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One mainframe vs many low-cost servers

August 29, 2006

Jim Stallings, general manager for IBM's System Z division is always excited to talk about the many advantages of the large corporate mainframe. Stallings recently said IBM is serious in overcoming what he said are big misconceptions about the mainframe.

There are still many that feel mainframes are too expensive and difficult to maintain. But along with its many advantages over low-cost servers are its lesser known advantages: saving on energy costs and being a solid platform for growth.

Stallings says "Large companies wishing to run their infrastructure on lower-cost x86 servers have discovered that as they grow, it isn't very practical."

"The x86 technology is out there, but it's considerably more expensive to run thousands of small servers than a single mainframe," Stallings added. "And what about data security? And zero downtime? These are areas the corporate mainframe has huge advantages."

Stallings said IBM is ready to move aggressively in trying to win business from server makers Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems with specific commitments to migrate their systems and save them a lot of money.

"Many companies don't want to become an IT factory with servers everywhere," said Stallings. "What we're saying is the mainframe CAN be the factory."

IBM has had its main success selling to existing mainframe customers and Stallings says the company is in a strong position to go after new customers, particularly with its new System Z business class systems that are priced starting at $100,000.

Business segments as diverse as financial services company Nexxar Group and Brazil-based Hoplon, an online multiplayer game company have bought the idea.

Nexxar is consolidating more than eighty x-86 servers onto IBM's Z-9 mainframe that runs on Linux. The company sees the mainframe move helping its growth-through-acquisition strategy.

"When we need to add a virtual Linux image on the IBM System Z9, it's as simple as 'cutting and pasting'," Wim De Ridder, managing director and CIO of Nexxar, said in a statement earlier this year.

"By contrast, in the x86 world, we would have to add a whole new physical server, plus the software, networking and attendant maintenance."

In the case of startup Hoplon, the company is tapping IBM's Managed Hosting Services rather than purchase the mainframe.

"Hosting lets us grow at our own pace, in a more comfortable way, without having to make large up-front commitments," said Hoplon CEO Teles Tarquinio.

With access to IBM's zSeries, Hoplon said it can create new virtual machines on demand, scaling rapidly and dynamically as needed to accommodate the shifting needs of users.

IBM also offers its mainframe buyers specialized processors designed to speed performance as needed. One, the zAAP processor is designed to speed up Java applications.

And earlier this year IBM introduced the System z9 Integrated Information Processor (zIIP), designed to accelerate data processing loads associated with customer relationship management, ERP, and business intelligence computing tasks.

On the energy savings side, at least one analyst agrees with Stallings assessment.

"Every CIO I've spoken to who operates a large data center has told me that the mainframe is now the coolest, most efficient device in their data center," said Jerald Murphy, director of research operations for Robert Frances Group.

In a recent RFG research report, Murphy said, "No other platform has clearly demonstrated the vertical scaling (scaling up) savings as the mainframe. IT can consistently achieve the highest utilization rates, and hardware/software costs go down as the processing capacity increases."

Comments like that are surely music to IBM's ears. But the mainframe, even as IBM strives to reestablish its value and niche, isn't about to retake the computing world.

It's still easier for most companies, that don't need all of the mainframe's capabilities, to build incrementally with lower cost servers.

IBM's biggest near-term opportunity may be in emerging markets, where companies aren't so much supplementing but building their first computing infrastructure.

"That's why we announced the z9 in Beijing, where there are 8 million small businesses," said Stallings.

Not surprisingly, familiar competitors HP, Sun and others are also going after those markets.

Stallings said he loves it when competitors tout features like virtualization (define), a hallmark of mainframes for years.

"Virtualization is a new model for them and the technology is just getting mature on those platforms," he said.

"But we've had it for decades because the mainframe was designed as a corporate computer from the beginning for multiple users with partitioning and the virtualization is built into the OS. We don't need separate virtualization for storage and workloads."

Source: IT World Canada