Z Open Terminal Emulation

You can spend a lot of time working with the Z and not find much new in terminal emulation. But there actually are a few new things, mainly because times change and people work differently, using different devices and doing new things. Sure, it all goes back to the mainframe, but it is a new world.

Terminal emulator screen

Rocket Software’s latest wrinkle in terminal emulation is BlueZone Web, which promises to simplify using the mainframe by enabling users to access host-based applications anywhere and on any type of device. It is part of a broader initiative Rocket calls Open AppDev for Z. From DancingDinosaur’s perspective its strength lies in being Zowe-compliant, an open source development environment from the Open Mainframe Project.This makes IBM Z a valuable open platform for an enterprise DevOps infrastructure.

Zowe is the first open source framework for z/OS. It facilitates DevOps teams to securely manage, control, script and develop on the mainframe like any other cloud platform. Launched in a collaboration of initial contributors IBM, CA Technologies, and Rocket Software, and supported by the Open Mainframe Project. The goal is to cultivate the next generation of mainframe developers, whether or not they have Z experience. Zowe promotes a faster team on-ramp to productivity, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and communication.

This is the critical thing about Zowe: you don’t need Z platform experience. Open source developers and programmers can use a wide range of popular open source tools, languages, and technologies–the tools they already know. Sure it’d be nice to find an experienced zOS developer  but that is increasingly unlikely, making Zowe a much better bet.   

According to the Open Source Project, IBM’s initial contribution to Zowe was an extensible z/OS framework that provides REST-based services and APIs that will allow even inexperienced developers to rapidly use new technology, tools, languages, and modern workflows with z/OS. 

IBM continues to invest in the open source environment through Zowe and other open source initiatives.  Zowe also has help from Rocket Software, which provides a web user interface, and CA, which handles the Command Line Interface. You can find more about zowe here.

IBM introduced Linux, a leading open source technology, to the Z over 20 years ago. In time it has expanded the range of the Z through open-source tools that can be combined with products developed by different communities. This does create unintentional regulatory and security risks. Rocket Open AppDev for Z helps mitigate these risks, offering a solution that provides developers with a package of open tools and languages they want, along with the security, easy management, and support IBM Z customers require.

“We wanted to solve three common customer challenges that have prevented enterprises from leveraging the flexibility and agility of open software within their mainframe environment: user and system programmer experience, security, and version latency,” said Peter Fandel, Rocket’s Product Director of Open Software for Z. “With Rocket Open AppDev for Z, we believe we have provided an innovative secure path forward for our customers,” he adds. Businesses can now extend the mainframe’s capabilities through the adoption of open source software, making IBM Z a valuable platform for their DevOps infrastructure.”

But there is an even bigger question here that Rocket turned to IDC to answer. The question: whether businesses that run mission-critical workloads on IBM Z or IBMi should remain on these platforms and modernize them by leveraging the innovative tools that exist today or replatform by moving to an alternative on-premises solution, typically x86 or the cloud.

IDC investigated more than 440 businesses that have either modernized the IBM Z or IBMi or replatformed. The results: modernizers incur lower costs for their modernizing initiative than the replatformers.  Modernizers were more satisfied with the new capabilities of their modernized platform than replatformers; and the modernizers achieved a new baseline for which they paid less in hardware, software, and staffing. There is much more of interest in this study, which DancingDinosaur will explore in the weeks or months ahead.

Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer, is DancingDinosaur. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/.

5G Will Accelerate a New Wave of IoT Applications and Z

Even before the advent of 5G DancingDinosaur, which had ghostwritten a top book on IoT, believed that IoT and smartphones would lead back to the Z eventually, somehow. Maybe the arrival of 5G and smart edge computing might slow the path to the Z. Or maybe not.

Even transactions and data originating and being processed at the edge will need to be secured, backed up, stored, distributed to the cloud, to other servers and systems, to multiple clouds, on premises, and further  processed and reprocessed in numerous ways. Along the way, they will find their ways back to a Z somehow and somewhere, sooner or later.

an edge architecture

“5G is driving change in the Internet of Things (IoT). It’s a powerful enabling technology for a new generation of use cases that will leverage edge computing to make IoT more effective and efficient,” writes Rishi Vaish and Sky Matthews. Rishi Vaish is CTO and VP, IBM AI Applications; Sky Matthews is CTO, Engineering Lifecycle Management at IBM.  DancingDinosaur completely agrees, adding only that it won’t just stop there.

Vaish and Matthews continue: “In many ways, the narrative of 5G is the interaction between two inexorable forces: the rise in highly reliable, high-bandwidth communications, and the rapid spread of available computing power throughout the network. The computing power doesn’t just end at the network, though. End-point devices that connect to the network are also getting smarter and more powerful.” 

True enough, the power does not just end there; neither does it start there. There is a long line of powerful systems, the z15 and generations of Z before it that handle and enhance everything that happens in whatever ways are desired at that moment or, as is often the case, later. 

And yes, there will be numerous ways to create comparable services using similarly smart and flexible edge devices. But experience has shown that it takes time to work out the inevitable kinks that invariably will surface, often at the least expected and most inopportune moment. Think of it as just the latest manifestation of Murphy’s Law moved to the edge and 5G.

The increasingly dynamic and powerful computational environment that’s taking shape as telcos begin to redesign their networks for 5G will accelerate the uptake of IoT applications and services throughout industry,  Vaish and Matthews continue. We expect that 5G will enable new use cases in remote monitoring and visual inspection, autonomous operations in large-scale remote environments such as mines, connected vehicles, and more.

This rapidly expanding range of computing options, they add,  requires a much more flexible approach to building and deploying applications and AI models that can take advantage of the most cost-efficient compute resources available.

IBM chimes in: There are many ways that this combination of 5G and edge computing can enable new applications and new innovations in various industries. IBM and Verizon, for example, are developing potential 5G and edge solutions like remote-controlled robotics, near real-time video analysis, and other kinds of factory-floor automation.

The advantage comes from smart 5G edge devices doing the analytics immediately, at the spot where decisions may be best made. Are you sure that decisions made at the edge immediately are always the best? DancingDinosaur would like to see a little more data on that.

In that case, don’t be surprised to discover that there will be other decisions that benefit from being made later, with the addition of other data and analysis. There is too much added value and insight packed into the Z data center to not take advantage of it.

Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer, is DancingDinosaur. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/.

AI Powered Enterprise

IBM has been proclaiming the power of AI for several years. It has not, however, shown much of it in action. A customer reference here and there, but mostly it takes the form of hints of great capabilities coming at some point. 

At first DancingDinosuar feared Seth Earley was following IBM down the AI vagueness path. Then I received an early copy of his book and the table of contents alone had more tangible descriptions than we’ve seen from IBM in a year. For instance, Chapter 7: Customer Service: Delivering Higher Quality at a Lower Cost; Chapter 8: Accelerating Employee Productivity; Chapter 9: Physical Meets Digital; Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Logistics.

That’s not to say that Earley can’t get mushy like IBM.  AI is “reinventing the way we invent” and “will usher in a new era of human capabilities.” Or,  “We are at an inflection point in human history,” he says early at the start of his new book, The AI Powered Enterprise, published by LifeTree Media Ltd. But just a few pages in we should be able to cut him some slack; he needs some puffy sound bytes to grab the reviewers or marketing suits, and we know how they dumb down complex technology in their hope to make it more accessible.

So, what can Earley talk about that is different from what we get from IBM’s suits. It starts in the Forward; “The book is heavily focused on the importance of ontologies in conversational AI systems, and ontologies were also very important in knowledge management,” writes Thomas H. Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor at Babson College, Research Fellow at MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He continues: “I do not know of any books that have such useful and detailed advice on the relationship between data and successful conversational AI systems.”

DancingDinosaur was dearly hoping to not write about ontologies, a subject he resorted to taking pass-fail decades ago as an undergraduate. But it can’t be avoided.  Writes Earley “AI needs the key that unlocks that understanding as an ontology; a representation of what matters within the company and makes it unique, including products and services, solutions and processes, organizational structures, protocols, customer characteristics, manufacturing methods, knowledge, content, and data of all types…Simply put, an ontology reveals what is going on inside your business— it’s the DNA of the enterprise.”

Earley then cites a company desperately needing effective search capabilities. It had one but in practice, the navigation within the system was poorly organized, topic areas were unclear or ambiguous, content was not properly labeled or tagged, and search operated so poorly that some workers joked of it as a “random document generator” when the same search entered at different times could produce different results. 

Earley describes the revamp of the search. All aspects of the business and its core knowledge were redeveloped from the foundation up. The blueprints for the new development began with, you guessed it, ontologies and a knowledge architecture. The resulting overhaul led to increases in user satisfaction (from 20% to 80% approval), greater trust in the system, and more.

And Earley is not done yet with ontologies. As the search example showed, ontologies are the DNA of the enterprise… a consistent representation of data and data relationships that can inform and power AI technologies. In different contexts, it can be expressed as any of the following–stuff we’re all familiar with:  a data model, a content model, an information model, a data/content/information architecture, master data, or metadata… an ontology is not a single, static thing; he writes, it is never complete, and it changes as the organization changes and as it is applied throughout the enterprise. The ontology is the master knowledge scaffolding of the organization.” 

IBM improved at describing AI lately. It has Watson and builds and deploys AI learning, manages machine learning models, AI concepts, and more. You can find a slew of IBM AI and machine learning offerings here. 

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/

  

IBM IBV Sees Shift in Pandemic Consumer Attitude

Do you wonder how this pandemic is going to end? Or when. Or what the world will be like when it actually does or if it does, and how we will even know.

IBM quantum computing researcher

IBM’s Institute of Business Value (IBV), an IBM research group, was asking similar questions. It polled more than 18,000 U.S. adults in May and early June to understand how COVID-19 has affected their perspectives on topics that include remote work; the return to the workplace; where they want to live; how they want to shop; and more. 

IBV’s results are not exactly encouraging. For example, it found that consumers are preparing themselves for more permanent changes in behavior because of the pandemic and their fears about future outbreaks. Two of every three respondents said they were concerned about a second wave of COVID-19 hitting later in 2020. More than 60 percent said they believed there were likely to be more global pandemic events like COVID-19 in the future.

The research also suggests that organizations in every industry must pay attention to their customers’ shifting preferences. And they must respond with agility: by adopting technology, rethinking processes and, most importantly, addressing culture in order to emerge from the pandemic smarter and stronger, say the researchers.

DancingDinosaur is not nearly as methodical as the researchers at IBV. But having spent nearly four months being bombarded with solicitations for almost anything that can be squeezed into Zoom I have been able to form some opinions. The first is how ingenious and creative a lot of marketers have become in repackaging their previously tedious messages for what has almost overnight emerged as a virtual Zoom-like world. 

For decades DancingDinosaur has dodged meetings like a plague, or maybe a pandemic. But some have managed to tease me into attending a few virtual zooms, which, surprisingly, were informative and useful and concise. When the pandemic is finally done and gone, marketers may never get DancingDinosaur into a convention center or seminar venue again. Not when it is so easy to click in and, as importantly, how convenient it is to click leave the meeting.

IBV’s research appears to have uncovered some interesting behaviors. For instance, nearly one in five urban residents indicated they would definitely relocate or would consider moving to suburban or rural areas as a result of the pandemic. Fewer than 1 in 10 indicated they now found living in an urban area more appealing. 

That makes sense. If DancingDinosaur was quarantined in a 1 bedroom or studio condo for weeks or months he’d never do that again and hope you wouldn’t either, no matter how tempting the restaurants might have been when you could actually go into them.

Another set of IBV data points bodes badly for combating climate change. Young climate change activist Greta Thunberg, please forgive them. The researchers found 25 percent of respondents said they would use their personal vehicles exclusively as their mode of transport, and an additional 17 percent said they’d use them more than before. A full 60 percent of those who want to use a personal vehicle but don’t own one said they would buy one. The remainder in this group said they would rent a vehicle until they felt safe using shared mobility.

IBV also looked at work-from-home. Before COVID-19 containment measures went into effect, less than 11% of respondents worked from home. As of June 4, that percentage had grown to more than 45%. What’s more, 81% of respondents—up from 75% in April—indicated they want to continue working remotely at least some of the time.  More than half—61%—would like this to become their primary way of working. 

DancingDinosaur spent his entire career working from home. It can be a great life. Of course,  I didn’t have to educate my children at home or on short notice with minimal guidance. They went to public school and summer camp. When they came home from school each day, it made a great excuse for me to take a cookie break with them. I do miss not having my cookie break partners. They married great guys and, if I set any kind of proper example, they now have cookie breaks with them instead.

Alan Radding is DancingDinosaur, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer still working from home in the Boston area. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/ 

IBM Wazi cloud-native devops for Z

In this rapidly evolving world of hybrid and multicloud systems, organizations are required to quickly evolve their processes and tooling to address business needs. Foremost among that are development environments that include IBM Z as part of their hybrid solution face, says Sanjay Chandru, Director, IBM Z DevOps.

IBM’s goal, then  is to provide a cloud native developer experience for the IBM Z that is consistent and familiar to all developers. And that requires cross platform consistency in tooling for application programmers on Z who will need to deliver innovation faster and without the backlogs that have been expected in the past.

Wazi, along with OpenShift,  is another dividend from IBM purchase of Red Hat. Here is where IBM Wazi for Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces comes in: an add-on to IBM Cloud Pak for Applications. It allows developers to use an industry standard integrated development environment (IDE),  such as Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) or Eclipse, to develop and test IBM z/OS applications in a containerized, virtual z/OS environment on Red Hat OpenShift running on x86 hardware. The container creates a sandbox. 

The combination of IBM Cloud Pak for Applications goes beyond what Zowe offers as an open source framework for z/OS and the OpenProject to enable Z development and operations teams to securely manage, control, script and develop on the mainframe like any other cloud platform. Developers who are not used to z/OS and IBM Z, which are most developers, now can  become productive faster in a familiar and accessible working environment, effectively  improving DevOps adoption across the enterprise

As IBM explained: Wazi integrates seamlessly into a standard, Git-based open tool chain to enable continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) as part of a fully hybrid devops process encompassing distributed and z systems.

IBM continues: Wazi is offered with deployment choices so that organizations can flexibly rebalance entitlement over time based on its business needs. In short, the organization can 

protect and leverage its IBM Z investments with robust and standard development capabilities that encompasses IBM Z and multicloud platforms.

The payoff comes as developers who are NOT used to z/OS and IBM Z, which is most of the developer world, can become productive faster in a familiar and accessible working environment while  improving DevOps adoption across the enterprise. IBM Wazi integrates seamlessly into a standard, Git-based open tool chain to deliver CI/CD and is offered with deployment choices so that any organization can flexibly rebalance over time based on its business needs. In short, you are protecting and leveraging your IBM Z investments with robust and standard development capabilities that encompass the Z and multicloud platforms.

As one large IBM customer put it: “We want to make the mainframe accessible. Use whatever tool you are comfortable with – Eclipse / IDz / Visual Studio Code. All of these things we are interested in to accelerate our innovation on the mainframe” 

An IT service provider added in IBM’s Wazi announcement: “Our colleagues in software development have been screaming for years for a dedicated testing environment that can be created and destroyed rapidly.” Well, now they have it in Wazi.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work athttp://technologywriter.com/

BMC Finalizes Compuware Acquisition

On June 1 BMC completed its acquisition of Compuware. Both were leading mainframe independent software vendors (ISV) and leading providers of mainframe application development, delivery, and performance solutions. Recently the mainframe ISV space has picked up the action. Just a week ago DancingDinosaur was writing about the renaming of Syncsort to Precisely after completing its acquisition of Pitney Bowes, a company best known for its postage metering.

Given IBM’s lackluster performance as a mainframe software application vendor, albeit somewhat constrained by legalities, a healthy mainframe ISV market is good for everyone that wants to thrive in the mainframe space. And there are others DancingDinosaur hasn’t covered recently, such as DataKinetics, a mainframe performance and optimization provider, and Software Diversified Services (SDS), which specializes in mainframe security.

In some ways DancingDinosaur is saddened that the number of independent mainframe ISVs has dropped by one, but is hopeful that those that remain are going to be stronger, more innovative, and better for the mainframe space overall. As BMC says in its announcement: Customers to benefit from an integrated DevOps toolchain with mainframe operations management and agile application development and delivery. Everybody with a stake in the mainframe space should wish them success.

As BMC puts it: the strategic combination of the two companies builds on the success of BMC’s Automated Mainframe Intelligence (AMI) and Compuware’s Topaz suite, ISPW technology, and classic product portfolios to modernize mainframe environments. BMC with Compuware now enables automation and intelligent operations with agile development and delivery – empowering the next generation of mainframe developers and operations teams to excel when working with mainframe programming languages, applications, data, infrastructure, and security.

And the industry analysts say in the announcement: “Adding Compuware’s Topaz software development environment to the BMC portfolio is another step in the direction of targeting the enterprise developer. With Topaz, developers take a modern approach to building, testing, and deploying mainframe applications. This move should allow BMC to spread the word that modern tools matter for the mainframe engineer,” wrote Christopher Condo, Chris Gardner, and Diego Lo Giudice at Forrester Research.

In addition: fifty percent of respondents in a 2019 Forrester study reported that they plan to grow their use of the mainframe over the next two years and 93% of respondents in the 2019 BMC Mainframe Survey believe in the long-term and new workload strength of the platform.

For the mainframe shop, the newly unified portfolio will enable enterprises to:

• Leverage the processing power, stability, security, and agile scalability of the mainframe
• Scale Agile and DevOps methods with a fully integrated DevOps toolchain – allowing for mainframe applications to get to market more quickly and efficiently without compromising quality.
• Combine the self-analyzing, self-healing, and self-optimizing power of the BMC AMI suite of products to increase mainframe availability, efficiency, and security while mitigating risk; along with the Compuware Topaz suite, to empower the next generation of developers to build, analyze, test, deploy, and manage mainframe applications
• Create a customer experience to meet the business demands of the digital age – jumpstarting their Autonomous Digital Enterprise journey

BMC’s AMI brings an interesting twist. Specifically, it aims to leverage AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics to achieve a self-managing mainframe. Key elements of such a self-managing mainframe in the areas of security for advanced network and system security include improved adherence to PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOX, FISMA, GDPR, ISO 27001, IRS Pub. 1075, NERC, and other industry standards for protecting data. Most helpful should be BMC AMI for Security to execute out-of-the-box scorecards for frequently audited areas. 

Similarly, AMI can address areas like  capacity management to optimize mainframe capacity by addressing bottlenecks before they occur, boost staff productivity, and deliver a right-sized, cost-optimized mainframe environment. Or DevOps AMI for the mainframe through application orchestration tools to automatically capture database changes and communicate them to the database administrator (DBA) while enforcing DevOps best practices.

ISVs also can ignite a spark under IBM, especially now that it has Red Hat, as is the case of IBM enabling Wazi, a cloud native devop tool for the z. That’s why we want a strong ISV community.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/

Syncsort Now Precisely After Pitney Bowes Acquisition

After announcing its acquisition of Pitney Bowes last August and completing the deal in December, Syncsort earlier this month rebranded itself as Precisely. The company, a long established mainframe ISV, is trying to position Precisely as a major player among enterprises seeking to handle quantities of data in various ways.

Precisely’s combined and updated Syncsort and Pitney Bowes product lines to span what the rebranded operation now describes as  “the breadth of the data integrity spectrum” by offering data integration, data quality and location intelligence tools.

The rebranded company’s solution portfolio spans five areas based on the use case. 

• Integrate is its data integration line that features Precisely Connect, Ironstream, Assure, and Syncsort.
• Verify unit of data quality tools includes Precisely Spectrum Quality, Spectrum Context, and Trillium.
• Location intelligence (Locate) touts Precisely Spectrum Spatial, Spectrum Geocoding, MapInfo, and Confirm
• Enrich features Precisely Streets, Boundaries, Points Of Interest, Addresses, and Demographics. 
• Engage unit aims to create seamless, personalized and omnichannel communications on any medium, anytime

According to the company, the updated product line will span what it describes as “the breadth of the data integrity spectrum” by offering data integration, data quality and location intelligence tools. Adds Josh Rogers, CEO, Syncsort, now Precisely,  “With the combination of Syncsort and Pitney Bowes software and data, we are creating in Precisely a new company that is focused on helping enterprises advance their use of data through expertise across data domains, disciplines and platforms.”

Rogers continued: “Advancements in storage, compute, analytics, and machine learning have opened up a world of possibilities for enhanced decision-making, but inaccuracies and inconsistencies in data have held back innovation and stifled value creation. Achieving data integrity is the next business imperative. Put simply, better data means better decisions, and Precisely offers the industry’s most complete portfolio of data integrity products, providing the link between data sources and analytics that helps companies realize the value of their data and investments.”

Precisely may again be onto something by emphasizing the quality of data for decision making, which is just an amplification of the old GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out), especially now as the volume, variety, and availability of data skyrockets. When edge devices begin generating new and different data it will further compound these challenges. Making data-driven decisions already has become increasingly complex for even the largest enterprises.

Despite the proliferation of cloud-based analytics tools, according to published studies in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and elsewhere CEOs found that 84 percent do not trust the data they are basing decisions on, and with good reason, as another study found almost half of newly created data records have at least one critical error. Meanwhile, the cost of noncompliance with new governmental regulations, including GDPR and CCPA, has created an even greater urgency for trusted data.

Out of the gate, Precisely has more than 2,000 employees and 12,000 customers in more than 100 countries, with 90 of those part of the Fortune 100. The company boasts annual revenue of over $600 million.

Prior to its acquisition Pitney Bowes delivered solutions, analytics, and APIs in the areas of ecommerce fulfillment, shipping and returns; cross-border ecommerce; office mailing and shipping; presort services; and financing.

Syncsort provides data integration and optimization software alongside location Intelligence, data enrichment, customer information management, and engagement solutions. Together, the two companies serve more than 11,000 enterprises and hundreds of channel partners worldwide.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/

Supercomputers Battle COVID-19

When the world finally defeats the coronavirus and Covad-19, a small part in the victory will go to massive computer power. As Dario Gil, Director of IBM Research, noted; 16 systems with more than 400 petaflops, 775,000 CPU cores, 34,000 GPUs, and counting are among the firepower.

Back in March DancingDinosaur reported here that IBM’s Summit, which the company was boasting as the world’s most powerful supercompter was able to simulate 8,000 chemical compounds in a matter of days in a hunt for something that could impact the COVID-19 infection. 

Writing this today, late in May, we already know that teams of medical researchers, scientists, technology experts, and a vast array of talents are working almost non-stop to find, develop, test, and mass produce a cure, with luck in the form of a vaccine. We should also note all the countless nurses, doctors, aides, assistants and various hospital and food and logistics staff of all types and outside support roles who are involved in keeping things working, feeding staff, wheeling patients around, and otherwise helping to save lives.

As Gil explains: high-performance computing systems allow researchers to run very large numbers of calculations in epidemiology, bioinformatics, and molecular modeling–all the required science disciplines that need to be involved in whatever success is ultimately achieved. You can probably throw in chemistry and a few other areas of electronics and engineering as well. Without massive computer horsepower these experiments would take years to complete if worked by hand, or months if handled on slower, traditional computing platforms.

These machines—more than 25 U.S.-based supercomputers with more than 400 petaflops of computing power—are now available for free to those working toward a vaccine or treatment against the virus, through the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium.

It was created with government, academia and industry—including competitors, working side by side. IBM is co-leading the effort with the U.S. Department of Energy, which operates the National Laboratories of the United States. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise have joined, as well as NASA, the National Science Foundation, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, and six National Labs—Lawrence Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley, Argonne, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Sandia, and others. And then there are academic institutions, including MIT, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Texas, Austin, and the University of California, San Diego.

The White House has been getting deservedly bashed for its slowness, incompetence, and narrow-minded bungling. However, Gil reports the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy has taken up an effort that can make a real difference. He adds; I want to offer this promise: IBM will continue to explore everything in our power to use our technology and expertise to drive meaningful progress in this global fight.

The first thing Gil’s team did was to spread the word to people who might be working on this on any or all fronts—from drug discovery and development with AI-led simulations to genomics, epidemiology and health systems.

He goes on:  We need to understand the whole life cycle of this virus, all the gearboxes that drive it—how it encounters and infects the host cell and replicates inside it, preventing it from producing vital particles. We need to know the molecular components, the proteins involved in the virus’ biochemistry, and then to use computational modeling to see how we can interrupt the cycle. That’s the standard scientific methodology of drug discovery, but we want to amplify it and speed it up.

The virus has been exploding in humans for months, providing an abundance of samples for computer modeling and analysis, Gil continued. Scientists already are depositing samples into public data sources such as GenBank and Protein Data Bank. There are many unknowns and assumptions but a lot of proposals involve using the available protein structures to come up with potential molecular compounds that could lead to a therapeutic treatment or a vaccine. Let’s hope they have great success, the sooner the better.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/

5G Joins Edge Technology and Hybrid Multicloud

At IBM’s virtual Think Conference the first week in May the company made a big play for edge computing and 5G together. 

From connected vehicles to intelligent manufacturing equipment, the amount of data from devices has resulted in unprecedented volumes of data at the edge. IBM is convinced the data volumes will compound as 5G networks increase the number of connected mobile devices.

z15 T02  and the LinuxONE 111 LT2

Edge computing  and 5G networks promise to reduce latency while improving speed, reliability, and processing. This will deliver faster and more comprehensive data analysis, deeper insights, faster response times, and improved experiences for employees, customers, and their customers.

First gaining prominence with the Internet of Things (IoT) a few years back IBM defined edge computing as a distributed computing framework that brings enterprise applications closer to where data is created and often remains, where it can be processed. This is where decisions are made and actions taken.

5G stands for the Fifth Generation of cellular wireless technology. Beyond higher speed and reduced latency, 5G standards will have a much higher connection density, allowing networks to handle greater numbers of connected devices combined with network slicing to isolate and protect designated applications.

Today, 10% of data is processed at the edge, an amount IBM expects to grow to 75% by 2025. Specifically, edge computing enables:

• Better data control and lower costs by minimizing data transport to central hubs and reducing vulnerabilities and costs
• Faster insights and actions by tapping into more sources of data and processing that data there, at the edge
• Continuous operations by enabling systems that run autonomously, reduce disruption, and lower costs because data can be processed by the devices themselves on the spot and where decisions can be made

In short: the growing number of increasingly capable devices, faster 5G processing, and the increased pressure to drive the edge computing market beyond what the initial IoT proponents, who didn’t have 5G yet, envisioned. They also weren’t in a position to imagine the growth in the processing capabilities of edge devices in just the past year or two.

But that is starting to happen now, according to IDC: By 2023, half of the newly deployed on-premises infrastructure will be in critical edge locations rather than corporate datacenters, up from less than 10% today.

Also unimagined was the emergence of the hybrid multicloud, which IBM has only recently started to tout. The convergence of 5G, edge computing, and hybrid multicloud, according to the company, is redefining how businesses operate. As more embrace 5G and edge, the ability to modernize networks to take advantage of the edge opportunity is only now feasible. 

And all of this could play very well with the new z machines, the z15 T02  and LinuxONE lll LT2. These appear to be sufficiently capable to handle the scale of business edge strategies and hybrid cloud requirements for now. Or the enterprise class z15 if you need more horsepower.

By moving to a hybrid multicloud model, telcos can process data at both the core and network edge across multiple clouds, perform cognitive operations and make it easier to introduce and manage differentiated digital services. As 5G matures it will become the network technology that underpins the delivery of these services. 

Enterprises adopting a hybrid multicloud model that extends from corporate data centers (or public and private clouds) to the edge is critical to unlock new connected experiences. By extending cloud computing to the edge, enterprises can perform AI/analytics faster, run enterprise apps to reduce impacts from intermittent connectivity, and minimize data transport to central hubs for cost efficiency. 

Deploying a hybrid multicloud model from corporate data centers to the edge is central to capitalizing on  new connected experiences. By extending cloud computing to the edge, organizations can run AI/analytics faster  while minimizing data transport to central hubs for cost efficiency. By 2023, half of the newly deployed on-premises infrastructure will be in critical edge locations rather than corporate datacenters, up from less than 10% today. It’s time to start thinking about making edge part of your computer strategy. 

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog, and see more of his work at http://technologywriter.com/