IBM System z: Trends And Drivers Catalyzing The Next Generation Midframe

IBM's System z9 stands at a crossroads. Some IT folks believe System z remains challenged, constrained by a lack of available programming and administrators' skills, legacy application re-use, and perceived higher software license and support costs. Yet System z9's renewed traction reflects the mainframe's original design win — running diverse workloads at extremely high systems utilization and transaction rates while supporting sizeable concurrent user populations. The combined attributes of z9's systems design and advanced virtualization stack, coupled with low cost specialty engines, constitute the energy efficient platform on which IBM will consolidate the widest array of application workloads. In April 2006, IBM announced a five-year development effort and $1 billion technology and marketing investment aimed at simplifying and modernizing its System z9. The z9 EC high-end systems models and cost efficient z9 Business Class alters the enterprise computing landscape, offering more granular "midframe" server models capable of cost effectively competing with computing alternatives for Linux/Unix applications consolidation.