Gary Barnett
The new IBM mainframe: bigger, better, cooler
A little over a week ago, IBM unveiled the next generation of its mainframe technology, the System Z9. The new mainframe represents a quantum leap in performance and scalability - delivering nearly double the MIPS (millions of instructions per second) of its predecessor, 80% more bandwidth, double the number of partitions and double the memory capacity. Comment: This announcement delivers a significant change to the economics of running mainframe hardware that brings a new lease of life to a platform that is older than most people working in the IT industry today. The launch of the System Z9 - coupled with a renewed Systems Agenda that focuses on Virtualisation, Openness and Collaboration - demonstrates that the IBM mainframe is very much alive among the fortune 5000 customer base.But the Z9 isn't just bigger and better; it's cooler too. IBM is positioning the Z9 as something that's much more than just a Cobol (or PL/1) workhorse; The Z9 can provide a safe home for Java and Linux-based applications too. This means that the Z9 can span two worlds supporting two very different workloads - the traditional transaction-oriented workloads that Cobol implies, and the interaction-oriented workload that Linux and Java represent.
