Update: IBM unleashes T-Rex

SAN FRANCISCO — The mainframe may be a dinosaur, but it is a carnivorous one. That was IBM’s message Tuesday at a press event in San Francisco where it launched its new line of mainframe computers, the first model of which is called the z990 — code-named T-Rex.

IBM said that with the z990 it will be reducing the number of its mainframe offerings from 42 to 4, and that the first two z990 products, the A08 and B16, are scheduled to become available on June 16.

These first systems ship with 16 processors — the same number available in IBM’s current z900 offerings. They will contain a new 16-chip multichip module that will be half the size of IBM’s current offerings, and the modules will contain over 3.2 billion transistors, according to IBM. Built using IBM’s Silicon-on-Insulator technology, these new chip modules will help account for a threefold performance improvement over IBM’s current z990s, according to IBM.

With 512 I/O channels, the z990s will also have double the I/O capability of IBM’s current mainframes, according to IBM Vice President of Enterprise Server Sales and Marketing Richard Lechner.  In 2004 that number will increase to 1024 channels, he said, adding that the number of logical partitions of processors, memory and storage in IBM’s mainframes would eventually increase from 15 partitions in the A08 and B16 to 60 in the models IBM is readying for 2004.

In September of 2003, the mainframes will start to ship with a new “On/Off Capacity on Demand” pricing structure that will allow mainframe customers to add computing capacity depending on their workload. “You can upgrade on demand,” said Erich Clementi, the general manager of IBM’s eServerzSeries. “We even introduced the capability to… downgrade on demand, which gives you the ability to absorb spikes in your workload,” he added.

“The on Demand aspect is really a step in a good direction,” said Fred Betito, a director with Levi Strauss’ Information Technology Technical Architecture Group. “Being able to just — over the phone — increase your capacity is something that is of great value.”

Levi Strauss recently switched from Unix to an IBM z900 mainframe to run its SAP AG database server, said Betito.

After the initial two versions of the z990 are released in June, the follow-up C24 and D32, both of which ship in 32-processor configurations, are scheduled to round out IBM’s mainframe product line on October 31, according to IBM. Support for 30 logical partitions within the machines as well as secure key cryptography will be available around the same time, IBM said.

Written off by industry pundits as obsolete just a few years ago, IBM’s mainframe business has experienced a renaissance of late, said Forrester Research. analyst Stacey Quandt. The growth of Linux on the mainframe — which IBM said accounted for 17 percent of mainframe revenue in 2002 — has largely driven this revival, she said. “It’s really going to fuel more server consolidation and more workload consolidation,” Quandt said.

At Tuesday’s launch, IBM went out of its way to promote this kind of workload consolidation as a key benefit of its new mainframes. “We believe very strongly that across the industry, the focus is moving back to integrated end-to-end systems that bring organizational productivity,” said IBM System Group Senior Vice President Bill Zeitler. Speaking at the event, he claimed that 70 percent of IBM’s mainframe sales came from customers who were using the hardware for new types of workloads.

IBM has brought over a hundred new clients to the mainframe since 2002, according to Zeitler, and has shipped over 4,000 zSeries since the line was introduced in October 2000. The z990 is the product of over four years of development work, done at a cost of more than $1 billion, he said.

Competitors such as Hewlett-Packard said IBM’s mainframe business is growing simply because so many of its mainframe competitors are exiting the market.

“I hear of more customers going away from mainframes than going to mainframes,” said HP Product Marketing Manager VishMulchand. A lack of off-the-shelf applications for the mainframe continues to hamper its growth, he argued, disputing the idea of Linux as a viable mainframe operating system.

“The problem with Linux on the mainframe is the same problem as with Windows NT on Alpha,” he said, referring to Microsoft’s failed attempt to popularize Windows NT on non-Intel Corp. microprocessors. “When you are not in the volume space, then you question how long this can be sustained.”

But Linux appears to be bringing some new customers to the mainframe, and not just as hardware customers. IBM was joined Wednesday by executives from a number of companies who were using managed hosting services from IBM’s Global Services group to run applications on the zSeries. While these “Linux virtual services” customers represent just a small part of its overall service revenue, the number of customers using the service, which is just under a year old, is growing, according to IBM.

One such customer, Paul Mercurio, chief information officer with Exxon Mobil’s Mobil Travel Guide division, said that when he looked at the numbers, Linux virtual services ended up costing him 20 percent to 25 percent less than IBM’s traditional outsourcing options. The savings, he said, came because Linux virtual services allowed him to pay for only the computing capacity that he required. “It’s because we can ramp up and ramp down,” Mercurio said.

Also announced Tuesday were enhancements to IBM’s TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server. They included new versions of its Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy and FlashCopy software.  IBM said the new features will improve long distance data mirroring and copy completion times.