VirtualZ Computing

VirtualZ Computing is a Minneapolis-based enterprise software company that builds no-code products for accessing, moving and storing data held on IBM Z mainframes, legacy applications and tape archives. Its stated aim is to make that data usable by modern consumers such as AI models, analytics platforms, SIEMs, cloud databases and hybrid-cloud applications without custom code, ETL pipeline development or changes to existing mainframe applications.

The portfolio consists of four products. PropelZ moves and transforms data from any source to any destination — including cloud databases, analytics and AI platforms, enterprise applications and mainframes — using no-code mappings, positioned as an alternative to ETL scripting and change-data-capture log tailing; sources supported include VSAM, sequential files, GDGs, tape, SMF logs and DB2, with over 100 targets cited, among them watsonx, SageMaker and Splunk. FlowZ provides no-code, file-based cloud storage for mainframe applications, letting z/OS write directly to AWS S3, Azure Blob or Google Cloud Storage as if it were a local device, with existing applications reading and writing without recompilation. Lozen gives cloud and distributed applications real-time, read-write access to live mainframe data presented as native NFS, leaving the data in place on z/OS as a single source of truth. Zaac presents Amazon S3, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage and SAN as native z/OS disk and tape devices, replacing hardware procurement, virtual tape library systems and storage virtualization layers, and supporting DB2 databases hosted on cloud storage.

Products are described as zIIP-optimized or zIIP-eligible to limit MIPS consumption on the mainframe, with same-day deployment (FlowZ is cited as installing in about 15 minutes). Common use cases published by the company include mainframe data access for Snowflake and Databricks, mainframe tape-to-cloud migration and mainframe report migration.

Founding story

Founder and CEO Jeanne Glass, a native of Columbia Heights, Minnesota, began her mainframe career while studying Management Information Systems with a COBOL focus at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, then held senior leadership roles at Kleiner Perkins-backed startups and at FICO, Tripwire and CA Technologies (now Broadcom), where she spent 11 years, including as head of worldwide client relations. Starting VirtualZ was described as a longtime ambition, and the company was founded by a group of collaborators cited as having over 150 years of combined mainframe experience.

Business model

VirtualZ licenses proprietary, patented software products installed in customer mainframe and hybrid-cloud environments (PropelZ, FlowZ, Lozen, Zaac). The company advertises a guarantee of no charge until customer data is flowing. Earlier company material also described licensing mainframe software as a service under the zWaaS designation.

Enterprise software licensing of the four-product portfolio, with the company stating customers are not invoiced until their data is flowing.

Traction

As of the December 2023 seed announcement the company had Lozen and PropelZ generally available and Zaac scheduled for Q1 2024, and stated it intended to achieve first revenue quickly while building out sales and development. The current website cites throughput proven at 56,000 records per second and published use cases spanning Snowflake, Databricks, tape-to-cloud migration and report migration.

Latest developments

The product portfolio now comprises four offerings — PropelZ, FlowZ, Lozen and Zaac — with PropelZ repositioned as any-source-to-any-destination, no-code replication and transformation, and FlowZ added as file-based cloud storage for mainframe applications. Marc Sokol, a general partner at Florida Funders, is listed as Executive Chairman.