At BMC Exchange 2021, we heard from customers and BMC product leaders on how they are applying DevOps principles across the enterprise in three different sessions. Read on to learn how creating a mainframe-inclusive DevOps toolchain has been instrumental in the success of two BMC customers and get a sneak peek at the BMC roadmap additions driving continuous innovation on the mainframe.
Mainframe-Inclusive DevOps Toolchain
In the session, How Humana Built a Modern Mainframe-Inclusive DevOps Toolchain for Increased ROI, Andrew Foster, director of DevOps at Humana, and Gaurav Jaju, application architect at Humana, discuss how their organization selected a modern mainframe development environment to enhance the developer experience. Says Foster, “We want our engineers to come into work, be excited about the tool set that they’re using, and be able to do their job in as frictionless a way as possible.”
When evaluating tools for automated releases for the mainframe developers, Jaju says, “Four years back, if you were to ask me, we were still doing manual releases, our SCM tool was Panvalet and we realized, very late in the game, that it is not scalable. And it does not allow us to bring in many more capabilities if we aligned DevOps, even on matrix…We went through a series of POCs [and] as a result of that POC, from our perspective, BMC AMI DevX scored higher…and that is how it became [the] tool of choice.” Jaju won’t deny that it was a journey to implement new tools and processes across Humana but says, “By [the] end of Q2 2021, we achieved our migration goal. So as of date, 99 percent of all Humana mainframe assets are running on BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline and the overall mainframe tool stack.”
After implementing solutions like BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline to help increase the quality, velocity, and efficiency of their software development, Jaju says, “We went through a VSM activity a couple of times, just to understand, what is the ROI we are getting out of all these changes, and in the past two years, especially now, on optional certified releases, our numbers have improved even further. And the best one, my favorite one, is a reduction in the wait times and especially…seeing a tremendous increase in automated releases.”
Citing improved business outcomes and ROI, Foster is proud to enable Humana engineers. “[At] Humana, we are very focused on the overall engineer experience for our mainframe engineers. And when you connect in an awesome toolset with the automation around our release process, we’ve truly enabled engineers at Humana to release software to production multiple times per day, if they chose to, in a safe and secure way.”
Hear more from Humana and watch the demonstration in the full session here.
BMC AMI and BMC AMI DevX Roadmap
In the final mainframe session of BMC Exchange, BMC product leaders discuss the latest news and developments for BMC AMI and BMC AMI DevX.
April Hickel, VP of product management at BMC, starts off, “We’re going to talk about optimizing your system resilience on the mainframe. So, how do you achieve availability, recoverability performance? What new techniques are available for you in AIOps or AI and machine learning? We’re going to talk about data management and how you take care of the ever-increasing data that you have on the mainframe. And then finally, we’ll wrap up with a discussion of our security portfolio and what we’re doing for the future.”
Keeping on the theme of the mainframe-inclusive toolchain, Spencer Hallman, manager of product management at BMC, says, “[The] DevOps toolchain is really what a majority of our development efforts are all about. We’ve taken an open-borders approach to integration to make our RESTful APIs available to pretty much anyone to make use of. APIs are what enable the integration between different vendors’ tools. And our competitors would like to see their customers using just their toolset.”
“We have taken a much more pragmatic approach to enabling integration across the DevOps spectrum so that mainframe code can be developed and deployed like any other piece of code in their organization.” We also get a peek at the BMC AMI DevX roadmap and discussions on BMC’s Db2 and IMS data strategy, Ops and AIOps strategy for operations and monitoring, and the security products coming soon.
Hickel wraps up the roadmap session with, “We believe we’re unique and differentiated and in a position to help you achieve your goals. That might be to innovate faster. It might be to harden your security. It might be to improve your system resiliency and automation. It might be to speed your modernization. It might be to take better care of your data. [Whatever] area of the mainframe you’re listening for or you’re participating in, we have innovation every quarter in those areas.”
Learn more about the roadmap for BMC’s industry-leading mainframe modernization solutions with intelligent operational insights, adaptive cybersecurity to protect critical systems and data, and integrated DevOps toolchain capabilities for rapid innovation by watching the full session here.
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