Model9 and IBM Z

The partnership between Model9 and IBM began back in 2016 when Model9, a pioneer of cloud data management for IBM Z, was founded. As an innovative startup company, Model9 participated in IBM’s business program called IBM Alpha Zone accelerator. Our primary goal was to develop the first software solution to connect IBM Z to the IBM cloud.

Model9’s multidisciplinary R&D team consists of highly skilled IBM Z professionals with certified data management, storage, systems engineering and cloud skills. That includes our founder and CEO who holds 20+ years of hands-on experience in IBM Z system programming and data management, and is the co-author of 8 IBM Redbooks on z/OS Implementation.

Today, as an IBM Business Partner, Model9 still strives to be the premier cloud data management platform for IBM Z, allowing customers to leverage the power of IBM Z with the Cloud and IBM Cloud Object Storage (ICOS), and realize the full potential of their mission-critical enterprise data.

Model9 Shield allows protecting IBM Z data against cyber attacks such as ransomware, by moving it to IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS) and keeping it as immutable data copies. In addition, the data is protected by end-to-end compression and encryption. When sent to IBM Cloud, the data can also be air-gapped, meaning an additional copy is isolated from the network and sheltered from malicious attacks.

Data recovery can be done from a “clean room”, or directly from IBM Cloud, without relying on a compromised on-premises system. Model9 Shield also allows “surgical recovery”, i.e., recovering specific parts of the data, based on predefined rules. In addition, Model9 Shield performs periodical automatic recovery tests, to always ensure recoverability. It supports cyber forensics, i.e., the extraction of data for legal purposes / as proof for a crime. Model9 Shield also helps maintain enterprise compliance with regulatory requirements for data retention, through object locking and versioning techniques available on IBM COS.

Model9 Manager moves IBM Z data to IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS) for easy and efficient cloud-based backup, archive, DR and space management. No changes to storage management policy are required.

Data is transferred to IBM COS directly, from any IBM Z DASD or tape system, requiring no additional hardware, software, tape emulation or interim disk storage. Model9 Manager runs side-by-side with existing backup and tape management software, for simplified data delivery. 

Model9 Manager supports automatic discovery of both active and historical data. The data is delivered from IBM Z to COS in an efficient manner, using a set of techniques such as parallel processing, data compression, and load balancing.

Model9 Gravity delivers IBM Z data of any format to IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS), so that cloud-based AI/ML & analytics applications can consume it. As the data is now part of the enterprise cloud-based data lake, better business decisions can be reached. 

The data is first transferred to IBM COS, then transformed to any data format required by the cloud-based applications. Performing the transformation in the cloud is efficient, as it relieves IBM Z of including that process as part of its workload. Model9 Gravity transforms any IBM Z data, in any format, including Db2, VSAM, sequential and partitioned data sets, to any standard open format,  such as JSON or CSV, which comply with cloud-based AI/ML & analytics  applications.