Why The Mainframe Will Never Die

The System z Linux environment has proven very popular with customers as a means to consolidate workloads as well as deploy new mission-critical mainframe applications that are well suited for Linux. Very often, these Linux applications on System z work in concert with our z/OS environment to make possible an end-to-end solution within the same box. The results speak for themselves. Last year, we saw Linux MIPS grow by 77 percent, with more than 1,300 System z customers benefiting from that environment. That amount of new capacity is equivalent to as many as 60,000 x86 cores and represents a very significant level of usage and growth. We expect the System z Linux environment to continue to thrive.

What is IBM doing to make sure there are enough IT pros with mainframe skills?
It’s been said that 80 percent of the world’s mission-critical data is stored on and accessed by IBM System z. We have a responsibility to ensure students around the world are being educated on System z servers. The System z Academic Initiative Program has added hundreds of schools offering System z course work. More than 50,000 students have been educated on the mainframe. Approximately 550 schools worldwide have now joined IBM to offer course work on the IBM System z enterprise servers. Around the world, more than 1,000 students from Brazil, The United Kingdom, Australia, U.S.A, Canada and China won prizes through the IBM student mainframe contests.

We feel this is important because students with z skills differentiate themselves with a level of versatility and depth that companies look for these days. Universities we work with are reporting strong job placement rates, even in this economy, for students with mainframe skills.

How does System z play in IBM’s “Smarter Planet” strategy?
The world is becoming more computerised; by 2010 there will be a billion transistors per human. The world is becoming more interconnected, with a trillion networked things, and it’s becoming more intelligent. Powerful systems are needed for industries to analyse mountains of data and turn it into decision and action, tailored to their specific needs. System z is an important engine behind this.

System z is one important element of a dynamic infrastructure that clients want today. It provides flexibility and choice to users; the agility and responsiveness that businesses need in today’s ever-changing environment; the automation and manageability required to provide the control that businesses require; and the ability to modernise mainframe assets. All of these requirements align with what System z can deliver today. As customers embrace the rapidly changing application environments of the future, they can do so knowing that Systems z’s capabilities will continue to be enhanced to support their evolving needs.

The dynamic infrastructure vision and the cross-IBM solutions that support it fundamentally differentiate us from commodity hardware vendors. The competition simply does not have the leadership to help apply technology to business problems; the middleware required to enable infrastructure and applications; or the breadth of server technologies to deliver a solution optimised for each client’s needs.

Do modern programming languages/practices translate to the mainframe?
The mainframe has powerful “speciality engines” known as zAAP (System z Application Assist Processor) engines dedicated to running Java and XML workloads. For organisations with legacy data, IBM offers software via EGL (enterprise generation language) for developers of any background to work on the mainframe. For example, IBM Rational software is easy to learn, hides the technical complexity of runtimes and middleware and ensures easy interoperability with legacy data. Basically, customers don’t need to worry about a lot of the infrastructure if they use Rational.

Altman shared her views on the future of the mainframe with eWEEK Senior Editor Darryl K. Taft.