Today, we're introducing intent-driven workflows for IBM Terraform Self-Managed for Z and LinuxONE (Terraform for Z), bringing a new way to interact with infrastructure through trusted, agentic workflows.
As enterprises continue to modernize increasingly hybrid infrastructure, AI is changing not only how infrastructure is managed, but how operators interact with it. Rather than navigating complex operational procedures, teams are increasingly looking to define the outcome they're trying to achieve while trusted agents handle the execution within established guardrails.
Intent-driven workflows bring that interaction model to Terraform for Z and LinuxONE. Users start by describing the desired infrastructure outcome and are guided through the required steps. By translating common infrastructure tasks into trusted Terraform workflows, this new capability simplifies Terraform for Z onboarding while laying the foundation for a new way to manage infrastructure across its entire lifecycle.
In this post, we'll explore why Terraform for Z is a natural fit for this new interaction model, how intent-driven workflows simplify infrastructure operations today, and how they're shaping the future of infrastructure management.
»Why Terraform is a natural fit for IBM Z
Mainframes such as IBM Z have long served as the foundation for many of the world's most mission-critical workloads. Today, IBM Z continues to serve as a strategic pillar of the modern hybrid IT estate, delivering the unmatched resiliency, security, transactional integrity, and backward compatibility that enterprises depend on for their most critical business processes.
While enterprises continue investing in their mainframe environments, they've also been working to standardize how infrastructure is managed across hybrid-cloud estates. Rather than maintaining separate tools and operational practices for different platforms, enterprises are seeking a consistent way to provision, govern, and automate infrastructure in any environment — from mainframe to public cloud.
Terraform, the industry standard for declaratively managing infrastructure through infrastructure as code (IaC), provides that common operating model. By extending Terraform to IBM Z, organizations can manage mainframe infrastructure using the same IaC workflows, governance practices, and automation they already rely on across the rest of their hybrid estate.
This enables IBM Z to become part of a consistent infrastructure operating model across the entire organization, rather than a separate operational domain. Through this standardization, modern enterprises can reduce operational silos and improve consistency, while maintaining the governance required for mission-critical systems.
»Simplified, governed Terraform adoption with intent-driven workflows
Bringing Terraform workflows to IBM Z shouldn't require every operator to become a Terraform expert overnight.
Many IBM Z environments rely on years of specialized expertise, custom operational processes, and institutional knowledge to safely manage infrastructure. While these practices have successfully supported mission-critical infrastructure for decades, reliance on specialized expertise can make it challenging to onboard new team members, transfer operational knowledge, or introduce modern infrastructure technologies and practices. Organizations need a way to build on shared expertise, not replace it, while making common infrastructure tasks easier to perform consistently across teams.
Intent-driven workflows for Terraform for Z and LinuxONE are designed to bridge that gap. Rather than requiring Z operators to fully understand every implementation detail or the underlying HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) behind common Terraform tasks, intent-driven workflows capture operational knowledge and translate it into guided workflows that operators can execute consistently:
Users can describe their intent in natural language or select from a set of predefined workflows
Intent-driven workflows capture user intent, gather required inputs, and present evidence for review before infrastructure is modified. This experience is enabled by three core capabilities:
Discovering existing infrastructure resources
Simulating environments that mirror infrastructure behavior
Rehearsing operational changes before execution.
Together, these capabilities help teams modernize operations and adopt Terraform more quickly by guiding them through onboarding, installation, configuration, and other operational tasks required to manage supported IBM Z and LinuxONE environments with Terraform.
Initial workflows focus on deploying Terraform for Z and LinuxONE environments, with additional infrastructure lifecycle management workflows planned over time.
»Safely validate infrastructure changes before execution
On mission-critical infrastructure, every proposed change—and its potential impact—must be understood before it reaches production. Intent-driven workflows in Terraform for Z provide that confidence.
Before proposed infrastructure changes are applied, intent-driven workflows can rehearse workflow execution against simulated infrastructure environments. These simulations allow operators to validate processes, understand impacts, and review evidence before approving changes. By separating agent exploration from production infrastructure, organizations gain a safer way to evaluate infrastructure operations while maintaining governance and control. Proposed changes can be reviewed as infrastructure- as -code artifacts before execution, helping reduce risk while improving transparency and auditability.
Each intent-driven workflow also produces a record of decisions, approvals, generated artifacts, and execution history. Teams can review completed workflows, inspect preserved evidence, and maintain a clear audit trail for governance and compliance requirements.
Together, these capabilities allow operators to remain in control while agents execute the approved workflows within established governance boundaries. This helps organizations scale operational knowledge, onboard new practitioners more effectively, and mitigate the risk associated with changes to mission-critical infrastructure.
»Preparing infrastructure operations for the future
The future of infrastructure management isn't tied to a single platform — it's about establishing a consistent way to operate infrastructure across the entire lifecycle, regardless of where it runs. As AI becomes embedded in enterprise IT, agents will increasingly help teams move from manual infrastructure orchestration to defining higher-level outcomes. However, realizing that vision depends on the trusted workflows and governance that guide those agents so they can execute infrastructure changes safely and consistently.
Intent-driven workflows for Terraform represent the first step toward that new interaction model. This release begins with IBM Z and LinuxONE and is designed to lay the foundation for a consistent way to interact with any infrastructure across its lifecycle. Over time, we intend to extend this approach across hybrid environments, enabling organizations to manage mainframe, on-premises, and public cloud infrastructure through a common, intent-driven approach.
We're excited to bring this experience to Terraform for Z and LinuxONE and look forward to expanding it to infrastructure teams wherever they operate.
»Next steps
Intent-driven workflows for Terraform for Z and LinuxONE will be generally available later this year. Stay tuned for additional details, demonstrations, and guidance as we approach availability.
To learn more about intent-driven workflows ahead of general availability, please contact sales.
