Accelerating Mainframe Application Development with IBM z/OS and DevOps Modernization
A leading global financial institution transformed its mainframe development ecosystem using IBM z/OS®, IBM DevOps tools, and IBM Wazi Developer for Red Hat® CodeReady Workspaces. This modernization initiative enhanced developer productivity, reduced release cycles, and streamlined collaboration across distributed and mainframe teams — ultimately driving faster innovation and business agility.
Business challenge
The financial institution managed a vast mainframe environment critical to global banking operations. However, its traditional development workflows limited agility, causing long release cycles, inconsistent tooling, and difficulty in onboarding new developers.
The organization aimed to:
- Modernize mainframe application development using agile principles.
- Improve collaboration between distributed and z/OS teams.
- Reduce time-to-market for new banking products and services.
- Maintain the resilience and performance of its core banking systems.
Solution
Partnering with IBM, the institution adopted an end-to-end DevOps modernization framework built on:
- IBM Wazi Developer for Red Hat® CodeReady Workspaces for modern IDE integration.
- IBM z/OS Connect to expose mainframe assets as APIs for digital applications.
- IBM UrbanCode Deploy to automate release management and continuous delivery.
- IBM Developer for z/OS (IDz) for improved debugging, testing, and code analysis.
This transformation unified development across mainframe and cloud environments, reduced manual intervention, and created a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline aligned with enterprise DevOps practices.
Solution components
- IBM z/OS®
- IBM Developer for z/OS (IDz)
- IBM Wazi Developer for Red Hat® CodeReady Workspaces
- IBM z/OS Connect
- IBM UrbanCode Deploy
Integrated DevOps Environment
Developers across distributed and mainframe teams collaborated through a unified platform, improving code quality and deployment consistency.
API-Driven Modernization
Legacy COBOL services were converted into APIs using IBM z/OS Connect, enabling seamless integration with mobile and digital banking systems.
Automated Release Management
Automated pipelines accelerated testing and deployment, reducing errors and improving release reliability.
Result
- Improved development efficiency and speed-to-market for new applications.
- Enhanced collaboration between distributed and mainframe teams.
- Simplified onboarding with modern IDEs and DevOps tooling.
- Achieved continuous delivery with minimal disruption to production systems.
- Strengthened agility while maintaining enterprise-grade reliability.
As we continue to modernize our development environment for IBM z/OS, the benefits in terms of control, autonomy, speed, and quality have been transformative. IBM’s platform enables our teams to deliver business value faster than ever.
— Head of IT Infrastructure Modernization, Leading Global Financial Institution