BI vendor bends to support mainframe chipset

So just yesterday I was rambling on about data event management and RDBMS’s that juggle huge throughput workload spikes - and today it’s a case of more data-intensive number crunching.

I see news of a BI vendor fashioning its core offering to support a powerful mainframe chipset. Information Builders is waving its flag to tell us of new support for the IBM System z/OS computer Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) from the depths of its FOCUS and WebFOCUS BI systems.

This is, “The first and only BI platform optimised for the popular mainframe environment.” Their words, not mine. Ah but of course, IBM says that the zIIP chip was build to accommodate for the typical workloads of Business Intelligence and, “Other data intensive applications.” So why not then?

Specialised mainframe processors like the zIIP are said to offload work that might otherwise run on the mainframe’s general-purpose chips. The theory is that FOCUS and WebFOCUS, in a working environment, will now improve resource optimisation and reduce latent workload demand, which the central processor can now absorb.

So you’re a fat cat retail manager sat at your boardroom table speaking to your CIO. You want every whizz-bang piece of operational data you can lay your hands on and you want it at the best price. Your CIO tells you that you can now get a dynamic business dashboard that is optimised for running on heavyweight mainframe power. Is it all good news?

I can’t think of a negative here. Even if our CIO thinks mainframes are outdated, just tell him it’s an IBM mainframe chip. He’s likely to go for it isn’t he? I mean nobody ever got fired for buying etc…

Perhaps Information Builders is playing this exact card too? Would it be super-cynical to suggest that this does not represent cutting edge technology, but just a safe cash-cow policy for selling their products to companies that need aggregated data BI filtering in the mainframe space? No need to be that nasty – is there?