Inside This Issue
Welcome to AI-Ready Data Access Insights. This issue is full of stories about teams getting their data where it needs to go, faster and more simply than they expected. Here’s what’s inside:
- A Fortune 500 retailer, its outsourcer, and its systems integrator all chose PropelZ. Each tested it against their own requirements, and all three said yes. Our new customer white paper shares what they found.
- For ISVs receiving customer data, and for teams sharing data with business partners. Two new blog posts cover both sides. One shows ISVs how to bring customers live in days. The other shows teams how to feed every business partner without writing another extract.
- How to give cloud apps live access to mainframe VSAM data without moving it. Our latest webinar shows how Lozen lets cloud applications read and update mainframe data right where it lives, with one copy, no pipelines, and your existing security in place.
- Move a million data sets with a single job. Give the PropelZ Multiplexer your list of files, and it schedules, runs, and tracks every transfer for you. It speeds up when your system has room and eases back during business hours. Hear how on the latest Skyward Data episode.
- Explore at your own pace. The Customer Briefing Center is open whenever you are, with no sales pitch.
We hope you find something here you can put to work. ↓
Why They Look to VirtualZ
End users, partners, integrators and hyperscalers are looking beyond the tools they already have
This month the calls came from every direction: end users with a project on the calendar, the platforms that serve them, the systems integrators delivering their programs, and the hyperscalers hosting the result. Each already has tools for moving data. Each came looking for something those tools weren’t built to do.
“We already owned most of the legacy mainframe data movement tools. None of them could move data to Google Cloud at the scale, and with the simplicity, this program requires. PropelZ did.”
— Senior Director of Engineering, Fortune 500 Retailer
End users with a plan and a date. A specialty manufacturer, working alongside its systems integrator, is building a Microsoft Fabric data warehouse and moving some workloads to .NET, with tools chosen by year-end and work starting early next year. The data that runs purchasing and manufacturing lives in about 1,500 VSAM files, with record layouts that general-purpose tools struggle to read. It needs to flow into SQL Server, current and usable, without rewriting the applications that keep the plant running.
Partners and hyperscalers bringing their customers. An IBM Power cloud partner, together with Google Cloud and the prime contractor, is helping a government ministry get its Db2 for i data into BigQuery for analytics and AI. The options on hand either lacked a direct path from IBM i or required a vendor’s cloud console in the middle.
Platforms answering their own customers. An observability platform hears from its largest enterprise customers that they want to see their mainframe alongside everything else they monitor. The standard route means building and maintaining a mapping layer before any data shows up. PropelZ can bring mainframe telemetry into the tools those teams already use every day.
When end users, systems integrators, platforms and hyperscalers all reach for the same answer, it starts to become the standard way the work gets done. If one of these stories sounds like your week, whichever seat you’re in, we’d love to hear about it. Is there a project on your calendar right now that’s waiting on data?
New on the Blog
How to Get VSAM and Mainframe Data into Databricks Without the Staging Hops
Mainframe data, straight into Databricks
More teams are asking us to get VSAM and other mainframe data into Databricks for analytics and AI. In this post we explain how PropelZ does it in one step. It reads the data once on z/OS, uses the COBOL copybooks you already have to sort out EBCDIC and packed decimal, and writes straight into Databricks through a native bulk-load driver.
Loads run about six times faster than standard JDBC, almost all of the processing runs on zIIP, and most teams are testing the same day they install.
Press Play
Now Streaming on the VirtualZ YouTube Channel
One channel. Every angle. Start here.
Our curated playlists walk you through AI & Modernization Strategy, Use Cases in Action, Product Deep Dives, Security & Compliance, Strategic Partner Conversations, and more — in the order we recommend watching.
Is a platform you’ve already paid for still waiting on your data?
You’ve signed with a new provider for payroll, loyalty or fraud, and there’s a go-live date on the calendar. The platform can’t do anything until your data arrives. Your mainframe team is already maintaining dozens of extracts, with a line of requests behind this one.
Or you’re the provider. You’ve signed a new customer, and you can’t bill them in full until their data shows up, in a layout unlike any of your other customers’. When they change a field next quarter, someone on your team rebuilds the intake.
Either way, the date is set and the feed isn’t. Hand-built extracts take weeks each and break when anything changes.
There’s a faster way through. Your customers keep sending what they already send, with nothing new to install, and the platform turns it into what it needs without writing a program for each customer. On the enterprise side, a new feed comes from the COBOL copybooks and Db2 definitions your team already has. Any input, any output, any platform, and your system of record stays where it is. That’s why it’s already built into a leading banking platform, and providers in observability and beyond are working toward the same thing.
Our on-demand webinar walks through both sides.
So — which go-live on your calendar is waiting on data?
On the Skyward Data Podcast
A Million Data Sets, One Job
Is your modernization milestone waiting on a data move your tools can’t finish in time?
You have a date that won’t move: a modernization milestone, an analytics or AI launch, a platform the business already bought. The data has to be there first, and the window to move it is fixed.
The tools you’d normally use were designed in the 1980s and ’90s, before the public cloud existed. Managed file transfer, ETL and change data capture each move the data one hop at a time, and every new feed has to be designed, built and maintained by hand. When the window is ten hours and the job takes fourteen, the date slips.
A Fortune 500 retailer hit exactly that. The retailer, its systems integrator and its outsourcer already owned every one of those tools. Each tested PropelZ, and each chose it. Transfers that took 12 to 14 hours finished in 2 to 4.
PropelZ installs and runs instead of being built. It moves data in one hop and filters at the source: any input to any output, on IBM Z, IBM i, Linux, UNIX or Windows, on premises or in any cloud, with no custom code. Your system of record stays where it is.
Which deadline on your calendar depends on data you can’t move fast enough today?
The latest Skyward Data episode shows how PropelZ can help.
Skyward Data is THE podcast for professionals who want to gain a competitive edge in the evolving data landscape. Join us on your favorite platform, and subscribe to remain ahead of the competition.
Any Platform. Any Input. Any Output. One Patented Portfolio.
On-Demand Customer Briefings
Today’s enterprise leaders want insight, not a sales pitch. That’s why we created the VirtualZ Customer Briefing Center — a self-paced, no-pressure environment where you can explore our patented, no-code data access software when and how it works for you.
“These briefings are designed to put customers in control. They make it easy to explore how our solutions solve real-world problems — at your own pace, with clarity and no noise.”
— Vince Re, CTO, VirtualZ Computing
Thank you!
Thanks for spending a few minutes with us this month.
Whether you’re modernizing storage, accelerating AI, or powering compliance, VirtualZ is here to help you unlock mainframe data with less friction — with our no-code solutions, you can start delivering results today.
Ready when you are:
- Explore at your own pace in the Customer Briefing Center
- Watch demos and webinars anytime on YouTube
- Reach out directly at hello@virtualzcomputing.com
See you next month with more ways to modernize, integrate, and accelerate.
— The VirtualZ Team