Macro 4 boosts speed-to-market with IBM System z9 Business Class

Established in 1968 in the UK, Macro 4 plc is now a global technology solutions provider with wholly-owned subsidiaries in Benelux, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the USA. The company also has an extensive network of business partners, giving it true global reach and market presence. Macro 4 employs more than 250 people and counts 65 of the Fortune 100 companies among its customers.

As a software development company, Macro 4’s primary business activities are research and development. Its customers span a broad range of industry sectors and have an equally broad range of applications running on the mainframe platform.

David Chalmers, Director of Business Development at Macro 4, comments: “Some customers are two or three releases of operating system behind others, and we need to ensure that our latest products will work as expected on all of their platforms. Moreover, we are seeing enormous demand in the market for the new zIIP, zAAP and IFL technologies—which all adds up to the need to run dozens of different development environments internally.”


Rapid response

Aiming to meet demand for a new generation of Java™ products on the System z platform, and for IBM DB2® on the new zIIP engines, Macro 4 needed to refresh its development environments. IBM and Thesaurus Computer Services Ltd, an IBM Premier Business Partner, recommended an upgrade to a new IBM System z9 Business Class. The z9 BC implemented by Macro 4 has two standard processors, plus an Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) engine, System z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) for improved Java performance and System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) for enhanced DB2 price-performance.

Macro 4 runs numerous different test, development and support environments on the z9 BC, including: native IBM z/OS®, z/OS in IBM Parallel Sysplex®, z/OS under IBM z/VM®, Linux under z/VM on the IFL engine, IBM VSE/ESA™ under z/VM, z/VM for VM-based products (not just as a hypervisor for virtual systems) and UNIX® System Services under z/OS. The company also supports virtually all programming languages for the mainframe, including C, C++, COBOL, Java and assembler.

By taking advantage of the advanced virtualization capabilities of the System z9 BC, Macro 4 can quickly create new test, development and support environments to mimic specific scenarios. Says Jim Allum, Group Information Services Director, “Using z/VM, we can quickly clone virtual servers—whether Linux or z/OS—then tune the cloned server as required. This means we can set up new development environments within hours, without the cost and delay of procuring and implementing new physical servers. That degree of flexibility is vital, because we need to respond quickly to whatever our customers decide to do on their mainframes and to be able to support them.”

He adds, “Our ability to run so many different environments side-by-side on the same hardware gives us real confidence that our customers can rely on our technology and sends out a very positive message to them. The z9 BC effectively gives us an entire infrastructure in a single box.”


Working with IBM

As a mid-sized business, Macro 4 appreciates the advantages of working through an IBM Business Partner, as David Chalmers explains: “Thesaurus has a very close relationship with IBM, and an excellent understanding of all the different operating systems that we need to support in our complex mainframe environment.”

Jim Allum adds, “The Thesaurus consultants have a strong understanding of our unique business needs as an R&D company, and to a certain extent they can predict where we want to go from a hardware perspective. The close cooperation between the IBM technical team and Thesaurus helped to make this project a real success.”


A growing sphere of influence

As usage of the mainframe grows and extends across new functional areas, Macro 4 is seeing significant demand for products that help non-specialists to manage cross-platform environments that include mainframe systems. Macro 4’s Fault Analysis Portal Web-enables the standard 3270 mainframe interface, making it more user-friendly and relevant to a new generation of systems engineers and administrators.

Another major Macro 4 product meets the demand for measuring Java performance across a multi-platform environment.

“We developed the multi-platform Java performance monitoring tool—called Application Performance Portal—under Linux on the System z platform,” says Jim Allum. “The ability to test the software across multiple virtual environments on the mainframe was a major advantage, helping us to speed time-to-market and achieve optimal quality in the finished software.”


Non-disruptive scalability

The z9 BC can be upgraded on-the-fly as Macro 4’s business grows. Each of the two central processors can be upgraded, and Macro 4 can add a further two central or special engines (IFL, zIIP or zAAP) on demand—for a total capacity increase of more than 800 percent.

Says Jim Allum. “The z9 BC has already delivered a 33 percent performance hike for the zAAP and IFL engines, and of course the zAAP and zIIP engines act like outboard motors, taking on workload from the central processors and freeing them up for other processing.”

The z9 BC has dramatically improved the speed of development and testing at Macro 4, enabling the company to bring high-quality multi-platform products to market more rapidly. Says Jim Allum, “Some Java testing was taking several hours to run—it now takes less than 15 minutes with the zAAP engine. We are seeing the same improvements in productivity with the zIIP engine, and we expect massive demand from customers for these technologies.”


12-month ROI

Macro 4 invested in the new z9 BC two years ahead of its expected hardware upgrade to take advantage of the new zIIP capability and to benefit from the improved price-performance. “The z9 BC was available for very little additional cost, and it gave us all the new features we needed,” says David Chalmers. “Considering the comparatively low cost of the hardware, and the ability to grow capacity by 800 percent with no further hardware upgrades, we anticipate seeing return on investment inside 12 months.”

He adds, “Our ability to run more environments natively on a single physical server has also produced direct cost-savings, since we no longer have to use a separate mainframe in an external data centre to run certain test platforms.”

Jim Allum concludes, “With the introduction of IFL, zAAP and zIIP, we foresee very rapid growth in demand for new mainframe software. The scalability of the z9 BC will mean that we can meet this growing demand without all the costs and disruption of upgrading to a new physical platform.”