IBM Launches zEnterprise Mainframe With Cost Savings In Mind

IBM has revamped its System z line of mainframes with a new system called zEnterprise, which should significantly reduce the computing cost for enterprise-class companies, according to IBM executives at a press and analyst briefing in New York Thursday.

’This is the most powerful announcement we have ever made in terms of customer economics. ’We’ve never done anything to put more money back in the hands of customers to solve business problems and bring down the cost of computing.,’ said Steve Mills, IBM’s senior vice president and group executive, Systems and Software. ’We will not stop making Intel-based servers, Power-based servers but this puts it all in on place where you can see it, cost it, deal with it.’

The zEnterprise products can create up to 100,000 virtual machines and run a multidue of platforms including zOS, Linux and more, Mills said. The machine utilizes a 5.2 Ghz processor, which Mills dubbed the industry’s fastest, and up to 3 TB of memory.

’It can run Intel or RISC, Unix-type workloads. Whether you’re using mainframe systems for traditional workloads or embracing Linux on a mainframe, there is great value in this system,’ Mills said.

The new system comes company amid a reorganization within IBM and a new focus on integrating hardware and software.

This was IBM’s biggest hardware announcement in recent memory, but it wasn’t the speeds and feeds that IBM said should make zEnterprise a differentiator in this market, in this economy. Companies can expect to save millions of dollars in storage, power and computing costs over a three-year period utilizing the new system, said Mills.

’This system is now highly adaptive to sophisticated analytics, diverse workloads brought forward by packaged application vendors. And it’s highly adaptive to Web collaboration type environments,’ Mills said. ’We did this to not just address issues of flexibility, but issues of cost. Businesses are in tremendous cost pressure. No product in the industry is subject to more debate about costs than mainframes.’

Mills said mainframes have been unfairly stereotyped as being bloated and expensive machines, when in truth they can save a customer money in the right environment, he said. ’If we all wanted to go from New York to California, you’d get there more economically and safely in a plane than if we all rented cards and drove across the country,’ he said.

IBM detailed an example of a data center that deploys 10,000 workloads on virtualized servers, including 7,000 light workloads, 500 heavy workloads and 2,500 heavy I/O workloads on a zEnterprise system, an infrastructure that would require 1,603 Intel servers to replicate.

The cost of acquisition over three years for those Intel servers over three years would be $314 million, while a zEnterprise solution, running 21 frames and 445 blades would be $138 million over the same period, 56 percent less.

The cost of networking equipment to run the Intel- and zEnterprise solutions would be $3.8 million and $197,000, respectively. Energy consumption on a zEnterprise system would cause $1.1 million, 80 percent less than the $5.6 million necessary to power the Intel system, Mills said.

Next: The Custom View of zEnterprise

Labor costs for system administrators would be $94.8 million for Intel, $36.4 million for zEnterprise, he added, while storage costs would be about half as much for the zEnterprise system ($108 million) as the Intel system.

’I have yet to meet a C-level executive that hasn’t wanted to talk about cost reductions, savings, how to bring down run costs. They say infrastructure is costing too much, for the care and feeding of what I have, there’s little money left over to do what I want to do,’ Mills said. ’This is why we did this. We saw a problem, put resources on it. We’ve solved the problem of the underlying cost of computing. We’ve made it less expensive, more accessible. For all the things we’d love to work on going forward, the only way to get there is to be more efficient.’

In its presentation, IBM did not detail its channel strategy for zEnterprise,

Rod Adkins, senior vice president of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group, noted that zEnterprise continues a mammoth refresh of the company’s servers that began in February with the Power 7 launch and continued in the spring with System X and storage enhancements.

’This platform addresses multiple dimensions. You’re going to hear us talk a lot about stack integration, bringing hardware and software together in an integrated way to provide a level of optimization that delivers better workload performance,’ Adkins said. ’Another area you’ll hear us talk about is management integration. You now need a set of capabilities to manage across environments and treat it as a single view with a single point of control. The third area is true data center integration. This provides a structure that takes mainframe capabilities out to distributed environments.’

IBM showcased a panel of customers from around the world, hosted by Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the Center for Digital Business at MIT, who said that companies today are on the brink of a revolution in business management.

’The revolution is bringing trillions of devices instrumenting the entire world. They’re all spinning off enormous amounts of information, most of which has not been used in an effective way. That’s leaving $2 trillion on the table. The missing ingredient is how to make use of that data. This is going to lead to an era of improved productivity and innovation,’ Brynjolfsson said.

One of the customers, Stephen van Rhyn, CIO of the First National Bank of Namibia, said he plans to use zEnterprise to house all of his company’s data in-country for the first time.

For the last 20 years, the country’s data has resided in South Africa, which has resulted in significant connectivity and latency issues. In the near future, Namibia expects to market its data center capabilities to surrounding countries, van Rhyn added.

IBM’s Adkins said that organizations should now be rethinking their technology strategies in order to capitalize on innovations that increase efficiencies and reduce costs.

’Our strategy has been around optimizing the workload. Managing the data center elements in a more consistent common way will provide dramatic improvement in managing resources.’