After the original post of “Reminding Management of the Advantages of System Z,” many people commented on how their management is increasingly out of touch with the mainframe. Also, comments also stated that the System Z environment is really processing almost all of the transactions in their company and how all the Windows platform systems continue to have scalability issues.
Although the mainframe revenue for IBM suffered in 2009 because of its upgrade cycle, the introduction of the z10 System platform demonstrates it is the best open system. Yes, that is correct, the mainframe is the most open system available because it runs all types of workloads: the legacy standards of Assembler, COBOL, PL1 etc. but also C++, C#, Java, PHP and the rest of the languages that run on UNIX and Windows boxes.
Also, some people are starting to run “virtualized” windows on the mainframe environments. PCWORLD highlighted this capability in early 2009With the System Z speed, scalability and network, the mainframe continues to be the best solution for all types of workloads. A nice short demo of z/Vos is on YouTube along with many other videos that you can show to your iPhone-obsessed boss, demonstrating that consolidating those hundreds of MS SQL Server instances is also possible.
The story of virtualization continues to drive UNIX consolidation to the mainframe. In 2009 Allianz consolidated 60 servers into a single mainframe, saving substantial operating, licensing and energy costs while improving scalability. This story detailed in this ComputerWorld article is being repeated at many companies as the mainframe IFL, zIIP and zAAP specialty engines continue to bring processing power at PC or minimized prices. This consolidation activity has a very short term return on investment as these efforts pay for themselves usually in the first year and reduce power consumption dramatically making it a “green” project.
The next time the hundreds of windows or UNIX server configurations need an OS, database or other software upgrade make sure to mention how System Z is saving other companies time and operating costs and overall costs through consolidating these environments to the best cost alternative -- the mainframe System Z.