PKWARE has released two new versions of its flagship products, intended to boost the performance and cost-effectiveness of System z environments. Version 15 of PKZIP and SecureZIP exploit several IBM mainframe hardware facilities to offload compression and free up general computing capacity to reduce the total cost of computing.
“This is an exciting breakthrough that provides 10x speed improvements that were not possible previously,” said Joe Sturonas, chief technology officer at PKWARE. "This changes the conversation about how IBM's mainframes can provide blazing speeds where fast data throughput is required. When you think about the huge demand for mobile app responsiveness, this can have a meaningful impact. And for those applications that require strong encryption for security, the performance gains are even more impressive.”
Organizations can use the IBM System z Integrated Information Processors (zIIP) and System z Enterprise Data Compression (zEDC) PCIe card with PKWARE's PKZIP or SecureZIP to improve mainframe performance. Benchmark results show up to a 92% reduction in total CPU time, PKWARE reports.
In addition, most customer deployments have been file-to-file compression/encryption in batch processes. With the addition of Memory File Support as part of the PKWARE API framework known as Virtual Objects, PKZIP and SecureZIP can now be integrated directly into IBM subsystems such as CICS, DB2, IMS and MQ, enabling increased performance.
More details are available at the PKWARE site at http://pkware.com.