Transform with Consistency:
Ensono Cloud-Connected Mainframe for Microsoft Azure

Adopting the latest advances in technology enables organizations to differentiate and challenge the status quo. This is especially true in the current era of AI. Successful technology adoption requires transformation and many companies struggle here, particularly those with traditional mainframe and burgeoning cloud environments. Adopting the latest advances in technology enables organizations to differentiate and challenge the status quo. This is especially true in the current era of AI. Successful technology adoption requires transformation and many companies struggle here, particularly those with traditional mainframe and burgeoning cloud environments.

Why? Because the two environments sit at opposite ends of the IT spectrum, posing challenges to transformation. Regardless of whether the strategy is to migrate everything to cloud or establish hybrid architectures, the impact of network latency between the two, plus the highly complex, tightly-coupled, often undocumented, mainframe estates – presents a real challenge.

What if there was a different way?

Suppose you could transform your IT landscape, modernising mainframe apps and data within arm’s reach of your cloud. You could move at your preferred pace, within the risk profile aligned to your business, whilst exploiting your preferred mix of the latest gen IBM z16 servers, and comprehensive capabilities of Microsoft Cloud.

This is the design principle for Ensono Cloud-Connected Mainframe for Microsoft Azure.

Solution Overview

Ensono’s Cloud-Connected Mainframe for Microsoft Azure delivers high-speed, low-latency connectivity between Ensono-hosted IBM z16 infrastructure and the Azure network fabric. Providing 2-3 ms latency, mainframe workloads can now seamlessly integrate with cloud services as though they were in the same data center, unlocking a range of transformation paths, from optimised DC exit to enhanced hybrid architectures.

This new technical capability is backed by a contractual model to support the transformation. Ensono Flex® provides workload flexibility to migrate workloads across any platform without incurring a penalty, meaning that mainframe capacity reduction directly reduces mainframe costs. Additionally, as the integration flourishes between mainframe and Azure, the reliable and consistent network connectivity is underpinned by a commercial model that includes ingress and egress charges. Moreover, the availability of solution in the Azure Marketplace allows organizations to retire this against their Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment.

Example Scenarios

Optimizing Data Center Exit

For organizations emptying their data centers, this solution allows x86 and mainframe workloads to be migrated in parallel. As the Linux and Windows environments are migrated and modernized in Microsoft Azure, the corresponding mainframe workloads can be re-housed to IBM zSystems hardware, on Ensono’s Cloud-Connected Mainframe. This allows organizations to move at speed, whilst avoiding the forced decision-making often associated with impending contract deadlines.

For those companies seeking to retire their mainframe entirely, the low-latency connection to native Azure services, directly addresses the challenges of tightly coupled architectures that are typical of mainframe. Now, applications and data components can be decoupled and migrated incrementally, enabling a more granular migration that can be delivered over a time period best suited to the risk profile of the estate.

Enhancing Hybrid Cloud

For organizations adopting hybrid cloud, the proximity of mainframe and Azure environments enables deep integration of application, data, and infrastructure services.

• Applications. Seamlessly creating, building, and deploying applications with a common developer experience across mainframe and cloud is entrenched in the design. More significantly, the low-latency connection enables end-to-end value chain services to be truly heterogeneous. This is particularly relevant with the rise of contemporary API integration techniques that vastly simplify mainframe and Azure services.
• Data. Market-leaders differentiate by deriving insights effectively from data throughout the enterprise, and this new high-speed connectivity enables unprecedented access to the rich sources of data on the mainframe. When combined with solutions such as the IBM Z and Cloud Modernization Stack for Azure, this surfaces current mainframe data in real-time for enterprise-wide analytics and AI engines built on Microsoft Fabric and Azure OpenAI.
• Infrastructure. Managing and optimizing mainframe infrastructure, to prioritize valuable production workloads has always been an integral part of the platform’s economics. Exploiting Azure to host non-production environments, such as development & test or back-up & archive, is another of the optimisation tenets of Cloud-Connected Mainframe, designed to reduce cost and improve long-term efficiencies of the environment.

Getting Started

Ensono’s Cloud-Connected Mainframe Lab provides an environment for organizations to explore all aspects of this solution, testing and validating key use-cases. In its initial implementation, the solution supports a high-speed network connection to the Microsoft Azure East US onramp. However, the Lab environment is open to organizations globally, who are seeking early testbeds ahead of future expansion to additional Azure Regions.

If you would like to learn more about and this solution, please contact the Microsoft team at: mainframetransformed@microsoft.com.