By Donna Hudi, SHARE Inc. Executive Director

The cloud can represent many different things to many different people. And quite often for developers in the mainframe ecosystem, the cloud can represent frustration and ambiguity.

Much of this frustration stems from organizations not ensuring that developers have the right tools to succeed: The idea is to help make their job as simple as possible – using cloud principles.

Before starting to integrate mainframe applications with the cloud, it is important to carefully plan an enterprise cloud strategy that will drive value for the organization. An effective cloud strategy can help simplify your developer’s job and frees up the time they need to work on development.

Developers are looking for easy development tools, testing and staging areas for deployable code, integration team collaboration and support, and a continuous delivery pipeline. The development pipeline needs to usher products along, without the developer having to be the one to drive that process.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, developers mainly want to be able to code with as few distractions as possible. In an on-premises environment, or an IaaS environment, developers usually need to help out as environment administrators. While developers are capable of managing your organization’s infrastructure, that’s not necessarily the best use of their time and valuable programming skills. Transitioning to cloud narrows the scope of developers’ responsibilities, giving them more time to develop quality code.

As we gear up for SHARE Providence, August 6-11, I am proud to say that we have many different sessions that will help provide a level of clarity when it comes to helping developers work with the cloud.

Take for instance, the panel discussion scheduled for Tuesday, Getting Your z/OS Data to the Cloud, which addresses new ways to get your z/OS data into the Cloud. For years, we've been backing up and archiving data on z Systems using the same fundamental architecture. This panel discussion will feature four hardware vendors (IBM, Oracle Storage Tek, Dell EMC, and HDS/Luminex) talking about strategies that reinvent z data backup and archive around a new methodology built on the latest Cloud storage technologies.

Learning about developers’ requirements is the first step toward advancing your company’s cloud strategy. Knowing the tools and solutions that developers want is part of that cloud strategy for helping them succeed.

At SHARE Providence, IBM’s Montgomery Bauman will present a survey of what he calls “cloud(ish)” tools and solutions. During this presentation, Bauman will discuss mainframe participation in the Cloud (API Economy), as well as mainframe on-prem use of Cloud-based technology (Provisioning Toolkits and Infrastructure and Database as a Service) and off-prem use of Cloud as a provider of services and tools.

The bottom line when it comes to ensuring that your developers succeed is simple: Make your developer’s job as simple as possible – using cloud principles – to allow them to focus on coding. SHARE Providence will showcase a broad array of opportunities to help put these professionals in the position to succeed.