Business resiliency

With global competition and customers in multiple time zones, businesses require 24x7 availability for their I/T services as a precondition of staying viable. But many companies view “availability” differently. It is not just that the server hardware is active, but should also include the requirement that internal customers within the company, external customers such as clients, and business to business transactions can complete successfully with good performance. This includes Network, server, application, and data layers are not only available, but running the proper way. It includes applications are completing on time, generating required accounting statistics, and meeting all regulatory requirements. It includes considering planned, as well as unplanned outages. It is not just a failure of a server, but a failure of any one of these elements can put the entire operation at risk.

The best way to keep something running is to not change the environment. This is the reason behind the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” or the euphemism, to “stabilize code” by not updating it. But one needs to change or be left behind.

Business resiliency is the ability to rapidly adapt and respond to internal or external dynamic changes: opportunities, demands, disruptions or threats, and continue operations with limited impact to the business.

Business Resiliency can be broken up into the following categories:

• Data driven risks: viruses, disk failures, network problems, application outages, server outages (including planned outages), human errors, etc.
• Business driven risks: audits, government regulations, etc.
• Event driven risks: Natural or man-made disasters, terrorism, pandemics, etc.

IBM System z servers running z/OS are uniquely positioned to help with these issues. It provides technology and services to help identify and remove single points of failures (SPOFs) in critical components, provide for security, disaster recovery, and availability. Planned outages are a thing of the past. All this can be done with system and performance management advantages over other platforms.

With IBM System z, your applications can stay up 24 x 7, all while making concurrent changes to the environment.