Why IBM Wazi aaS is a Game Changer
If you’ve been involved in mainframe development for a while, you’re likely aware that development and testing typically occur directly on the mainframe itself, which can raise concerns. Potential bottlenecks and the need to avoid disrupting live operations are real issues. However, with IBM’s Wazi as a Service (Wazi aaS), mainframe development is moving in the right direction.
IBM Wazi aaS is a product that separates development and testing from production environments. It introduces modern practices like Continuous Integration (CI), which have been more challenging for mainframes to adopt compared to modern distributed software development domains.
Still Developing on live Mainframe?
For years, mainframe developers have worked in environments that forced them to develop and test directly on live mainframe machines. While this provided the ideal scenario to test whether their application or new features worked, it also created some problems.
- Resource Contention: Even though the mainframe is a powerful system you are consuming processing power that could impact the performance of production systems, every time you run a test or compile code.
- Risky Testing: Testing on the live mainframe is risky business. Small bugs or mistakes during testing could disrupt the mainframe’s critical business operations. Developers often had to schedule downtime for testing, slowing the entire development process.
- Limited Flexibility: There’s not a lot of room for trial and error when everything happens on the mainframe itself. It restricts what you can test, how you test it, and when.
It’s not exactly the most developer-friendly setup, is it?
Wazi aaS Brings Modern Development to Mainframes
This is a safer and more flexible way of working.
Enter IBM Wazi as a Service, a cloud-based solution that provides isolated, virtualized z/OS environments for development and testing. Instead of working directly on the production mainframe, you now get a dedicated environment in the IBM Cloud, which you can configure exactly as your target production environment, where you can do everything you need. This is a safer and more flexible way of working.
Here’s why Wazi aaS is a game-changer:
- Isolated Development and Testing: By moving these activities off the live production mainframe, you eliminate the need to share resources with critical business operations. Developers can now run their tests and build their code without impacting the mainframe’s live workloads. This means no more waiting for your “turn” to use resources, no slowdowns in production, and no risk of accidentally messing something up in the live system.
- Faster Feedback and Safer Testing: Because Wazi aaS offers on-demand, virtual environments, you can spin up a new testing instance anytime you need. This separation allows for much faster iteration and feedback loops since you’re no longer tied to production windows or live system concerns. Developers can be more creative and experimental in their testing—something that’s nearly impossible on a live mainframe.
- Improved Productivity and Collaboration: With Wazi aaS, multiple teams can work in parallel. No need to schedule around each other or wait for specific times to test. This leads to faster development cycles, reduced downtime, and more frequent updates. You can develop and test new features more quickly and confidently, knowing that any issues won’t affect the live system.
Wazi aaS Plus Git – The Perfect Pair
Since you’re moving away from the live physical mainframe for building and testing mainframe code, it’s a good opportunity to modernize your development tools, such as your code editor and versioning system. This will enable you to adopt modern development practices like Continuous Integration (CI) and DevOps.
The benefits of using a modern IDE instead of a traditional mainframe editor, such as the ISPF editor for example, are clear: it’s much more user-friendly and integrates better with other tools in your development workflow, such as Wazi aaS. Now, let’s explore some advantages of using Git, a modern distributed versioning system, integrated with Wazi aaS.
- Version Control and Branching: Git’s distributed nature means developers can work on individual branches, tracking their own changes without interfering with others. This makes parallel development and collaboration smoother, especially when combined with Wazi aaS’s isolated environments.
- Easy Rollbacks and Merging: Mistakes happen, but with Git’s built-in versioning and rollback features, you can quickly recover from them. Merging changes is also much simpler, allowing different teams or individuals to contribute code without causing conflicts.
- Better Traceability: When managing complex, legacy codebases, knowing exactly who changed what and why is crucial. Git’s commit history provides that transparency, helping developers easily track changes and fix issues faster.
With Git, you can adopt more efficient workflows and bring agility to mainframe development, something the traditional, centralized SCM systems weren’t built for.
Automating It All with Kobee
If Wazi aaS and Git seem like modern solutions to mainframe development’s traditional bottlenecks, let’s take it a step further. Integrating Kobee with Wazi aaS and Git provides full CI/CD automation.
Kobee automatically monitors your Git repository for changes. When a developer pushes new code, Kobee triggers a build, deploys it to Wazi aaS, runs automated tests, and, if everything passes, can deploy the build to the production mainframe. The entire process is automated and reliable.
Regarding building and deploying, while Kobee can handle these actions itself, it can also orchestrate IBM Dependency Based Build and IBM Wazi Deploy if that is the user’s preference.
This level of automation significantly reduces errors caused by manual steps and ensures that your mainframe applications are always tested and ready for deployment.
Ready to Level Up?
A more efficient, agile, and reliable approach to mainframe development.
The old way of developing on live physical mainframes is fading for good reason, and IBM Wazi as a Service is a great step towards more flexible, safer, and modern development practices. Combined with Git and Kobee, Wazi aaS offers a more efficient, agile, and reliable approach to mainframe development.
Ready to move your development away from the live mainframe and into a more scalable, automated workflow? Start exploring Wazi aaS and how integrating it with Git and Kobee can transform your development process today!
About the author
Hello, my name is René De Vleeschauwer.
Throughout my career, I have been actively engaged in developing enterprise software. For the past 18 years, I have led the development of Kobee, an open CI/CD and DevOps framework that has been highly regarded in regulated enterprises.
Do you have any questions? Just ask me!