AWS Taps Precisely to Bring IBM i Data Into Its Cloud
December 6, 2023 Alex Woodie
Amazon Web Services and Precisely have entered into a partnership agreement that will see AWS reselling Precisely’s data replication software to bring IBM i data into the cloud. It’s part of a larger effort by AWS to bring more IBM workloads into its data centers.
Precisely and AWS previously had a relationship to move mainframe data into the world’s largest public cloud through a program called AWS Mainframe Modernization Data Replication. In late November, the companies announced they’re expanding the program to include IBM i. (While not technically a mainframe, the IBM i server is often called a mainframe. If the hat fits…)
AWS has been experiencing customer demand for a way to bring IBM i data into the cloud and approached Precisely for the capability, according to Precisely Chief Operating Officer Eric Yau. Precisely was happy to oblige, and the two companies hammered out an agreement that allows AWS to offer the native IBM i data replication capabilities in the Precisely portfolio to its massive installed base.
An AWS data center in northern Virginia.
Precisely Connect provides near real-time data integration capabilities for a variety of sources running not only on IBM i and z/OS systems, but Linux, Unix, and Windows too. The company describes it as a form of ETL (extract, transform, and load) or change data capture (CDC). It takes data from source systems and pushes it to target systems, which is often a data warehouse like Teradata, Snowflake, or Apache Hive, or a streaming data bus like Apache Kafka.
On IBM i, Precisely Connect leverages journal-based data replication mechanisms tied to Db2 for i, which is equivalent to the commit log used to implement CDC on “standards-based” relational databases. This gives IBM i customers the ability to replicate database changes to a remote system soon after they are committed to Db2 for i. (It’s basically like a high availability for IBM i setup, but without the extra object and application failover stuff.)
AWS wants to make it easier for IBM i shops to bring data into its cloud for a couple of reasons. In the short term, the goal is to make IBM i data available for advanced analytics using AWS services like Redshift, Athena, or Relational Database Service (RDS), or even third-party analytics services running on AWS, like Snowflake, Databricks, or Cloudera.
In the long run, AWS wants to provide a path for companies to modernize their operational systems running on IBM i and System Z systems and running them in its cloud. That is a much bigger project that will take many years to complete, Yau says, but AWS wants to be there with a solution when customers are ready.
One IBM i shop that’s eager to move their data into the AWS cloud is AAA Life Insurance, a Livonia, Michigan-based company owned by several of the largest entities in the AAA organization.
“Precisely Connect enables us to quickly and easily access vast volumes of historical business and customer data, which is then replicated to the AWS environment where it can be leveraged for advanced analytics,” said Steven Hinzmann, Manager of Application Development at AAA Life Insurance. “Our customers depend on us to provide financial protection for their loved ones, and with over 1,500,000 active policies, central to success is near real-time access to trusted data across multiple sources – the combination of Precisely and AWS allows us to innovate and drive the best possible customer experience.”
Yau is bullish on the potential for Precisely (formerly Syncsort and previously Vision Solutions, et al., before that) and AWS to bring more IBM i data into the cloud.
“Our work with AWS further highlights the expertise that Precisely has built over many decades integrating data from some of the world’s most complex transactional systems, including IBM i and mainframe,” Yau said. “We’re thrilled to expand our relationship with AWS and our shared commitment to help customers fully leverage valuable data assets across their infrastructure.”
You can read more about the offering from AWS here.
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