In an interview with eWEEK, Anne Altman, general manager of the IBM System z Platform in IBM's Systems and Technology Group, explains why the IBM System z mainframe platform remains relevant today and has relevance well into the next decade as it supports new workloads, complements greening strategies, bolsters cloud computing models and supports a variety of development and programming technologies. In short, the mainframe continues to adapt to evolving IT environments.Anne Altman is general manager of the IBM
System z Platform in IBM's Systems and
Technology Group, responsible for all facets of IBM's
mainframe server business. Before her current position, Altman was the managing
director of IBM's federal government account
-- IBMs largest integrated account -- where
she led an organization of 5,000 IBMers providing IT and business process
solutions to U.S. federal government clients. Altman joined IBM
in 1981 as a systems engineer.
Altman shared her views on the future of the mainframe with
eWEEK Senior Editor Darryl K. Taft.
Q: How is the mainframe staying relevant in today's technology
discussions?
A: IBM is making significant
investments to the mainframe platform to deliver business value to clients,
from the hardware to the global community of application providers and
partners. Most people know that the IBM
mainframe has a long history in supporting the world's most complex and
critical business requirements. Now
they're seeing that we continue to expand System z's capabilities to an
ever-increasing array of new workloads, ranging from business intelligence to
enterprise infrastructure solutions to risk management solutions. And we're making it easier for IT people to
program, manage and administer a mainframe system.
There's a great deal of innovation going on in energy-efficient
technologies that take up less space, keep energy costs low and require fewer
IT gurus to operate. The IBM mainframe also
will continue to push the boundaries of virtualization, resiliency and security
capabilities.
These capabilities, together with the well-known systems
management strengths of the mainframe, have made the Linux environment
on System
z an extremely attractive option for consolidation of distributed
environments. And thanks to such innovations, in a server
consolidation, today's System z10 may provide up to six times the same
work in
the same space and may provide up to 16 times the work for the same
power consumption
to simultaneously manage a variety of business operations.
Q: Tell me more about the hot technologies that will take
System z customers into the next decade.
A: IBM's clients face
increasingly challenging computational requirements, including a strong need to
address the real-time and varied requirements of transactions. Even seemingly
simple online retail transactions, such as adding an item to a shopping cart,
are placing unprecedented demands on IT infrastructure. At the same time that
an item is added to the cart, data mining processing is often performed behind
the scenes. That processing can leverage the shopper's purchase and Web
browsing history as well as other information to determine additional items
that the shopper may be interested in buying.
System z is evolving into a platform that will not only
coherently manage these different processing components of the transaction, but
will also more tightly couple them and optimize data flows. Mainframe-like
attributes will be extended to a more heterogeneous set of computing resources.
This will bring with it the ability to manage multiple and varied processing elements
and workloads and maintain System z's leadership position in the data center.
This model can also include other computing resources such as those based on
Power and x86 to serve specific application needs. So, for example, a banking
application might have a Web server, application server, data server. Clients
will be able to manage and monitor the performance of this combined heterogeneous
workload from a single view.
We will also continue to improve capacity of our systems with
respect to processor, memory and I/O performance. As we do so, we will remain
focused on efficient use of data center resources. Each successive generation
of the IBM mainframe has made improvements
in the area of energy consumption. In fact, z uses less electricity than other
platforms of the same capacity.
Progress and improvement across the classic mainframe qualities
of service will continue as well.
Q: Why is a System z mainframe better than, say, a farm of x86
boxes?
A: An IBM System z10
Enterprise Class mainframe has the equivalent capacity of nearly 1,500 x86
servers, with an 85 percent smaller footprint and up to 85 percent lower energy
costs. An IBM System z10 Business Class
server has the capacity of up to 232 x86 servers with an 83 percent smaller
footprint and up to 93 percent lower energy costs.
Given these capacity capabilities, System z has become an ideal
platform for the consolidation of distributed workloads. This can dramatically
reduce data center complexity, reduce systems management requirements and
bring improved levels of availability, security and scalability to the application
environment. Once running on System z, workloads can also enjoy the benefit of
supporting future growth in a very cost effective fashion and very often within
the same physical footprint. If you consider the reliability of System z, its
ability to seamlessly scale and the wide variety of application environments
supported, it becomes clear that System z is also the ideal platform to deploy
application environments supporting emerging business models such as those
based on cloud computing.
Nothing beats the mainframe for heavy-duty transaction
processing in financial services, retail, airline reservations, anything that
requires the ability to securely manage hundreds of millions of concurrent
transactions. How's this for robust? In 2007, benchmark tests with Bank of
China confirmed a record 9,445 business transactions per second [tps] in real
time based on more than 380 million accounts with three billion transaction
histories.
As for security, System z's security capabilities are extensive
and layered. Every aspect of the system has security as a key design point. Our
security support is highly integrated, from the hardware/firmware up, all the
way to the application layer.
In the future, the competitive edge will be given to businesses
that implement an infrastructure that is both highly cost-efficient as well as
dynamic. This infrastructure must be able to grow and respond to changing
requirements quickly while providing the best business resilience. This is exactly
what System z has been designed from the ground up to do.
Click here to read the rest of this Q&A with IBM's Anne Altman.
IT Infrastructure 
/ 9 
