Forewords: is Automation the ultimate answer?

IT automation is nowadays pervading the market, especially in conjunction with virtualization. Hence, one may be tempted to consider those two initiatives as the magical solution to reduce IT costs.

​They may indeed, but let’s start with confirming and arguing few simple statements:

Ensuring the compliance of your business is crucial to establishing a trusted relationship between a provider and their customers. Nowadays, every company has different policies that define how to comply with laws and business regulations. Maintaining and protecting data, remediating problems and timely reporting are essential actions in ensuring compliance regardless of the internal or external policies to which you need to adhere.

​Counting on her 20+ years’ experience on the mainframe, Karine Le Boulanger – z/OS System Expert at Orange France – is definitely an expert of the product, and that’s why we thought that no one better than her could have said why Mainframe matters.

I had the chance to meet her at the latest User Group France, and asked her views on Workload Automation for Z.


1. We believe that #MainframeMatters and at Orange you do too, since you invested in it since years. So, what do you think that are the advantages of mainframe in today’s IT world? 
The mainframe brings reliability, security, it remains one of the safest environments on the market, and more is always competitive: with new developments and regular changes. The mainframe remains an extremely powerful machine and I am proud to work on this environment.

2. Could you tell us more about your experience with the WSz, how do you use it? WSz 9.3 is installed on our LPAR, I am the person who installed the latest version of WSz. I have been working on OPC now for 20 years, I work in the system team, so we are in charge of the upgrade of software systems, network, security, storage. WSz is part of the software that we maintain, so we intervene on the upgrade of WSz and in case of an incident, and we must admit that the problems with WSz are very few.

3. Are there some recent features that have helped you improve the way you work? Today we are strongly interested in Zowe and especially the connection between Zowe and WSz.

4. What do you like most from our product? ​​I like the reliability and the solidity of this product, and I wish I had more time to discover and test more new features. Also, I would be happy to use a friendly WSz interface, such as the Dynamic Workload Console.
 
Merci Karine!
 
Mainframe is definitely more alive than ever. As recently stated by an IBM executive, it “essentially keeps the world running”. No wonder then that we keep talking about mainframe modernization, while adding new features and releasing new major versions of WSz, such as the 9.5.

While the latest version confirms the characteristics which made WSz so great - reliability, stability and high performances – it moves one step further by enhancing capabilities such as predictive analysis, what-if, auditability and security. 
Plus, making the most out of a single point of access and monitoring, WSz allows hybrid workload automation and bring the mainframe in everybody’s hands, thanks to graphical interfaces, which significantly reduce the adoption curve for new users.
 
So, what about you? Why do you think that #MainframeMatters? 
Tell us your experience with the workload scheduler on mainframe and share it with our community. 
Just drop me a line at emanuela.zaccone@hcl.com: can’t wait to hear about it!

You can use the agent for z/OS  - aka D-Driven - to schedule work using IBM Workload Scheduler. You install and configure the agent for z/OS in the z/OS system and this work as any other dynamic agent. ​As soon as it is configured, the agent automatically links with the dynamic domain manager component of IBM Workload Scheduler through the HTTP or HTTPS protocols. With the agent for z/OS you can define jobs and schedules on IBM Workload Scheduler and submit a subset of the jobs to a z/OS system and you run the planning tasks on IBM Workload Scheduler while the execution is demanded to the z/OS system. 

Securing communications in the Workload Automation environment is an essential step to meet your company’s security requirements. Does Workload Automation use a secure communication mechanism? The answer is yes! All communication is implemented over SSL protocol TLSv1.2. Read this blog to find out how to implement security correctly in a v9.5 environment by customizing default certificates.

“Mainframe essentially keeps the world running."
It may sound bold but it’s true. The quote above, which is from an IBM executive , Philip MacLochlainn, is indeed supported by stunning figures: “85% of all credit cards, 29 billion ATM transactions per year, 92 of the top 100 banks ... 12 billion passenger flights are booked” thanks to mainframe. And it makes no wonder to whom is familiar with mainframe’s history and the story of workload scheduling and management, which we contributed to write.