Four million rows. Hours of waiting. Then 11 minutes.
That’s not a marketing number — it’s what happened when a global fintech customer rebuilt their incident investigation workflow around PropelZ™. Engineers who used to wait on EBCDIC files now investigate them in real time. The barrier between their teams and their mainframe data quietly disappeared.
It’s the kind of shift we’re seeing across our customer base: enterprises that have stopped treating mainframe data as a separate, slower world — and stopped treating mainframe storage as a fixed cost they’re stuck with. The common thread is a willingness to question assumptions that have gone unchallenged for decades, whether that’s how fast mainframe data can move or how much it should cost to store.
This month’s issue is built around that pattern — the customers proving it works, the architecture making it possible, the storage strategy quietly cutting costs, and the industry analysts taking notice.
Inside: how a fintech team collapsed hours of file investigation into minutes, why 60–70% of your mainframe storage may be sitting on the wrong tier, the any-input-to-any-output design behind PropelZ, ISG’s latest take on where VirtualZ fits in the modernization landscape, and a behind-the-scenes look at how automatic metadata discovery is rewriting the database integration playbook.
Let’s get into it.
Customer Spotlight
Cracking the EBCDIC Problem with PropelZ™
A global fintech company needed a faster way to investigate incidents buried inside massive mainframe EBCDIC files — some with four to five million rows — per day.
They embedded PropelZ™ as the decoding engine inside their internal file-exploration tool. Project teams now import any COBOL copybook as a schema, tag it by customer, and let PropelZ auto-match and decode files on open. Multiple PropelZ containers run in parallel for large files, and once decoded, teams query the data with SQL or ask plain-language questions through an AI assistant.
The impact: a 4-million-row file that used to take hours now opens in about 11 minutes, and engineers go from waiting on the file to investigating it in minutes. Incident resolution is faster, the barrier to mainframe data is lower, and the team has a reusable schema library that scales across every customer they onboard.
Curious how PropelZ could fit into your data pipelines? Get in touch — we’d love to show you what’s new in PropelZ 2.0.
The Fastest Storage Savings You’re Not Capturing
Quit Paying Tier 1 Prices for Tier 3 Data
Here’s a number worth acting on: 60–70% of mainframe storage is backup and archive data — and most of it is sitting on premium, high-performance tiers it never needed. You’re paying Tier 1 prices for data that has Tier 3 requirements.
Storage costs climbing, data volumes exploding, migrations getting more complex by the quarter — the easy conclusion is “we’re running out of storage.” But that’s the wrong diagnosis. Most enterprises aren’t running out of storage. They’re running up against the limits of a decades-old model built for a world that no longer exists.
Stop designing around your devices and start designing around your data. Learn how an extend-don’t-replace approach — powered by solutions like FlowZ™, Zaac™, and PropelZ™ — lets you offload expensive workloads, simplify backup and archive, and activate data once locked away on tape, all without rewriting a single application.
The organizations leading this shift aren’t asking how to add more storage. They’re asking how to stop using expensive storage for the wrong data.
New on the Blog
Any Input to Any Output: The Architecture Behind Universal Data Movement
Traditional enterprise integration relies on point-to-point connectors — a separate tool for every source-to-target combination. PropelZ™ takes a different approach: a modular architecture that separates inputs from outputs, enabling any data source to connect to any target platform through a common transformation pipeline.
VSAM files, JDBC databases, console message streams, SMF records, and structured feeds can all route to any supported output. The key is metadata abstraction — every input speaks the same language to the transformation engine, eliminating the need for custom mapping logic on each combination.
The result: reduced complexity, future-proof flexibility, lower costs, and built-in options for testing and disaster recovery.
The Linux version extends these capabilities into cloud-native environments, turning a VM in AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud into a universal data transformation hub.
Enterprise needs evolve faster than software release cycles. PropelZ’s any-to-any architecture is designed for that reality, giving organizations the building blocks to adapt as platforms, partners, and priorities change.
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.
Whether you’re 10 minutes in or ten years deep on mainframe modernization, there’s something here that will change how you think about enterprise data access.
In the News
VirtualZ Recognized in the 2026 ISG Provider Lens® Mainframes – Services and Solutions Study.
The work our customers and partners are doing to unlock mainframe data for the cloud, AI, and analytics is getting noticed. VirtualZ Computing has been named a Contender in the 2026 ISG Provider Lens® Mainframes — Services and Solutions study across three quadrants:
- Application Modernization Software — Global
- Mainframe Technology Consulting — U.S.
- Mainframe Technology Consulting — U.S. Public Sector
Thank you to ISG and the analyst team for the recognition, and to our customers and partners who continue to push this category forward with us.
On the Skyward Data Podcast
Tired of spending weeks creating COBOL copybooks just to move database data? VirtualZ CTO Vince Re reveals how PropelZ’s automatic metadata discovery is eliminating copybook hell for database integration — and why your next DB2-to-Snowflake migration might take minutes instead of months.
This episode exposes the secret every mainframe professional knows but won’t admit: copybook creation for database integration is a productivity killer that’s been holding back data projects for decades. Discover why forward-thinking enterprises are skipping manual metadata management for database-driven integration that “just works.”
What you’ll learn:
- Why “write a SQL query and run the pipeline” is replacing weeks of copybook engineering
- How automatic metadata extraction eliminates the #1 adoption barrier for database projects
- Real scenarios: DB2 table migration that went from complex to trivial overnight
- The truth about why your database integration projects take 80% longer than they should
- How self-describing databases make COBOL expertise optional (not required) for data movement
The controversial claim: If you’re still manually creating copybooks for database integration in 2026, you’re doing it the hard way. Vince explains why the smartest teams are abandoning traditional approaches for metadata automation that scales from simple migrations to billion-row analytics projects.
Perfect for fed-up mainframe developers, integration architects tired of copybook nightmares, and IT leaders questioning why database integration is still so complicated.
Warning: This episode will make you reconsider every database copybook you’ve ever written.
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.
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