Mainframe Blog

The Continuous Improvement of Mainframe Speed and Efficiency

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2 minute read
John McKenny

In today’s always-on digital economy, customers expect 24×7 system availability, instant response times, and products and services that constantly evolve to meet their needs. Whether your mainframe teams are developing new applications and features, resolving database issues, or recovering from a security incident, speed and efficiency are vital to gaining and maintaining a competitive advantage. This quarter’s release of enhancements to the BMC AMI portfolio helps your mainframe teams work quickly and cost-effectively without sacrificing quality, regardless of the task at hand. Read on to learn more.

BMC AMI Cloud Data users can now reduce storage capacity usage and cost by archiving BMC AMI Storage IAM datasets to the cloud, while new automations enable more efficient data management processing. We’ve also introduced streamlined filtering and grouping capabilities give users better data insights.

An enhancement to BMC AMI DevX Code Insights builds on our recently released code refactoring support by automatically analyzing all fields in a specific copybook and giving developers the ability to quickly comment and remove unused copybooks. Meanwhile, BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline now offers detailed deploy controls, enabling developers to specify actions for different environments, set specific deployment times, and specify how to handle failures.

This quarter’s enhancements also boost the efficiency and performance of IBM® Db2® and IBM® IMS. A new BMC AMI zAdviser dashboard provides actionable insights from BMC AMI Recovery for Db2® with new visibility into data migration and audit task oversight. BMC AMI Online Reorg for IMS streamlines database change management capabilities, while new features in BMC AMI Database Administration for Db2® and BMC AMI Utilities for Db2® reduce downtime and accelerate mean time to diagnose (MTTD) and resolve issues.

New BMC AMI Ops quick-view dashboards for IBM® z/OS®, IBM® CICS®, Db2®, and Java help users easily visualize key performance metrics for mainframe systems and subsystems, providing at-a-glance insights to help identify areas that could affect uptime or performance.

Finally, BMC now offers clients mainframe penetration testing (pentesting) through NetSPI to determine system vulnerabilities, validate security posture, and easily fulfil compliance requirements.

This quarter’s release coincides with the 60th anniversary of the release of the IBM® System/360 machine on April 7, 1964. Over the past 60 years, the mainframe has undergone incredible change, not only in hardware capacity but also in its role as the backbone of the modern digital economy. As we enter the next 60 years of mainframe history, BMC is committed to continually offering new products and features that improve the speed, efficiency, and quality of your mainframe data management, development, operations, and security teams. We look forward to being your partner in 2024 and beyond as you optimize and transform the mainframe, taking the platform to new heights.

Learn more about our April release of BMC AMI enhancements on the What’s New in Mainframe Solutions page.

Access the 2024 BMC Mainframe Report

The results of the 19th annual BMC Mainframe Survey are in, and the state of the mainframe remains strong. Overall perception of the mainframe is positive, as is the outlook for future growth on the platform, with workloads growing and investment in new technologies and processes increasing.


These postings are my own and do not necessarily represent BMC's position, strategies, or opinion.

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About the author

John McKenny

As SVP and General Manager of Intelligent Z Optimization and Transformation at BMC Software, John leads the R&D, Product Management and Solutions Marketing teams to innovate the mainframe to meet the needs of today’s evolving digital economy. John has over 25 years of management experience at BMC alone and, prior to joining, he led various IT management teams and strategies for 15 years in the transportation and insurance industries.