What Others Are Saying

By leveraging PropelZ for Linux within our banking platform strategy, we’ve increased throughput, reduced unnecessary processing layers, and improved operational efficiency all without introducing additional complexity into our systems.

We’re seeing PropelZ sustain around 56,000 records per second, and in one run it moved about 60.9 million records in 18 minutes. Across 100 to 200-million-record datasets, that’s roughly twice the throughput of the managed file transfer-based approach — and the data comes through intact, with no impact to production, whether it’s VSAM, non-VSAM, tape, or GDG.

Lozen was incredibly easy to install and configure. The step-by-step documentation made the process seamless, and with responsive support, everything worked as expected on the first try. Even with our complex AWS and mainframe environment, Lozen integrated smoothly, ensuring secure, real-time data access.

We already had every other tool… nothing else worked.

VirtualZ is solving complex data access challenges with an innovative approach, and we’re proud to support that with the performance and reliability of our DataDirect connectivity. Together, we’re helping customers simplify integration and bring legacy data into modern environments faster.

Lozen enables real-time, read-write, peer-to-peer, access to IBM z mainframe data, while PropelZ makes one-time copies of the Z-held structured data for transfer to an on-prem or public cloud database. The two new products extend VirtualZ’ product repertoire, with FlowZ moving mainframe-held files to a target on-prem or public cloud destination, and Zaac expanding mainframe storage capacity with an external SAN or the public cloud.

Enterprise AI initiatives depend upon high-quality, current data. For enterprises whose data is locked away on mainframes, VirtualZ’s products can resolve strategic bottlenecks to enterprise AI adoption.

The CDC component of PropelZ that allows us to not only replicate the baseline files but represent change moved quite a bit of our work in front of the cutover window.

Ocient and VirtualZ together deliver powerful, end-to-end solutions that turn complex, high-volume data into real-time insight.

Lozen is the best fit for me. I’ve got multiple VSAMs accessed by hundreds of applications — I can’t migrate that with custom solutions.

At Pellera, we understand that mainframe modernization is critical for enterprises looking to innovate while maintaining stability. Our partnership with VirtualZ strengthens our ability to deliver advanced solutions like PropelZ, Zaac and Lozen, enabling our customers to modernize their mainframe environments, integrate seamlessly with the cloud, and optimize storage — all without disruption to their operations.

Lozen will be a total game-changer in the z/OS to cloud native migration space. The ability to transparently move enterprise applications to the cloud without having to move all the dependent data off the z/OS platform will revolutionize the process, the speed, and the risk mitigation involved in these complex efforts. We are excited to partner with VirtualZ as they bring this revolutionary technology to market. Lozen will be great for the Microsoft Azure business, and our mutual customers will see tremendous benefits and cost savings.

We can move the data from the mainframe to a PostgreSQL database in one step, removing 3-4 significant steps… We’re seeing a good increase in performance… We’re handling larger volume transactions with a lot better performance.

Perhaps most challenging to conventional thinking is the company’s Zaac solution, which allows mainframe applications to use cloud storage as if it were native DASD (Direct Access Storage Device). This brings the kind of flexible storage options that distributed systems have enjoyed for years to the mainframe world, but without compromising on the platform’s renowned security and reliability characteristics.

Lozen solves a lot of problems when you have a mainframe that needs to talk to the distributed platform and vice versa, and so that’s why we’re very, very excited about this new solution.

Lozen enables partial and incremental replatform projects, with some applications being replatformed and others staying on the mainframe. Being able to transparently access mainframe VSAM data in real time really helps replatform projects move forward — without having to build additional processes or controls around moving the workload, all while maintaining data integrity and currency. Lozen provides a really good way of providing shared access to critical mainframe data between batch and online applications.

VirtualZ complements AWS Transform by addressing the data side of modernization. While Transform automates code analysis and refactoring, VirtualZ’s Lozen software operationalizes data access – allowing modernized COBOL or Java applications running on AWS to securely read and write live IBM Z datasets (such as VSAM) in real time, without replication or code changes.

VirtualZ develops technology that moves data between IBM Z mainframe servers and cloud or on-premises applications and vice versa. The company, which late 2023 exited stealth with $2.2 million in seed funding, is tackling the need for mainframes to run data on the cloud or for cloud applications to run mainframe data without needing custom coding for each instance.

With so much business-critical data still stored on mainframes, often in VSAM, being able to effectively access that data for both production and testing as part of a modernization strategy is definitely a challenge. With the Lozen solutions, mainframe customers will be able to explore new ways of using their Rocket Software data and look to optimize existing processes to deliver additional business value.

PropelZ is a very straightforward install — you create the ZFS, upload it, untar it, and it’s ready to go. It doesn’t take much time at all, just a couple of hours to get the product laid down and installed in a testing environment.

The installation of Lozen was incredibly straightforward — something that even a junior sysprog or a recent college graduate could handle. As long as you understand Linux, it’s a smooth process. Within just a couple of hours, the product was installed and ready to go in a test environment. From a z/OS system programmer’s perspective, it was one of the easiest installations I’ve encountered.

Eliminating the ETL bottleneck for real-time mainframe-to-cloud data integration is definitely a highly relevant area for modern banking architecture and AI initiatives.