In this installment of Behind the Code: Unfiltered Conversations with CTO Vince Re, we dive into how PropelZ provides a “single pane of glass” solution to seamlessly capture, preserve, and deliver SMF data to any platform where it’s needed.

In today’s highly regulated industries like banking and finance, properly managed System Management Facility (SMF) data is not just an operational necessity — it’s a legal requirement.
Organizations are tasked with storing, managing, and preserving SMF records, which track every action on a mainframe for potentially many years. The volume of SMF data can be staggering, with larger enterprises producing terabytes of data daily. Managing this data effectively, securely, and at low cost has long been a challenge.

Capturing and preserving SMF data is crucial, but the real value comes from leveraging that data across various applications. Many of these applications (such as log management, intrusion detection systems, and AI-driven capacity planning tools) are not hosted on the mainframe. Organizations need seamless access to SMF data in these cloud-based or distributed systems to enable real-time insights, security monitoring, and operational intelligence.



Real-Time Data Capture: Whether you have one system or hundreds generating SMF data, PropelZ consolidates it all into a single, unified stream.


Seamless Cloud Integration: PropelZ pushes SMF records to a customer’s preferred cloud environment — including AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure — with no need for additional manual processes. The data is securely stored in low-cost cloud storage, ensuring long-term archiving and compliance with regulatory requirements.


Cost-Effective Archiving: By utilizing cloud storage, organizations can store SMF data in a highly scalable and secure environment. PropelZ allows for the automatic maintenance of these records in the cloud, ensuring they are readily available for audits, inquiries, or other needs without the high costs associated with traditional storage methods.


Data Accessibility & Querying: Once in the cloud, SMF records are stored in a database, making them easily accessible for analysis and reporting. Users can run complex queries such as retrieving all SMF records from specific time frames or performing data analytics for business intelligence — all without needing to manually merge or process data sets.


Eliminating Data Loss: One of the key benefits of PropelZ’s real-time integration is its ability to reduce the risk of data loss. Traditional methods, which rely on periodic data set switches, can sometimes lead to small amounts of data being lost if a system crashes. With PropelZ, records are captured as they are written, significantly reducing this risk.


PropelZ empowers businesses to correlate mainframe activity with broader enterprise-wide data, offering a more holistic view of security, performance, and operational health.

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