Innovative grid computing solution that allows savings on mainframe, running process in open systems without changes in legacy applications.

Companies working on banking sector require in their daily activity the use of mainframes which are able to process a large quantity of transactions and banking operations. This is solved by using IBM mainframes, which means banking entities are highly dependent on the conditions and requirements proposed by IBM and carrying in high maintenance costs. In this context, a Spanish company specialized in IT consulting, has develop a solution which extends mainframe processing capacity by offloading workload on hybrid clouds of servers, reducing in a significant way the acquisition and maintenance cost, and those costs associated to millions of instructions per second (MIPS) consumption. This solution is aimed at mainframe users and enables mainframe legacy applications to execute transparently on open systems with no change in the source-code, development life cycle, migration or conversion of data, operation change or migration of programs or applications. It provides an inexpensive extension of the mainframe central processing unit (CPU) allowing the operation manager to decide dynamically in real time what to execute where, in the mainframe or on a cloud of servers. This solution is built around three main components: 1. A platform which virtualizes any set of heterogeneous servers in a mixed hybrid cloud into a lattice of Hyper Processing Nodes (grid) capable of both sequential and parallel execution of services combining High Performance Computing (HPC) and High Throughput Computing (HTC) characteristics. This platform remains operational regardless of the fall or failure of one or more of its components. It has an automatic system for detecting component errors, restructuring the grid and reallocating work, so that, in these situations, pending work can be carried out by other elements of the grid in a manner that is completely transparent to system operators. 2. A specific software runs on the above platform, offloading the execution of mainframe information management system / data communication (IMS/DC) or Customer Information Control System (CICS) transactions on open systems as an extension of the mainframe central processing unit (CPU). This application creates a sub grid of specialized nodes that execute mainframe transactions and represents the online mainframe extension. The data can rest indifferently in the mainframe in DB2 (IBM database management system) or be migrated locally to open systems. It needs a gateway to intercept the messages to be sent to the mainframe Customer Information Control System /information management system (CICS/IMS) transactions and reroute them to the application, which processes the transactions against the same database in the mainframe and sends back the results to the gateway to be delivered to the programs/web applications that have initiated the messages. 3. A set of integrated services and applications representing the batch mainframe extension and responsible for the transparent and safe execution of batch processes. It runs on the mainframe and on the linux units windows (LUW) cloud on the above application to achieve the transparent offloading of mainframe batch programs. The transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) network is used to synchronize the executions between the mainframe and the linux units windows (LUW) systems while the appliance is used to stream data from the files in native format without conversion. This platform executes the validated programs that can be offloaded. The results from the point of view of the mainframe is similar to the execution of the same programs on a specialized coprocessor, only that it is available to a large majority of programs instead of a selected few ones. The company is looking for increasing its international business development by seeking international ICT integrators, which commercializes solutions for any IBM mainframe client, willing to collaborate under license agreements.