IBM launches new generation mainframe

MANILA, Philippines - IBM Philippines recently launched a new generation mainframe that it says is the most powerful and energy-efficient mainframe ever.

“The new IBM zEnterprise System represents a bold move to fundamentally change how data centers are managed,” said Erwin Chuauansu, country manager for systems and technology group of IBM Philippines.

“The new mainframe is the fastest enterprise server in the world and represents a giant leap in performance,” he added.

Built over the past three years with a total investment of $1.5 billion in R&D and with more than 5,000 IBMers working at 18 IBM labs worldwide, the zEnterprise is actually a response to the clamor for smarter products and IBM’s smarter planet concept.

“We recognize that some customers are facing challenges in their data centers,” said Richard Pape, business executive of the System Z Platform of IBM Growth Markets.

According to their surveys, Pape said 78 percent of CIOs want to improve the way they use data.

From a cost point of view, companies spend about 70 cents for every dollar maintaining the IT infrastructure, and seven out of 10 companies in the Global 100 feel the need to modify their data centers to meet increased power and cooling requirements.

“We need smarter systems and software for enterprise computing and robust private cloud environment,” stressed Pape. “Clearly one approach from an IT perspective is to push forward a single platform. That reality has happened with the zEnterprise.”

According to IBM, the new IBM zEnterprise delivers groundbreaking flexibility to help enterprises simplify operations and “allows workloads running on multiple heterogeneous platforms to be consolidated and managed as a single system delivering System Z’s proven qualities of service that business-critical applications require.”

Pape said enterprises that would most benefit from this new system are banks, airlines, telcos, power generation companies and government institutions running mission-critical applications.

“With the zEnterprise, we want to be able to scale without adding complexity, we want to simply data center management, reduce complexity, and transform IT as an enabler for business growth innovation,” he added.

IBM also announced a new systems design that allows workloads on mainframe, Power 7 and System x servers to share resources and be managed as a single, virtualized system.

“As a result, customers can integrate the management of zEnterprise System resources as a single system and extend mainframe qualities, such as governance and manageability, to workloads running on select IBM Power 7 and System x blade servers,” it said.

With this ability to manage workloads across systems as one, IBM said the zEnterprise System can drive up to 40 percent lower acquisition costs and reduce cost of ownership by 55 percent.

Is the mainframe still relevant in the IT infrastructure? Pape said it is because of its high reliability, security and scalability.

“We are seeing new customers coming to the mainframe who have not been in the mainframe before and they include customers in Vietnam, Pompei, Russia and even in mature markets like Korea,” he said.

Raffy Andaya, country System Z brand manager for IBM ASEAN, disclosed that two years ago a client from the Philippines migrated to mainframe because of its proven advantages.

“When they run the applications, it is 33 times faster and that is what essentially compelled them to re-platform their existing applications,” he said.

IBM Philippines is also banking on the fact that in the total server category, it has a 51.3 percent market share in the Philippines and in the high-end server category, it has 92 percent share, according to a May 2010 IDC report.

“Moving forward from a hardware architecture change perspective,” said Ooi Sze Kai, business unit executive of System Z Software of IBM Software Group-ASEAN, “zEnterprise is all about being able to manage other systems. The argument now is it depends on the workload and how the mainframe would be used. What we are announcing here is the option to put together, run them all in one box so that everything will be easy to manage.”

Andaya affirmed that the innovations in the mainframe are best for big enterprise customers, especially those who are running more than a hundred servers.

“Essentially we are inviting enterprises to try the new system and we can do ‘proof of concept’ (POC) in Singapore for prospective clients for free. For one, we can do an inventory of their IT infrastructure and compare the difference in savings and total cost of ownership for hardware, software and even the environment cost if they move to the mainframe environment,” he said.