Z Review from Spring 2019 TechU
May 06, 2019
Z Review from Spring 2019 TechU
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with IBM Z
IBM Z is our enterprise system housing 90% of our data and does all of out back end processing. We execute 45 million CICS transactions and 24 million CICS transactions daily.
- Reliable - We have an SLA with our customers of 99% availability
- Scalable - IBM Z is the most scalable processors available. In January we had an unanticate 45% CICS transaction growth with on demand availablity we were quickly able to deal with this growth.
- Data Sharing and SYSPlex across LPARS with DB2 and IMS accommodates multiple jobs requiring simultaneous access and updates
- Improvements in CICS CPSM usability
- Reduce the cost - it is a very expensive platform with costs that are very easy see
- App dev improvements it is very difficult to implement lean processes on the platform
- Our processing is measured by cost per member. The Z platform has returned the best value so far. Other platforms are catching up. I do not have specific numbers to share.
We currently have both X Linux and Windows platforms. The Windows applications support some of the smaller business units within Highmark very well and Z is probably not a solution for those environments. X Linux won out over Z Linux due to the processor requirements of the applications. The application ran better with dedicated cpu's and dedicated memory. These applications are mostly portals to the business applications that execute on z/OS. Be assured there are some professionals in the organization that would like to Z replaced however they do not understand the business application that execute on Z and are underestimating what that cost would be. Expanding new application to Z is very difficult even with the z/Connect and node JS support there simply is no interest in the application areas for that type of development.