This text was written by David McNierney, member of the Zowe Technical Group and Product Advertising & Developer Advertising Chief at Broadcom Inc. It appeared on the Open Mainframe Undertaking weblog. The third annual Open Mainframe Summit is September 21-22 in Philadelphia, PA. It will likely be in-person and digital. The schedule is now accessible and early-bird pricing ends on July 15. Study extra, see the agenda, and register right here.
The Open Mainframe Undertaking’s Zowe initiative was born from an formidable objective: make the mainframe a seamless, built-in a part of the fashionable IT panorama — using the identical practices, instruments and skillsets — with out compromising its core attributes of stability, safety and resiliency. Reaching this imaginative and prescient would deal with the rising expertise crunch whereas serving to enterprises modernize their mission-critical functions for at the moment’s hybrid cloud world. It was thrilling from the outset.
What higher solution to combine the mainframe on this manner than with open supply, the expertise that has fueled different paradigm-changing tendencies? Broadcom, IBM and Rocket Software program found complementary initiatives throughout their organizations and, with the steering and help of the Open Mainframe Undertaking, Zowe was born. The framework, the primary open supply mission for z/OS, opens the mainframe to widespread practices like DevOps, languages like JavaScript and Python, and instruments like CI/CD orchestrators.
Since then, Zowe’s trajectory has been extraordinary. Listed here are the highest 5 causes to be excited in regards to the framework:
1) Extraordinary Progress
The person survey from the Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2022 affords some eye-opening statistics: 19% of web sites are already utilizing Zowe (up from 10% final yr) with an extra 50% of web sites planning to make use of it within the coming yr (an enormous improve from 10% final yr).
“Zowe, the open-source manner of accessing mainframes, was launched in 2018. 19 % of web sites mentioned that they’re already utilizing this open-source expertise, with an enormous 50 % of web sites having plans to utilize it within the coming yr. Open-source expertise is now changing into commonplace on mainframes.”
“Maybe Zowe will proceed to assist the mainframe to seem like every other server to a youthful era of programmers and managers.”
Key takeaway: don’t miss the bus!
2) Trade Recognition
Zowe received the Finest DevOps for Mainframe award on this yr’s DevOps Dozen competitors, solely 3 years after its introduction! Primarily based on a mix of judging and widespread voting, this recognition is especially noteworthy as a result of Zowe was chosen over plenty of well-established business choices with massive numbers of customers. Chalk one up for the next-generation!
3) Strong Ecosystem
With over 70 conformant merchandise, the Zowe ecosystem is quick rising with instruments now spanning the applying improvement, safety and operations domains. Along with leaders like Broadcom and IBM, distributors receiving badges for Zowe Conformance now embody Micro Focus and BMC reflecting broader recognition of the framework’s worth and buyer demand. And one other signal of a fast-maturing open supply expertise, conformant help suppliers can be found to assist customers notice the complete energy of the ecosystem.
4) Present Person Base
Downloads of the Zowe CLI have exceeded 100,000 and Zowe Explorer for VS Code has exceeded 50,000. And Zowe z/OS Construct downloads (server-side) have exceeded 5,000. These numbers seem to verify the Arcati findings of accelerating Zowe adoption and mirror an more and more real-world-hardened answer.
5) Energized Group
An important variety of all is 501 — the variety of contributors to this vibrant open supply mission. These contributors supply their time, experience and power to advance the Zowe trigger to the advantage of everybody within the enterprise IT group. They contribute every little thing from documentation to structure opinions to code they usually come from many backgrounds and geographies. It takes a village, and this one is extra energized than ever!
The onboarding of the mainframe as a seamless, built-in a part of the hybrid cloud is nicely underway. The highway is obvious and up to date proof suggests a fast-approaching tipping level — a degree at which Zowe transitions from an expanded toolkit for just a few to the muse of the hybrid cloud for all.
For those who loved this weblog, checkout extra Zowe blogs right here or the Zowe web site at Zowe.org. It’s also possible to ask a query and be a part of the dialog on the Open Mainframe Undertaking Slack Channel #Zowe-dev, #Zowe-user or #Zowe-onboarding. If that is your first time utilizing the Open Mainframe Undertaking Slack, register right here.
