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Resiliency is top-of-mind for today’s customers. Successful organizations know to expect the unexpected and are prepared for it. They invest in flexible infrastructures ready to respond to a potential outage. The reason is simple: Businesses that can recover from an outage instantly to minimize business disruption — and get their business back up and running as quickly as possible — have effectively minimized any perceptible impact to their customers.
The Case for Resiliency
Business continuity can cover a lot of ground, ranging from facilities management to staffing, but it typically comes down to disaster recovery. And while that focus is important, the ability to keep companies up and running no matter what happens calls for more. Resiliency is the result of two different factors: having a flexible infrastructure and the capability to bounce back from outages.
Most people overlook technology until it stops working. No one ever calls a help desk to thank them for 99.999% uptime — but if systems go down for five minutes, end users will swiftly and loudly voice their concerns and displeasure. That’s because we live in a world where technology plays a significant role in practically everything we do. We are so dependent on our systems that even a brief glitch is a cause for major consternation.
System outages can result in serious economic loss and lasting harm to customer experience and confidence. Visa, the world’s largest card payment company, processes 269.8 billion transactions per year with an estimated annual payment volume of $14.5 trillion, making the value of each second over $460,000.* If just four seconds are lost, the company would not just lose those funds — over $1.8 million — it would also incur a severe hit to its reputation. For other Fortune 1000 companies, the risks and damage from an outage are similar.
The Best Way to Manage a Crisis? Don't Have One
There is always a need to manage risk to the IT infrastructure at all levels to ensure business continuity. That task continues to face increasing challenges. Over the last several years, unprecedented global events have significantly impacted both IT and business requirements. The global pandemic has accelerated the need for businesses to enhance their digital experiences. Global warming, social unrest and regional conflicts underscore the need for geographically dispersed sites to keep critical business services running in the event of a disaster.
Of course, no matter how much planning you do, some things are just out of a business’s control. Earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanos, tsunamis, wars and other conflicts can happen quickly, so you need to be prepared for everything and expect the unexpected. Those organizations that succeed in managing risk better than others will reap enduring value.
The Power of a Flexible Infrastructure
To minimize and manage risk, building resiliency into both hardware and software is necessary. Doing so enables you to avoid outages and to provide for continuous operation in the event of an outage should one occur. Organizations accomplish this through built-in redundancy and tight integration of hardware, operating systems and middleware, which host their business-critical applications.
In the event that an outage does occur, businesses must have the infrastructure and horsepower to get things back up and running as quickly as possible. Hardware has gotten faster every year, and the software that supports it has kept pace. As a result, global enterprises that experience outages and downtime can flick the switch and be up and running almost instantly. This is the essence of having a flexible architecture.
Delivering Resiliency
The latest z16 mainframe aids the goals of availability and proactive outage avoidance with support features that boost recovery and flexible infrastructure. When IT shops bring the power of industry-leading automation, performance and reporting tools to the new platform, they can manage risks and ensure resilient applications even more easily. Software tools and providers build resiliency seamlessly into client systems through solutions that enable them to better manage their IT infrastructures.
Here at Broadcom, we regularly partner with clients to improve how effectively they can handle the mainframe equivalent of a power outage. For example, we work with clients to enable them to automate system recovery boost activity. With automated operations software management features, often referred to collectively as AIOps, they can coordinate application movement for a flexible infrastructure migration event.
Every successful business is looking to increase efficiency and improve system performance. We make those goals a reality for our clients by empowering them to proactively identify and resolve problems. Today’s AIOps solutions deliver the capability for real-time monitoring and visibility into mainframe performance, providing access to data across multiple systems. This enables businesses to gain actionable insights into resiliency features before and during a recovery event.
An important early step in building a flexible infrastructure is mapping business processes to IT services and resources. Doing so provides visibility into IT resource consumption so you can assess system performance and conduct appropriate storage and capacity planning.
Today’s resource management software provides the metrics you need to monitor system performance against existing service levels. It delivers this capability by simplifying the management of data and improving visualization. As a result, businesses can better align their IT investments to critical business needs, such as licensing additional instant recovery or flexible infrastructure resources to shore up their system’s resiliency.
Business continuity and regulatory compliance also require mainframe shops to prove their Db2 systems can quickly recover from breaches and failures. Leading mainframe providers provide recovery software that ensures your data is always recoverable, and your customers receive an always-on experience. It ensures users can successfully recover Db2 in a timely fashion and ensures that they are always in compliance with government regulations and business objectives.
To keep your business strong, you need to keep your infrastructure healthy. It takes proper planning, visibility, the right infrastructure tools, and a partner to work with you side-by-side to put risk in its place and keep your business up and running.
Ultimately, achieving a resilient infrastructure is not just about technology. Leading enterprises look to establish a partnership between their IT vendors. At Broadcom, we take resiliency and partnership seriously, and we are committed to delivering programs to help your resiliency journey.
If you’d like to discuss this topic further, please contact me directly.
Sources:
* https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/aboutvisafactsheet.pd