Syncsort debuts ‘breakthrough’ Big Data technology, Ironstream

Syncsort has announced the availability of Ironstream™, the unique-in-the-market product that provides real-time, operational insights for Splunk® Enterprise and Splunk Cloud™ customers based on mainframe data. This game-changing new product will allow current and future Splunk customers to continuously pull valuable data from the mainframe into their Splunk applications without disrupting the mainframe operating environment.

Splunk has taken the market by storm, providing its customers with a simple way to utilise machine data in real-time to gain operational insights in use cases as varied as IT Operations, Application Management, Application Development, Security Analytics, Business Analytics, and the Internet of Things. For large enterprises, mainframes represent some of the richest and most log data available, as they host the most mission-critical applications.

Until today, the terabytes of data in more than 200 different log types produced by a typical mainframe system were inaccessible to Splunk software without significant manpower. Even while using Splunk software to analyse the rest of their enterprise data, customers were often forced to keep separate, expensive systems in place simply to monitor their mainframe systems. Ironstream delivers on the technology alliance recently announced by Splunk and Syncsort to eliminate this last remaining gap – pulling the mainframe data into Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud using advanced, secure technology that doesn’t disrupt the mainframe operating environment.

“Many of the world’s leading businesses have been asking for a way to incorporate the rich and detailed mainframe log data into their Splunk applications to measure the operational health and security of their IT systems,” said Colin Savage, vice president of business development, Splunk. “With Ironstream and Splunk, they can now get immediate visibility across all platforms, and analyse logs from the mainframe along with machine data coming from distributed platforms, yielding comprehensive operational insight.”

Ironstream makes it simple to collect, transform and forward mainframe log data, such as Systems Management Facilities (SMF) records and mainframe application data into the Splunk Enterprise and Splunk Cloud platforms for correlation and analysis, supporting use cases such as:
· Enhanced Security. Identifying unauthorised mainframe access and potential security risks
· Advanced Workload Balancing. Creating real-time alerts for database table deadlocks and exhausted resources while monitoring IBM Customer Information Control System
· (CICS) and IBM DB2 transaction system performance
· Faster Error Recovery. Minimising or preventing downtime due to operational or system failures, and triaging repair efforts
· Offload. Eliminating spend on legacy monitoring software by migrating functionality to the Splunk applications that are already monitoring the rest of their enterprise environment

“The mainframe executes a critical portion of the core business transactions for most of the Fortune 1000, which helps to explain why the pipeline growth for Ironstream is faster than for any product in Syncsort’s 46-year history” said Josh Rogers, president, Syncsort. “To be useful to Splunk customers, mainframe data must be delivered incredibly quickly, securely, and without disrupting or adding costs to the mainframe environment. The advanced technology in our new Ironstream product elegantly addresses all of these challenges.”

With over four decades of mainframe experience and an extraordinary engineering team, Syncsort is widely recognised for its ability to securely and efficiently move and process data, with no programming or tuning required. Ironstream is the latest technology from Syncsort to leverage that expertise.