Reduced Total Cost of Ownership
Full Exploitation of zIIP and zAAP Specialty Engines
In many circles, enterprise architects and developers equate the IBM System Z mainframe platform with expensive processing costs. However, by dramatically lowering mainframe Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in a variety of ways, DataDirect Shadow is quickly changing this perception.
By maximizing IBM's System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) specialty engine exploitation, substantially reducing integration complexity, and optimizing developer productivity, DataDirect Shadow enables enterprise organizations to better incorporate mainframe functionality and data into more modern Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and at the same time reduce TCO and save precious IT budget dollars. DataDirect provides a proven, risk-free method for exploiting zIIP specialty engines. Shadow does not cause IBM or other third party code to become zIIP-enabled.
There is no way around it; traditional approaches to mainframe integration are computationally expensive. DataDirect Shadow exploits the zIIP specialty engine beyond DB2 for reduced mainframe TCO, and the new Shadow TCO Calculator measures the actual value of zIIP exploitation!
Unlike any product on the market today, Shadow provides a risk-free, proven method for unlocking the zIIP engine to run additional workloads beyond DB2, in particular, the processing involved with integrating mainframes with SOAs. On the graphic below, adjust the sliders on the demonstration graphic below to calculate the benefit of zIIP offload.
The real DataDirect Shadow TCO Calculator is a sophisticated, user-friendly tool for analyzing and modeling the impact of Web Services/SOA and data-related processing on mainframe MIPS capacity. With just a few user inputs, the TCO Calculator assembles a detailed report that determines potential saving in MIPS dollars and MIPS capacity when utilizing a zIIP specialty engine in combination with DataDirect Shadow.
Register now for a personal tour of the Shadow Mainframe TCO Calculator!
Note: The formulas and underlying calculations were developed by experts at DataDirect Technologies' mainframe research lab and a team of analysts with WinterGreen Research, an acknowledged leader in the field of mainframe TCO analysis.
Shadow offloads up to 99% of the mainframe integration processing for Web services supporting Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) or large data queries to no-charge areas of the mainframe.
Shadow seamlessly diverts processing-intensive SOA workloads, such as Web services involving mainframe data sources including Adabas, DB2 for z/OS, IMS DB, and VSAM as well as legacy application environments such as CICS, IDMS, IMS TM and Natural – from the mainframe's General Purpose Processor (GPP) to the zIIP specialty engine, reducing MSU utilization.
Shadow quickly and efficiently transforms working mainframe transactions or data queries, allowing the new processing to run economically on the zIIP specialty engine. Shadow’s patent-pending technology switches between ineligible zIIP environments - like CICS transactions, which must run on standard central processors - and our own processing code, which runs in enclave SRB mode, and is eligible to run on the zIIP. Shadow does not cause IBM or other third party code to become zIIP-enabled.
By leveraging the zIIP specialty engine beyond DB2, Shadow significantly increases the Transaction per Second (TPS) rate – often by as much as 175%. And as a result, Shadow helps organizations better manage IBM monthly licensing charges, as well as improving the ability to meet service level agreement requirements.
Also, this approach dramatically reduces MIP and MSU utilization – on average slashing per transaction CPU time by as much as 430%. In effect, Shadow’s unmatched zIIP exploitation translates on average to an 80% savings of GPP CPU time – immediate savings in monthly license and support fees as well as future savings in the form of deferred upgrades through more efficient workload management against capacity requirements.
By eliminating the need for redundant point integration solutions, Shadow is a flexible, yet highly scalable solution that significantly diminishes complexity, points of failure, and costs associated with maintaining the typical "accidental" architecture that defines most enterprise integration scenarios.
For the large enterprise organization that has a wide range of mainframe integration requirements, Shadow’s products work together seamlessly, dramatically reducing the complexity, cost and risk associated with multi-platform connectivity.
On the other hand, Shadow products also work independently as stand alone solutions. So, for the enterprise that has a specific project requirement, Shadow can deliver the best of breed tool that meets the most tightly defined integration need. In either scenario, DataDirect Shadow not only seamlessly incorporates the mainframe into modern computing architectures, but also improves cross-platform performance, and delivers substantial TCO reductions.
