A Structured Approach to Assessing Heterogenous Workload Deployment to the IBM zEnterprise System

Examining a possible deployment or migration of an application or workload to the IBM® zEnterprise™ System requires a structured approach. This process entails the following key decisions:

What will the additional business value be, if any, after the application or workload is deployed on the zEnterprise System?
What will the topology, or infrastructure architecture, be of the application or workload on the zEnterprise System?

This IBM Redpaper™ publication describes an approach to help determine the possible business value of deploying a workload or application on the zEnterprise System. It provides a framework to use, and brief information about, the zEnterprise Business Value Assessment tool and the Fit for Purpose method that IBM uses to help Clients make these decisions.

This paper is intended for customer technical managers and architects, and IBM and IBM Business Partner technical sales and architects. Before reading this paper, you must have knowledge about the zEnterprise Business Value Assessment method.

The goal of the approach in this paper is to ensure that the assessment of business value for a customer's business application results in an optimally architected zEnterprise deployment design and a solid business-grounded case for change. The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance for technical managers and IT architects to perform assessments of their own business applications.