The real cost of COBOL batch processing
Your COBOL applications are the backbone of your business. They process millions of transactions, handle your most critical data, and keep your operations running smoothly around the clock. These are some of the hardest working applications in your organization. Night after night, weekend after weekend, your COBOL batch jobs run on your mainframe’s Central Processor (CP).
While these workloads are essential to your operations, they can easily become one of your biggest cost drivers. Running batch jobs on your CP can come with expensive software licensing fees. Every MSU you consume directly impacts your bottom line. And as your transaction processing volumes grow, so do your costs.
This places you in a difficult position. Somehow, you need to reduce the burden these core applications place on your Central Processor, but traditional solutions to this problem like application rewrites or platform migrations come with enormous risks and unacceptable costs.
Mainframe Optimization: Your path to risk-free CP workload reduction
Luckily, there is an alternate path to achieving the cost savings and efficiency gains you’re looking for that doesn’t require undertaking risky migrations or time-consuming application rewrites: mainframe optimization. By maximizing the performance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of your mainframe itself, you can keep what works in place, and still free up budget and resources for the innovative projects that will move your business forward. For example, Software AG JOPAZ is a optimization tool that changes where your mainframe executes batch jobs (your mainframe’s zIIP processor rather than the CP) which can drive significant cost and capacity savings.
zIIP and embrace, not rip-and-replace
JOPAZ works by compiling your existing COBOL code into Java bytecode that can run on Java Virtual Machines, allowing you to shift your workload from the expensive Central Processor to the more cost-effective zIIP processor. Rather than migrating your data to a new, unproven environment, you can continue to embrace your reliable, time-tested mainframe and keep your mission-critical data and applications exactly where they are. Critically, however, by offloading expensive batch jobs to zIIP, you can realize significant cost reduction and reclaim capacity for growth and innovation.
In measurements taken by our customers using JOPAZ in productive operation environments, we have seen 80% CP workload reductions on average, and up to 90% at peak performance. The only prerequisite for this level of workload reduction is a corresponding amount of freely available zIIP processor capacity, which must be provided by IT on the hardware side on the mainframe.
What mainframe optimization can do for your business
- Reduce costs: When you reduce the load on your Central Processor, you immediately reduce MSU consumption on your mainframe. This can result in a significant reduction in MSU-based software licensing costs.
- Free-up capacity for growth: The capacity you save becomes available for other scaling additional workloads and new initiatives. You can finally pursue innovation projects without worrying about hitting your mainframe limits or going over budget.
- Zero business disruption: Your COBOL application remains untouched. Your developers continue working with their preferred development tools. You’ll maintain the same reliability, security, and performance that make the mainframe so valuable. There’s no learning curve, no retraining, and no operational changes required.
Work with a partner as reliable as your mainframe
You run some of your business’s most critical applications on your mainframe. That’s why it matters who you choose to optimize it with. With decades of mainframe expertise and deep experience in zIIP technology, Software AG helps you reduce costs and free capacity while keeping your applications exactly where they belong: on your secure, proven, reliable mainframe. Ready to start saving?
Your mainframe costs don’t have to keep growing. With JOPAZ, you can achieve significant savings while keeping your COBOL applications exactly where they belong—on your reliable, secure IBM Z mainframe.
Ready to see what a mainframe COBOL workload reduction of over 80% can achieve for your business? Let’s explore how JOPAZ can transform your IT economics while preserving everything that makes your COBOL applications so valuable to your business.