Mainframe Optimization
How JOPAZ Turns IT Infrastructure Optimization Into ROI
Learn how recompiling COBOL with JOPAZ enables faster mainframe modernization, freeing up IT capacity for digital innovation without disruption.
It’s no secret that today’s executive leaders are under constant pressure to innovate. Digital transformation and artificial intelligence initiatives demand significant computing power and financial investment, and often require legacy system modernization. For many organizations, this means touching COBOL applications that have been running for decades.
These applications are the backbone of business, but scaling them consumes resources that could be dedicated to growth initiatives. Strategies like rip-and-replace or buying more capacity may seem like the most efficient approach, but they’re often costly, resource-intensive, and don’t cater to your organization’s long-term needs (or your bottom line). Modernization often comes with mounting cloud costs and major disruption. On the other hand, simply adding capacity and keeping your COBOL doesn’t help lower TCO. Enterprise technical debt grows, innovation stalls.
Fortunately, you don’t have to abandon your mission-critical applications to innovate. It’s possible to modernize faster without rewriting or replacing what already works, enabling your organization to maximize existing IT investments. Learn how JOPAZ stretches the value of your mainframe, helps reclaim mainframe capacity, and frees time and resources for future innovation, all without changing a single line of COBOL code.
The challenges of mainframe modernization
As the demand for IT transformation and innovation grows, so does the need for mainframe capacity and optimization. This push for business agility often clashes with the reality that scaling mission-critical legacy systems is time- and resource-intensive.
Many organizations have COBOL applications that have been running reliably for decades. To meet growing business demands, they might try to optimize COBOL, bringing in analyst tools, new developers, and other programs. Alternatively, they might try a rip-and-replace strategy, buy bigger mainframes, or move off the mainframe altogether. However, these options are often unpredictable, hard to manage, and come with a hidden cost: the loss of decades of business and application knowledge that can’t be replaced.
We often hear customers planning to translate their COBOL code into other languages saying they hope that knowledge also transfers during the project. But here’s the thing: Hope is not a strategy for enterprise application modernization. It’s time for a more effective solution that allows your developers to work in a familiar language and avoids the need for more development resources.
JOPAZ enables mainframe modernization without migration
JOPAZ exists to help you reclaim mainframe capacity without losing your developers’ knowledge, keeping the unmatched performance, security, and reliability of IBM Z while saving CPU cycles.
How? JOPAZ recompiles COBOL source code into zIIP-eligible Java bytecode to redistribute high-utilization workloads to the more efficient zIIP processor. It also offloads Db2 access to the Java side, resulting in fewer usage spikes, greater cost predictability, and reduced technical debt. The benefits are twofold: mitigating risks in mainframe modernization and freeing up IT capacity for digital innovation.
The mainframe optimization business case
The benefits of JOPAZ can be summed up as aligning mainframe strategy with business goals. Optimizing your COBOL applications with JOPAZ stretches the value of your existing IT investments by:
- Utilizing hardware already in your stack
- Maximizing mainframe ROI
- Reducing batch clock time
- Shrinking SLA windows and removing latent workloads from the queue
- Allowing your teams to do more in the same time frame
- Freeing resources for developers to focus on innovation
- Enabling strategic planning for future upgrades (i.e., ensuring you have the capacity you need, when you need it)
Rather than replatforming or upgrading your COBOL, JOPAZ helps you seamlessly bridge the gap between legacy environments and modern DevOps pipelines to extend the value of your revenue-generating applications, keep your workloads in place, and gain efficiency using zIIP.
Case study: JOPAZ leads to real mainframe modernization ROI
Consider this customer example of the impact of smart workload redistribution:
A major energy provider with a significant mainframe footprint and high-volume Db2 workload sought to achieve greater efficiency by balancing its batch COBOL workloads across processing resources.
With JOPAZ, they compiled COBOL batch source code to Java bytecode and ran it on JVM, leveraging IBM zIIP engines. The result: 76% batch COBOL CPU savings with one zIIP engine, and 92.9% CPU savings when a second was added, all with no changes to code or business logic. This scale of improved application performance unlocks capacity for teams to focus on growth rather than maintenance—and alleviates budget pressure while innovating.
Enable IT infrastructure optimization and improve business agility with JOPAZ
Modernizing your IT environment doesn’t have to mean putting your core business applications at risk. Recompiling your legacy COBOL with JOPAZ is a minimally invasive way to reclaim capacity and get the most out of your IBM Z platform, using the same developers and business logic that are already working for your business. With JOPAZ, your legacy systems are no longer a liability, but a critical enabler of modernization and innovative projects like generative AI, machine learning, and hybrid cloud.
Ready to see the business value of legacy system modernization with JOPAZ? Watch a demo to get started.
JOPAZ Demo
Discover how JOPAZ demo Modernization transforms your COBOL workloads to free up valuable resources without business risk.
Reduce mainframe COBOL workload with JOPAZ
JOPAZ compiles COBOL code into Java bytecode to run workloads on the zIIP processor, reducing mainframe CPU use and freeing capacity without code changes.
Mainframe optimization: Maximize the potential of your IBM Z without risk
JOPAZ optimizes COBOL workloads on IBM Z by compiling them to zIIP-eligible Java, reclaiming GP capacity for AI, analytics, and innovation with zero disruption.