While much of the software used in the enterprise today is supplied by outside vendors, older applications left over from the mainframe era often contain homegrown code that can be challenging to maintain. It’s even more difficult to add new capabilities like integration with a third party service, which complicates operations a great deal. Syncsort Inc. wants to help customers overcome the problem with an enhanced iteration of its Ironstream tool rolling out this week that opens a bridge to Splunk Inc.’s namesake log processing platform.

The update lets organizations utilize the analytics software to ingest operational data from their custom mainframe applications in real-time and identify potential signs of technical trouble as soon as they appear. The underlying hardware can be monitored as well thanks to the addition of integration with the latest version of RMF, the performance tracking tool that IBM Corp. offers for its System z machines. A Syncsort customer could even correlate the infrastructure information with their workload logs try and determine if there’s a broader problem pattern hampering their deployment.

But where Splunk’s analytics functionality has the potential to make the biggest difference is threat detection. While crucial to the security of every workload, the ability to identify malicious activity in a timely manner is especially important when it comes to mainframes, which typically run high-priority applications like payment processing software.

Syncsort is rolling out a free demo version of Ironstream in conjunction with the new release to let mainframe users explore the different ways they can put Splunk to use before committing to a purchase. The company says that the edition doesn’t have a time limit like most trial software and may be used in production environments without violating the licensing terms.

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