Informatica for Mainframes

Trusted. Secure. Scalable.

Informatica offers a uniquely broad set of data access and transformation products for customers using z/OS or z/Linux. Fully interoperable with PowerCenter and PowerExchange running on Linux, UNIX, and Windows platforms, Informatica's mainframe products provide the ability to configure a highly scalable real-time data integration environment. Thanks to Informatica's internal architecture, data integration components can be arranged to balance security, performance, and cost, with the ability to reconfigure as conditions change. All this is accomplished without needing extensive mainframe-specific skills that are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive.

By supporting mainframe customers with flexible configurations, Informatica enables the mainframe to participate fully in any data integration initiative—whether as the hub, as a data provider—according to customer requirements.

Data Access

PowerExchange
Data access is the foundation of any data integration environment, and PowerExchange is the secure, bi-directional, high-performance data access foundation of the Informatica platform. Whether running on z/OS, z/Linux, Windows, UNIX, or Linux, PowerExchange uses the fastest native interfaces available. Thanks to the Informatica architecture, which allows PowerCenter and PowerExchange to run on different machines, mainframe customers can choose to locate PowerCenter on z/Linux, x86 Linux, UNIX, or Windows-no matter where the data actually resides.

Change Data Capture Option (CDC)
Mainframe systems often run high-volume transaction systems accessing very large databases, making batch-only integration strategies infeasible. PowerExchange's patented CDC capability was designed to support the low-latency access these systems need. By capturing only changed data and avoiding the repetitive extraction of large unchanging data sets, data can be provided in real-time to any data integration process. In addition to improving organizational agility by allowing the creation of business events, the CDC Option can result in dramatically reduced system workload-especially important when MIPS capacity is used to determine software license costs. Thanks to the Informatica architecture, captured data can be sent to PowerCenter running on z/Linux or any other supported environment.

Data Transformation

PowerCenter for z/Linux
As z/Linux adoption grows, more customers are choosing to make it the core of their data integration environment. Some customers focus on lowering the cost of software licensing and IT operations through consolidation of multiple commodity servers. Other customers are transferring some workloads from z/OS to z/Linux, hoping to lower MIPS-based costs and defer upgrades of their z/OS environments. PowerCenter for z/Linux was created to support both of these strategies. PowerCenter's CPU-intensive data transformations run at full speed in z/Linux, using Hipersockets (the mainframe's virtualized network technology) to access PowerExchange on z/OS. With this approach, data never leaves the safety and security of the mainframe environment.  The Informatica architecture also gives PowerCenter on z/Linux equal access to data on any other PowerExchange platform.

PowerCenter for Linux, UNIX, and Windows
Mainframe customers often choose to move the CPU-intensive data transformation workload to a Linux, UNIX, or Windows platform, as a way to control the MIPS growth responsible for much of a mainframe's cost. These customers focus on the strengths of their mainframe systems-such as high I/O bandwidth-and use PowerCenter running on commodity processors for data transformation. Even though data leaves the mainframe environment, PowerCenter supports encrypted communication to maintain a high degree of security.

Supported Mainframe-resident Sources and Targets

In mainframe environments, PowerCenter runs on z/Linux. Other mainframe-resident sources and targets are below:

“Informatica PowerCenter has brought consistency to our data environment and helped us modernize our data transfer methods. Its native access to our mainframe Adabas data sources has enabled us to roll out eight data marts in just four years to our analysts, and cut the time our developers used to spend on custom coding by as much as one-half.” - Chris Kemp, Manager, Data Management Services Washington State Department of Transportation read the full story

Product Literature