IBM: The mainframe is back
Summary
Topics
Richard Pape, mainframe systems executive at IBM Asia-Pacific, told ZDNet Asia in an email interview that the company is witnessing a resurgence in the mainframe. "We saw a range of all-new mainframe clients this year across the world, particularly in emerging markets [such as China and India]," he said.
During the release of its second-quarter results last month, IBM reported a 32 percent year-on-year increase in revenue from the System z mainframe server products.
There are several drivers for customers wanting or continuing to invest in mainframes, said Pape.
"Many companies are facing both space and power constraints in their datacenters, and are clamoring for increased datacenter efficiency," he said. "Clients want datacenters that are designed for specific processes that can help them consolidate servers and improve their energy efficiency."
Pape added that many independent software vendors are now choosing to support their applications on the mainframe, thereby enabling more options for users on the platform.
Increasing support for open standards is also driving demand for mainframes, he said. "The mainframe has been completely redesigned and is as modern — [if not] more modern — than any other platform out there," Pape said.
Mainframe critical for BI
In an email note, Madan Sheina, senior analyst at Ovum, said Cognos's recent move to put business-intelligence (BI) software on the IBM System z mainframe running Linux indicates that mainframes are far from being legacy systems.
"Trusty mainframes are alive and kicking, and remain critical components of a company's IT infrastructure, especially for mission-critical, high-volume transactional environments like financial services, where the mainframe has proven itself to be a trusted platform for housing large amounts of data in a secure and centrally managed environment," said Sheina.
Noting that global mainframe revenues are on the rise, he said: "We suspect that much of this growth is coming from existing mainframe users who are either upgrading or growing their mainframe usage."
BI vendors that fail to extend their reach to the mainframe could be "missing out on an opportunity", he added, as doing so can help enterprises "scale up the performance of sophisticated data analysis and other BI functions against larger volumes of data".
In addition, the mainframe platform complements BI applications, which are increasingly viewed as mission critical, he said. Sheina explained: "BI is still a growing market. Pushing the software onto the mainframe helps companies to both protect and leverage their mainframe investments — that is, using BI to drive legacy modernization without replacement of the mainframe."
However, Sheina said there are challenges around mainframe usage. "Classic mainframe myths still exist today. Mainframes have traditionally been associated with high total cost of ownership; lack of advanced applications; inability to support real-time/low-latency processing; poor back-end data-integration support; a shortage of mainframe skills; and steep and inflexible development and maintenance curves," he said. Some of these issues have been addressed, however. Sheina said modern mainframe architectures today have been fitted with new partitioning, virtualization and workload-management techniques, and can host multiple operating systems, emulate other hardware platforms and have the capacity to support mixed BI workloads without stringing queries in parallel across server nodes that are complex to fine-tune and administer.
He added that vendors such as SAS and IBM are also introducing new pricing strategies and open-source deployment options to make mainframe computing more affordable.
Human resources, though, could prove a challenge. "There are simply not enough young, bright people wanting to learn mainframe skills over PHP, Java, Flash and other 'hip' Web 2.0 technologies," said Sheina.
IBM's Pape noted, however, that the company has been working with educational institutions over the last few years to address resource issues.
To date, IBM has tie-ups with over 400 colleges and universities globally for its Academic Initiative for System z program, he said.
Talkback Most Recent of 16 Talkback(s)
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Mainframe decision makers...
As long as IT departments are headed by baby boomers who are in bed with IBM, the z series will continue to exist and propogate. There are a number of old systems (re: COBOL) that still meet the business needs, and will continue to run because replatforming doesn't make business sense or because of prioriites. Most of these could run on the mainframes of ten years ago (or older). IBM works hard on coming up with ways to economically justify upgrading to the latest and greatest mainframes. And they are especially good at marketing and buddying up with folks who are the technical decision makers or heads of IT departments...most who grew up in the 70's..80s...with mainframes. And they're convinced that nothing could replace them.
eeterrific18th Aug 2008 -
Replatforming makes more sense than you know
There seems to be a pervasive misconception in the world that rearchitecting is still impossible. I understand that when the options were limited to mechanical conversion and starting from scratch, there was a lost of justification for learned helplessness around the mainframe applications.
However, times have changed. Getting the Java or .NET system you want that replaces and builds upon the asset you have in the COBOL (or similar) system is not such an unattainable holy grail. MAKE Technologies does it (looks us up if you like).
And now that it's possible, there's a lot of fear welling up in these mainframe vendors, resulting in articles like this one, intended to engineer some consensus.
But you can't put the genie back in the bottle!
http://www.maketechnologies.com
tom@...18th Aug 2008 -
Hmmm!
What a shameless plug!
Mawdo19th Aug 2008 -
Similar Tech
From what I have seen, it's a case of similar technology goals of the recent commodity systems to the mainframe. Virtualization, multiple guest OS's, consolidation, cloud computing, grid computing, better use of company resources, etc. All of this points to a central system, which is what the mainframe offers. The added features of a mainframe type system are also there (like up-time, hot swapping/adding, etc). It does make sense in some environments. It will only be a matter of time before commodity hardware does this (it does a lot of it now).
happyharry_z18th Aug 2008 -
Nailed it right on the head...
IBM's fatal mistake, at least with us, was convincing our decision makers to stay with Token Ring WAY past when we should have switched (i.e., we never should have been on it in the first place).
When our decision makers finally realized that IBM pushes what's good for IBM, rather than what's good for the customer, our decision makers were very receptive to grassroots efforts within the organization to retire the mainframe and migrate to a Linux/Intel platform. There was certainly some trepidation taking steps away from Big Blue, but we've been happy and haven't looked back since.
ejhonda19th Aug 2008 -
responsibility
1) Token Ring is much more efficient on an internal network and the larger the network, the more efficient it is over Ethernet. However, it does have a couple of problems. First, it doesn't talk to the outside world nicely. You can bridge, but it's not as transparent and introduces another potentlal failure point. Second, like many of IBM's offerings, it requires a lot more expertise to configure and manage. In an age when people are expensive, if you don't develop you own folks, I can see not wanting to buy the competence necessary to run a Token Ring network. The same is true of DB2 - it blows the socks off any other database out there but it runs like a pig if the Admin isn't a genius. SQL and Oracle are cheaper to administer and 'good enough for government work'.
2) If your company rubberstamped IBM marketing, you had a much bigger problme than Token Ring.
3) What gives you the delusion that other vendors are any different?
This business goes through cycles of centralization and decentralization. There is a place for each, as long as we don't try to force one approach as being the only valid way. Mainframe is overkill for web browsing and email, but nothing can touch it for truly large scale business applications.
When people call the mainframe a dinosaur, it is worth remembering that homo sapiens has only been around about 150,000 years. Dinosaurs were around about 1000 times longer - 150,000,000 years.
steeleweed@...25th Aug 2008 -
Dinosaurs?
We run between 250 and 300 servers right now (not sure how many because we keep adding 3-5 a week). We run one mainframe. Not a day goes by without 2 or 3 (or more )servers crashing. The mainframe has never crashed in the 8 years I've been running it.
If the server-based Apps were on Linux, we could port them all to the mainframe as Virtual systems and have plenty of CPU, bandwidth (nobody beats IBM at I/O) and performance. All the disks would be Raid 5, much of the Operating System overhead would be in the micro-code, Windows servers tend to crash if you push them beyond 50% but mainframes keep chugging along up to 100%.
It took IBM years, (and I lived/worked through through the years when they were working out the kinks) but they finally got it right. Their VM is so far ahead of anything Intel-based that it isn't in the same league.
I have been working with mainframes since 1963 and with PCs since they were invented (by IBM). Take my word for it - whatever you can do on an Windows or Linux box, can be done better on a mainframe.
DB2 is in a similar situation - it's the best database ever built but in runs like a pig if the Admin is not really good. If you have the skills, DB2 blows the socks off any other database. If you have the skills, the mainframe outperforms anything else.
Total Cost of Ownership?
In a small show (under 50 servers), Intel-based systems may make sense, but in a real shop, if you add up the cost of hardware, software licenses, footprint costs, power and people, the bigger the outfit grows, the better the mainframe advantage.
Google has hundreds of thousands of servers, Amazon probably has thousands also. I've seen services disruptions at both places along with other major players in the Intel-based world.
I know of mainframes that have been running non-stop for years and applications spread across multiple mainframes so the applications are CPU-independent and which have been online non-stop for decades.
Try thay with Intel/Microsoft.
steeleweed19th Aug 2008 -
RE: IBM: The mainframe is back
(Nice) to hear a few baby-boomer-babies thinking 'cos it aint new it aint good.
When you spend months integrating dozens of individual boxes, trying to provide some semblance of unified backup and restore across these platforms as well as provisioning a SAN with virtualised storage iSCSI etc. You soon feel warmer to the unified all-in-box solutions IBM (at the least) provide with p, i and z series.
I yearn for the days when one unstoppable box ran nearly all the facilities for our 1000's of users and that was before IBM had their epiphany and made this hardware so much more flexible.
I am not saying IBM are perfect - they are far from it. But well considered, well designed and engineered solutions on a Mainframe or Mid-Range system will provide a reliable and simple to manage platform for end users for years and yes you can use Web "niceness". Can you say all that about 5 dozen loosely coupled servers? Rarely!Mawdo19th Aug 2008 -
Lights-out data center
The last sata center I was associated with, about five years ago, was in the process of migrating a lot of the critical 24x7 apps back to the mainframe. The cool idea of a dedicated server, or bunch of servers, for each application led them down the path of no single neck to squeeze and a lot of staff on duty around the clock. The new code term was "lights out." I don't know if they achieved it.
IT_User19th Aug 2008 -
RE: IBM: The mainframe is back
So what do I need to know? As a VB, VB.Net developer mainframes seem shrouded in mystery. Is it possible to write web applications on them? Can I run multiple application sessions with a virtualized windows XP? How are they in a Java environment. Is there a ZDNet column on the subject?
Beyond using warehouse/reporting applications like SAP and COGNOS I have no idea where to start. It would be nice if there were some books for learning the basics in 21 days, etc. This is the information that we need and it seems in very short supply.
tcalbaz@...19th Aug 2008 -
Time to dust off those Basic & COBOL manuals?
Just when I thought I would not need them any more. Hmmmmmmm.
IT_Guy_z19th Aug 2008 -
Rock solid and reliable
For me, I spent much of my early career with mainframe (and mid-range) IBM kit. It was always reliable (apart from the odd peripheral) and the OS was rock solid. It could run flat out all day every day at 100% and still do a good job of load balancing.
Lately I have worked with the *NIXes and Microsoft NT through Vista. I can leave the NIXes running all day and every day, but the Microsofties still just don't get it. They just don't seem to understand what a business critical platform requires. The scheduler is a shocker. Perhaps they should download the Linux kernel to see how its done.
The longer I work with Microsoft OSes, the more respect I have for IBM.
simon.hacketpain@...20th Aug 2008 -
alexfaye20th Aug 2008 -
RE: IBM: The mainframe is back
It is good to know that IBM is focusing again. IBM was one of the best corporations at producing quality products, backed by a strong professional support team and Preventive Maintenance. Intel servers would have an equally high reliability rate if they were installed in highly customized environments, and constantly serviced like most mainframe installations.
Having said that, I wish the bashing would stop. We nearly killed ourselves when the bottom dropped out of the dot.coms and we were off shored in the U.S. and Europe in 2003. It is good to see China and India ordering mainframes. It would be better if we would specify the right systems for our business customers and not pander to our biases. This business of my Intel/MS, Intel/Linux is better than your Apple/OS or IBM/UNIX/VM is stupid. Let's face it, the more we bash and hack each other, the less likely the business, science, and academic community will take us seriously as the professionals we pretend to be.
I'd love it if a maga-bucks client advertised that their product, banking services, or research paper was made possible by the well designed and integrated business intelligence system supported by their highly trained and well paid professional staff. Well OK. Maybe that is a pipe dream.
Welcome back IBM and mainframes.
pate.robert20th Aug 2008 -
RE: IBM: The mainframe is back
>and with PCs since they were invented (by IBM).
Actually, IBM didn't want anything to do with personal computers until the Apple II showed them how it could be done. They were convinced that the mainframe was all that anyone needed.
fbarpk26th Aug 2008
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