IBM: System Z Is Not A Cash Cow

The first specialty engine ran Linux, he said, and “it did not seem to make sense to charge for Linux”. This was followed up with Java and other workloads, co-located with the mainframe. Part of the reason for the way IBM sells specialty engines is the need to comply with regulations such as Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley, which limit the ways in which data can be copied between machines and between sites. “Our goal is to reduce complexity,” he said.

If specialty processors are just an artefact of the regulatory and competitive environment, and limit workloads artificially within the mainframe, then they must be an unstable solution in the long term, we suggested to Porell. IBM has to get suitable reward for its products, but an artifical price boost can’t last, surely?

He wouldn’t answer that one: “We are trying to give value, and look at the cost of ownership,” said Porell. “We look at end to end costs.” And, he assured me, specialty processors weren’t going away – future generations will have even more of them.

Without going into how the fees are derived, he argued they are fair. If you include labour costs, environmental costs and capital costs, then IBM mainframes are “very competitive,” he said. The acquisition costs may be within twenty percent of the competition, but “our TCO [total cost of ownership] story is far better.”

While aiming to be cost-competitive, he said, “if there is any breach to our IP [intellectual property], we will defend it. We have billions invested in research and development, and this is no cash cow, it is there to solve customer problems.”

What about cooling?

IBM’s server expertise extends to cooling, which has become a sensitive topic as data centres become more sustainable. In the bipolar era, mainframes had to be water-cooled, but that went away. Now water-cooling (or liquid cooling) seems to be coming back – and IBM is promoting it as the future for servers.

“Water can be cooled better than air,” said Porell, “and it’s coming back as chips become smaller and denser.” But there are plenty of other options, such as raising the temperature of the “hot aisle” at the back of the servers, or turning the machines around “so they aren’t just making each other hot”.

The fact that mainframes are now much easier to cool has contributed to their deployment outside old-style data centres, he said, describing how Wal-Mart has business-class mainframes in 54 of its distribution centres, controlling conveyor belts, without having dedicated IT staff on site. “To them it’s just another server.”