Middleware Consulting International

SAP plans to onboard finance and data management solutions to the IBM Cloud for Financial Services

ARMONK, N.Y. and WALLDORF, Germany, July 28, 2021 /CNW/ – IBM and SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that SAP intends to onboard two of its finance and data management solutions to IBM Cloud for Financial Services to help accelerate IBM cloud adoption within the financial services industry. The collaboration will be designed to help the companies address the industry’s stringent compliance, security and resiliency requirements, while supporting business transformation and innovation for financial services institutions.

As banks and insurers balance the need to deliver innovative services and meeting the industry’s strict security and compliance requirements, hybrid cloud environments have become increasingly important. To fuel industry-wide innovation, IBM introduced the IBM Cloud for Financial Services with built-in security and compliance controls that help companies reduce risk and regulatory barriers impeding IT landscape modernization, transformation, and innovation.

IBM Cloud for Financial Services offers a highly secured, purpose-built environment for financial services institutions to transact with their technology partners and FinTechs. By onboarding to the IBM Cloud for Financial Services, clients can adopt onboarded SAP offerings, while addressing their regulatory and compliance standards. Supported by a growing ecosystem of more than 100 partners and FinTechs, the cloud platform is designed to speed customers’ business transformations by addressing risk in the supply chain for financial institutions and unlocking new revenue opportunities.

In the context of their ongoing partnership, IBM and SAP have helped hundreds of companies digitize their operations using an open, hybrid cloud approach. SAP intends to join IBM’s ecosystem to deliver finance risk, operations, and total spend management offerings on the IBM Cloud for Financial Services.

“The rapid transition of regulated industries, such as financial services, toward the cloud makes it necessary to address new operational and technology challenges,” said Bob Cummings, Head of SAP Financial Services Sector. “The combination of IBM Cloud and SAP’s capabilities can help banks and insurers around the world to accelerate their digitalization journey and scale their business globally.”

“As we continue to add partners, such as SAP, to our growing ecosystem, we’re one step closer to driving a true change in cloud adoption for the industry to ultimately help reduce risk throughout the supply chain,” said Joel Spieth, General Manager, IBM Cloud for Industries. “We’re helping financial institutions modernize with SAP solutions on IBM Cloud for Financial Services, driving innovation, and creating operational efficiencies.”

When onboarded, SAP’s planned offerings on the IBM Cloud for Financial Services will provide financial services institutions, their partners and FinTechs with the following:

• SAP’s intelligent suite, including SAP S/4HANA® solutions: With its intelligent enterprise framework, SAP provides integrated applications, intelligent technologies, and a digital platform designed to enable banks to better serve current customers.
• SAP’s solutions for strategic data management, including SAP® Adaptive Server Enterprise, and SAP IQ software: Combining the strength of in-memory technology with these solutions, SAP offers a robust data platform to achieve business agility.

SAP and IBM together have hundreds of clients and more than 5,500 individual products. The companies are focused on helping enterprises modernize their businesses and making the most of cutting-edge technologies.

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdraw without notice and represent goals and objectives only.

V2.5 Brings AI Capabilities to IBM Z, Strengthens Security, Introduces New Capabilities for Application Modernization

ARMONK, N.Y., July 27, 2021 — IBM today announced IBM z/OS V2.5, the next-generation operating system (OS) for IBM Z, designed to accelerate client adoption of hybrid cloud and AI and drive application modernization projects.

According to an IBM Institute for Business Value study “Application modernization on the mainframe” released today, 71% of executives surveyed say mainframe-based applications are central to their business strategy; and in three years, the percentage of organizations leveraging mainframe assets in a hybrid cloud environment is expected to increase by more than 2x.

IBM z/OS V2.5 helps drive value for our clients by delivering new capabilities across AI enablement, application modernization, resiliency, enhanced security and an improved developer experience.

AI capabilities on IBM Z

According to the “Global AI Adoption Index 2021,” conducted by Morning Consult commissioned by IBM, 87% of global IT professionals surveyed report it is very or somewhat important to their company that they can build and run their AI projects wherever the data resides[1]. With z/OS V2.5, IBM is introducing new high performance AI capabilities that are tightly integrated with z/OS workloads, designed to give clients business insights for more informed decision making.

“IBM is all-in on hybrid cloud and AI, and we are deeply focused on delivering new innovations like AI and new security capabilities on IBM Z to help our clients move forward, more quickly with their modernization journeys,” said Ross Mauri, GM, IBM Z. “For our clients, IBM z/OS V2.5 brings new security and resiliency capabilities to the platform, and enables clients to infuse AI in real-time into every business transaction – imperatives that became more urgent during the pandemic.”

Enhanced security to make client data future ready

Amid recent threats like SolarWinds and the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack against critical infrastructure, there is a continued need for clients to further strengthen their overall cyber security and resiliency posture. IBM z/OS V2.5 is helping to address these challenges by unveiling a broad spectrum of enhancements across authentication, authorization, logging, system integrity, system and data availability, encryption for data in flight and at rest, and overall data privacy including:

• Expanding pervasive encryption to new types of data sets: sequential basic format and large format SMS-managed data sets are now included, providing users with the capability to encrypt data without application changes and to simplify compliance 
• Anomaly Mitigation capabilities that leverage Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA), Runtime Diagnostics, Workload Manager (WLM), and JES2 to help further detect anomalous behavior in near real-time, letting clients proactively address potential problems

A secured, scalable environment for hybrid cloud

As clients accelerate their journey to hybrid cloud, having a secured, scalable environment is critical for the underlying transformation process. IBM z/OS V2.5 introduces new capabilities that support application modernization and provide a cloud native experience on z/OS:

• New Java/COBOL Interoperability that extends existing application programming models with support for parallel 31-bit and 64-bit addressing, simplifying enterprise application modernization.
• Enhanced performance and ease of use for z/OS Container Extensions (zCX) to integrate Linux applications and utilities into z/OS.
• Additional capabilities to integrate cloud storage through transparent cloud tiering (TCT) and the Object Access Method (OAM) cloud tier support to help reduce capital and operating expenses with data transfer to hybrid cloud storage environments for simplified data archiving and data protection on IBM Z.

IBM z/OS V2.5 is expected to be faster and easier to install and upgrade, with one client trial demonstrating the ability to install z/OS more than 30% faster than compared with IBM z/OS 2.3 and 2.4.[2] With a simplified management experience supplied by streamlined and automated tasks, specialty skills may not be required. IBM z/OS V2.5 is expected to be generally available on September 30, 2021.

Statements regarding IBM’s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.

Integration is designed to help streamline the validation of air travelers’ COVID-19 health documentation, reducing friction during check-in, and supporting airlines as the industry works to increase international travel volumes

ARMONK, N.Y. and MADRID, July 22, 2021 — IBM and Amadeus (MCE: AMS) today announced that they are working together to help meet one of the major challenges facing travel companies today: checking and validating the COVID-19 health documentation of travelers at checkpoints where required.

As part of that effort, IBM Digital Health Pass is now integrated into Traveler ID for Safe Travel, Amadeus’ digital health verification solution. This enables airlines to integrate the use of COVID-19 digital health credentials into their existing reservation and booking system, allowing airline passengers the option to scan or upload documentation to show their health credentials.

As passengers move through the online check-in process, Traveler ID for Safe Travel checks the requirements for that particular trip against destination country regulations. This then prompts passengers with the option to generate a secure COVID-19 digital credential by scanning paper documents or uploading a digital version from their mobile or desktop.

These COVID-19 digital health credentials are then verified using IBM Digital Health Pass, which uses a combination of encryption and blockchain technologies to authenticate COVID-19 health credentials against a global ecosystem of labs, vaccination centers and healthcare providers. Airlines receive a simple status confirming a passenger is ready to fly. This secure approach provides passenger privacy since only the compliance with border entry requirements is confirmed; no personal health information is stored by the airline, IBM, or Amadeus.

“While countries across the globe are beginning to slowly reopen borders to welcome back visitors, specific border entry requirements may vary greatly country to country. The need to check COVID-19 health documentation is causing significant delays during the journey for airlines and other travel providers, as well as the traveler,” said Greg Land, Travel and Transportation Industry Lead, IBM. “The integration of IBM Digital Health Pass into Amadeus’ Traveler ID for Safe Travel is designed to provide airlines with open technologies they can build into existing digital solutions. This can help airlines safely meet border entry requirements while delivering a smoother customer experience.”

“The integration with IBM is a step-change for Traveler ID for Safe Travel. The combination of the IBM Digital Health Pass with our Traveler ID for Safe Travel technology means that COVID-19 health documents can be digitized and read, verified, and authenticated. This avoids cumbersome and time-consuming checks while traveling, and adds further reassurance to airlines and their passengers,” said Christian Warneck, VP Safe Travel Ecosystem, Amadeus. “This is another milestone in the collaboration we are driving through our Safe Travel Ecosystem. By working hand in hand with customers and partners such as IBM, we can deliver the capabilities needed by travel providers and travelers to help provide a smooth passenger journey once more.”

Traveler ID for Safe Travel is currently live with multiple airlines, with additional airline customers to be announced soon. Traveler ID’s digital identity and health verification capabilities are also relevant for other customer groups, including hotels and airports.

Escalating Cybersecurity and Ransomware Attacks Make Spend on Cybersecurity a Priority for Government Agencies Next Year, Many Agencies Expect 3 Plus Year Timeline to Comply with New Cybersecurity Executive Order

ARMONK, N.Y., July 15, 2021 — According to “Government Index for IT Modernization”, a new study of current and former U.S. government IT decision makers,  commissioned by IBM, nearly 70% of those surveyed view security risks as the top barrier when migrating to modern cloud platforms. Of those surveyed, security also now outweighs reducing costs by almost double as the reason to modernize IT infrastructures.

Recent cybersecurity threats including SolarWinds, one of the largest supply chain attacks in recent history, and the Kaseya cyberattack impacting 1,500 global organizations, have put a spotlight on current cyber threats and existing vulnerabilities. In an urgent response, President Biden issued an executive order, urging federal agencies to modernize and protect their data from existing and future threats.

As federal government agencies look to make decisions for their long-term strategies, IBM’s new market research, “Government Index for IT Modernization” provides insights into the critical role of security and privacy in cloud adoption and modernization decision-making.  The study, conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM, surveyed over 500 current and former IT government decision makers based in the U.S. found:

• Modernization Drives Security – With cybersecurity attacks on the rise, so too are budgets to protect data. Responding government IT decision makers for all levels of government anticipate agencies will spend the most on cybersecurity in planning for FY22. According to the study, more than 75% of respondents cited migrating and managing data from legacy systems to the cloud as a challenge for their current or former agency, with security was cited as the top barrier but also as a main driver.
• Contradictions Over Security Readiness – The study found that between 64% and 82% of respondents believe their current or former agency is very prepared or somewhat prepared for a wide range of current and future threats – from ransomware to post-quantum attacks. Yet more than 40% believe it will take three or more years to comply with the Biden Administration Cybersecurity Executive Order to implement zero trust and encrypt all data, an eternity in a world where security breaches occur with increasing regularity. This contradiction is further reinforced when looking at the current use of baseline security protocols – more than half of IT decisions makers surveyed say their cloud administrators does not always require complex passwords (50%) and two-factor/multi-factor authentication (51%).
• Visibility Gets Cloudy – 50% of the respondents report their agency is using a mix of security tools for on-premise and cloud threats, creating a gap in visibility. At the same time security is the top concern holding 46% of responding government IT decision makers back from working with third party vendors. With the average federal agency using 10 or more cloud providers and working with hundreds of third parties, managing risk across this growing attack surface is expected to further complicate security.

“With the President’s executive orders, the U.S. Federal market is facing a massive transformation to its cybersecurity strategy which requires a great deal of technological modernization. While this is a priority for government IT decisions makers, our survey found that they view security as both a driver and barrier to modernization,” said Howard Boville, Head of IBM Cloud Platform. “Enterprise technology providers are stewards of massive volumes of personal data, and we need to do our utmost to protect this data. A public and private sector partnership that adopts an open and secured hybrid cloud architecture with sophisticated security capabilities can help agencies ensure that data truly remains theirs, even in a multi-cloud environment.”

Managing Transformation and Risk in Hybrid, Multi-Cloud Environment

IBM has a long history of collaboration with the U.S. Federal Government helping it innovate, adapt and transform over a multi-decade journey. This includes helping government agencies ease cloud adoption, improve efficiency, bridge varied cloud environments, and ensure mission critical workloads are integrated with security.

Based on the results of the new study, IBM suggests the following insights for managing risk while modernizing:

• Government entities should consider open and secure hybrid cloud architectures to embrace innovation in the cloud which focus on helping them keep their data protected. A hybrid cloud approach can help governments manage data across on premise, off premise/cloud and edge environments, securely.
• Complexity is the enemy of security and the approach to modernization should incorporate a secure architecture, including sophisticated capabilities that will not compromise or monetize customer and citizen data at any cost. To help mitigate third party risks it’s vital to close any loopholes in the data security supply chain, encrypting data being stored and transmitted and leveraging confidential computing to protect data in use.
• New approaches for cybersecurity should be adopted to help protect data across hybrid cloud environments – no matter where data resides – either on premise, in the cloud or at the edge.