@scotth_z has hit the nail on the head. There are many shops that have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers (virtualized and not) with NO mainframe. But there are virtually no shops that have a mainframe that don't also have servers. Many of the applications that run on mainframes are interconnected with those servers (either loosely or some quite tightly coupled). This kind of environment is complex and difficult to manage. The tool sets to manage such an environment have historically been divided, one set for the mainframe and one for the servers, despite several vendors trying to sell consolidated tool sets. Trying to diagnose complex problems has involved trying to get two groups that don't typically work together to collaborate "nicely" to get to the root cause. Good luck with that.
So, along comes IBM with the new zEnterprise. First, it is a very impressive "upgrade" for the traditional mainframe side of things (z/OS, z/VM, z/Linux). But, now they show us something new, the zBX, initially announcing AIX and Linux, and now Windows. The added values of such a concept are 1) bringing the server side into a notably superior hardware scenario, 2) brining those hybrid mainframe/server workloads under the same management umbrella, 3) significantly reducing the footprint and facility costs in our data centers, and 4) subject to some reality checking, potentially reducing the costs of our server environments.
However, there is a fly in the ointment. @ido17 demonstrates it: a virtual religious war between the mainframe and server camps. This has been brewing for decades. The reality is that the distributed organization will fight putting their instances inside any mainframe. I imagine there will be some mainframe groups that won't want windows running on their systems, either. This is a sad state of affairs. The zEnterprise is only a server, albeit one that runs multiple OSs. If the zEnterprise proves to be a solid and cost-effective solution, then IT Management will need to set a tone that encourages, right up to forcing, the two sides to work together......please!
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