Kyndryl, Microsoft tie mainframe to Azure cloud resources

Kyndryl and Microsoft have extended their existing partnership to include mainframe connectivity to cloud applications and workloads.

The extension ties together Kyndryl’s zCloud mainframe service with Microsoft’s Power Platform, a low-code application and workflow-automation package that brings access to cloud services including  Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Teams.

The aim is making it easier for organizations to access and integrate mainframe-based data with cloud-based resources and combine that data with other information to build new applications.

Available now, the service is a way to access decades of data sitting on  mainframes, said Harish Grama, Kyndryl’s global practice leader for cloud. “The idea is to unleash data sitting on the mainframe, mine it, modernize it, and write new business applications on it,” he said. “That data shouldn’t be trapped in legacy backends.”

The integration sets up a secure, encrypted pipe between the zCloud and Microsoft cloud, and customers then have access to mainframe-based resources that they can include in Azure cloud-based applications.

The service is directed at customers interested in maintaining a hybrid mainframe/cloud operation, Grama said. “You can have part of the application on the mainframe and part in the cloud, but for the most part the data remains on the mainframe.”

Kyndryl and others, including Microsoft and AWS, do offer “mainframe modernization” services that move data entirely off of the mainframe, but that is not what the new service, is about.

Microsoft was one of the first strategic partnerships Kyndryl made last year as it spun out of IBM. Under that agreement the companies will develop new products built on Microsoft Cloud and aimed at facilitating digital transformation, Kyndryl stated. Microsoft also said it would sell products developed by the two companies through its global enterprise sales force and will develop a Microsoft Cloud training ground called Kyndryl University for Microsoft.

The companies said they will focus on data modernization and governance, AI-driven innovations for industries, cyber security and resiliency, and transformation of mission-critical workloads to the cloud.

Since spinning out from IBM, Kyndryl has been makng partnerships, tying up with Cloudera, Lenovo, Dell, SAP, VMware, Red Hat, NetApp, Google Cloud, AWS, and others.