startup disruptors.
Today, BMC furthers this vision with enhancements that expand developers’ ability to innovate on the mainframe the way they want. Our latest BMC AMI DevX quarterly release includes product enhancements that will help you integrate the mainframe with DevOps tools across your enterprise using new Java, REST, and webhook Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), an extended Command Line Interface (CLI), and new database integration points, as well as an enhanced developer experience. Together these enhancements ensure that you can empower your mainframe teams with the modern tools, automation, and integrations that they need to be successful.
Expansion of JES Java APIs
We have expanded our Topaz Java APIs providing full access to JES Explorer functionality as well as the ability to execute TSO commands including REXX or CLISTs. These new APIs allow customers to modernize and extend custom utilities their developers need directly in Workbench for Eclipse.
New BMC AMI DevX Data Studio CLI
A new CLI for BMC AMI DevX Data Studio makes it easy to automate the setup of test data in development and QA environments by enabling developers to connect extract, load, and compare request functionality where needed within the DevOps toolchain.
BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline Integration with Visual Studio Code
A new integration enables developers using Git and the popular Visual Studio (VS) Code environment can easily compile it on the mainframe using BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline with a simple right-click. This gives developers the freedom to code how they want, in the environment that they find most comfortable, enhancing their creativity and increasing innovation.
New REST APIs for Submitting Jobs and Checking Execution Status
We are starting the process to enable core Topaz functions to be connected through REST APIs, giving Development and Operations teams a simple approach to automating tasks in their DevOps toolchain. In this quarter, the new Topaz REST API available in BMC AMI DevX Enterprise Services (CES) will allow submission and execution status check capabilities.
New Jenkins and UrbanCode Db2 Integration Points
Some might say “you can only change your code as fast as your database.” To ensure you can change both as rapidly as you need in your DevOps toolchain, we are offering new integration points for BMC AMI Data products.
A new plugin extends Db2 schema change management, allowing UrbanCode to orchestrate database changes as they flow through development, QA, and production environments.
The new BMC AMI SQL Performance for Db2® Jenkins plugin ensures that SQL operates at peak efficiency and quality by giving developers and DBAs insight into the performance and quality of SQL across the development, QA, and production environments as changes are made.
Mainstreaming the Mainframe
The enhancements included in our April release further strengthen BMC’s already robust capabilities to mainstream development and operational aspects of the mainframe, building the connective tissue required to integrate the mainframe with the rest of your enterprise IT ecosystem. With the combined portfolios of BMC AMI and BMC AMI DevX, you’re empowered to leverage the systems and products on which your business was built while making progress to modernize and meet the challenges of the future.
These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.
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