Precisely announced new support to simplify the migration of IBM Db2 data into Amazon’s Relational Database Service (RDS). It is just the latest announcement from Precisely since it achieved Amazon RDS Ready Partner status with the Precisely Connect product.

This will speed up the ability of Precisely customers to take advantage of Amazon’s analytics apps. For AWS, it gives them greater access to the data held inside IBM customers’ Db2 environments.

Eric Yau, COO at Precisely (Image Credit: Eric Yau)
Eric Yau, COO at Precisely

Eric Yau, Chief Operating Officer at Precisely, said, “Digital transformation and IT infrastructure modernisation initiatives look different for every company – but the one common denominator across all industries is the need for fast and reliable access to trusted data. Our work and expertise with AWS allow us to support customers with the flexibility and agility needed to align real-time data delivery with changing business demands.”

Mainframe modernisation accelerating

Mainframe modernisation is accelerating. For many IBM customers, this has been going on for several years. At one point, it was about a lack of options in terms of software, the costs of the mainframe and skills shortages.

IBM has addressed much of this with several programmes to increase skills and attract new people to the mainframe. The prevalence of Linux on its mainframes has also improved things. However, access to many of the newer technologies comes at a price.

This is where Amazon and other cloud vendors have staked a place. They have been releasing new analytics, data, and AI-based tools to attract organisations that use the mainframe. Another challenge has been that few of these organisations are willing to abandon the mainframe and its role as the system of record.

What Precisely is doing is making it easier for IBM Z and IBM i customers to now migrate data to use the tools Amazon offers. Precisely Connect allows them to do real-time streaming to the services that AWS offers for advanced analytics. Customers can also take advantage of other Precisely solutions to enhance and enrich that data. It gives them a richer set of data to get more effective analytics.

It is not just the ease of access to AWS services that appeals to many of these customers. A major benefit is that the data stays on IBM Z and IBM i. Many of these customers also use Precisely data tools and data sets in other parts of their business. It makes Precisely a trusted broker between them and Amazon.

Enterprise Times: What does this mean?

Over the last few years, Precisely has increased its support for Amazon data and analytics services. In doing so, it has become a key player in mainframe modernisation by enabling trusted and secure data replication.

Adding support for IBM Db2 is a major step forward. It is one of the most heavily used databases inside the mainframe community. Importantly, those customers are no strangers to data extraction and replication for other uses. With Precisely stepping up with its Precisely Connect solution, it is likely that many will simply stop the development of bespoke solutions and use Precisely instead.

The question now is, where does Amazon go? Will it try to persuade those customers that it is a better system of record? Will it look to fully migrate organisations onto its platform and away from their existing mainframe services? If it does, Precisely will be a key part of that migration process around the data story.

Whatever Amazon decides to do, IBM Db2 owners are likely to see this as an opportunity to do better data analysis. For Precisely, it further cements its position in the data world from real-time replication to security and data enrichment.

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