Ensure Full Stack Observability Between Mainframe and Cloud/Container Applications with AIOps from Broadcom

The modernization journey and the new reality

As enterprises advance on their cloud/modernization journeys, many teams struggle to achieve full stack observability. These teams are finding that mainframe systems are a ”critical path” for applications that deliver business-critical digital services to customers, partners, and employees. Observability gaps between mainframe systems, distributed applications, and cloud environments make holistic monitoring unattainable, impede root cause analysis and remediation, and can magnify other challenges in large-scale enterprises that have diverse workloads.

This is the new reality in which key applications are now spread between mainframe and distributed systems, both on-premises and in the cloud. The challenge many Broadcom customers face is ensuring these apps and transactions are fully monitored and that there are no blind spots.

Full stack monitoring from Broadcom

AIOps and Observability from Broadcom provides full stack observability for both mainframe and distributed applications deployed in cloud, on-premises, or hybrid environments. Importantly, the solution links observability across these different environments to provide a full connected view and correlated insights.

Let's dig a little deeper with an example from one of our customers. This customer, a large health care insurance provider, has business critical services that are spread across both modern and legacy apps. A typical transaction for this customer starts with a request going to nginix web servers hosted on a RedHat® OpenShift® cluster that serves static content. The request is then directed to a Node.js®/Apache Tomcat® application, once again deployed in an OpenShift cluster, which then goes to IBM WebSphere and crosses over to the mainframe environment.

Although these are complex transactions, they are not unique. This customer leveraged full stack observability solutions from Broadcom to provide deep visibility across both distributed and mainframe systems. The web server is monitored using the APM agent, with specific instrumentation for nginix that tracked real end user behavior. Similarly, the Universal Monitoring Agent (UMA) provides deep insights into Node.js, Tomcat, and WebSphere applications. The agent monitors applications and infrastructures and provides visibility for cloud and containers. Note: UMA is available as a near zero-touch deployment. Finally, APM for Mainframe monitors the mainframe elements. The result: the customer’s IT operations team receives deep insights with full end-to-end correlation that intelligently links mainframe systems with distributed applications and cloud environments.

End-to-end correlation across distributed and mainframe systems.

Deep metric visibility for DB2 for z/OS, CICS regions, IMS subsystems, a/OS metrics, and more.

Providing a near zero-touch approach to monitoring, UMA from Broadcom is a leading solution for monitoring cloud and container applications and infrastructure. APM for mainframe solutions has been enhanced with recent optimization and architectural improvements. These enhancements can provide order-of-magnitude savings. With the solution, customers can progress along their modernization journey with confidence, knowing they have the full end-to-end coverage across their IT estate.

With Broadcom’s full stack solution, customers benefit from:

1. Holistic monitoring:
   1. Gain a unified view of your entire IT ecosystem, including mainframe systems.
   2. Understand how mainframe performance affects overall application health.
2. Root cause analysis:
   1. Quickly identify bottlenecks and performance issues across the stack.
   2. Trace problems from end-user interactions down to mainframe transactions.
3. Anomaly detection:
   1. Detect deviations from normal behavior, whether in mainframe or distributed components.
   2. Receive alerts when thresholds are breached.
4. Autonomous remediation:
   1. Leverage AI-driven insights to proactively address issues.
   2. Reduce manual intervention and improve system reliability.
5. Enterprise scale:
   1. DX SaaS handles the most demanding applications, from mobile to mainframe.
   2. The solution’s scalability enables consistent monitoring across diverse workloads.