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The reason is that it is simply too expensive to rewrite this software to make it run on cheaper computers.

The software COULD be rewritten, to work on cheaper computers, but it is still cheaper to continue to run the software on mainframe computers then to rewrite the software and make it run on cheaper computers.

I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World

I.B.M. Mainframe Evolves to Serve the Digital World

By STEVE LOHR

Published: August 28, 2012

I.B.M. is introducing on Tuesday a new line of mainframe computers, adding yet another chapter to a remarkable story of technological longevity and business strategy.

The new model, the zEnterprise EC12, has strengthened the traditional mainframe’s skill of reliably and securely handling vast volumes of transactions. That is why the mainframe is still the digital workhorse for banking and telecommunications networks — and why mainframes are selling briskly in the emerging economies of Asia and Africa.

The new models have added capabilities for computing chores that are growing rapidly, like analyzing torrents of data from the Web and corporate databases to predict consumer behavior and business risks. Name a trend in corporate computing — cloud computing, data center consolidation, flash-memory storage, so-called green computing — and I.B.M. executives point to tailored features in its mainframe that deliver the goods.

The death of the mainframe has been predicted many times over the years. But it has prevailed because it has been overhauled time and again. In the early 1990s, the personal computer revolution took off and I.B.M., wedded to its big-iron computers, was in deep trouble. To make the mainframe more competitive, its insides were retooled, using low-cost microprocessors as the computing engine.

Like any threatened species that survives, the mainframe evolved. It has been tweaked to master new programming languages, like Java, and new software operating systems, like Linux.

“The mainframe is the most flexible technology platform in computing,” said Rodney C. Adkins, I.B.M.’s senior vice president for systems and technology.

That flexibility is a byproduct of investment. The new I.B.M. mainframe, according to the company, represents $1 billion in research and development spending over three years.

I.B.M. has also invested beyond its corporate walls. Nearly a decade ago, fearing that its mainframe business would wither if retiring mainframe engineers were not replaced, I.B.M. went out to universities, advocating for mainframe courses and offering support. Today, more than 1,000 schools in 67 countries participate in I.B.M.’s academic initiative for mainframe education.

The sale of mainframe computers accounts for only about 4 percent of I.B.M.’s revenue these days. Yet the mainframe is a vital asset to I.B.M. because of all the business that flows from it. When all the mainframe-related software, services and storage are included, mainframe technology delivers about 25 percent of I.B.M.’s revenue and more than 40 percent of its profits, estimates A. M. Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.

The I.B.M. mainframe story offers a glimpse of why manufacturing can be crucial to an American company — and to the economy as a whole — even though high-end manufacturing does not employ large numbers of factory workers.

Over the last 15 years, I.B.M. has aggressively globalized its operations and work force, and pulled out of manufacturing businesses including personal computers and disk drives.

But I.B.M. held on to its core mainframe business, whose development is supported by thousands of engineers and scientists. Mainframe parts are produced in I.B.M. facilities in the United States, in Endicott, N.Y., and Fishkill, N.Y., and in Germany and elsewhere. The final assembly work is done in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where I.B.M. opened a $30 million mainframe plant in 2010.

A mainframe costs more than $1 million, and higher-performance models with peripheral equipment often cost $10 million or more. Yet even young companies and emerging nations, analysts say, find the expense worth it for some tasks.

Comepay, for instance, is a fast-growing company that says it operates more than 10,000 self-service payment kiosks in Russia, where consumers pay for products and services ranging from Internet service and cellphones to electric bills. Comepay handles millions of transactions a day, and the volume is rising. The Russian company bought an I.B.M. mainframe in 2010.

“Mainframes are extremely reliable,” said Ruslan Stepanenko, chief information officer of Comepay. “It keeps working even when the transaction load is very high.”

Last year, the Senegal Ministry of Finance bought two I.B.M. mainframes to help monitor all the imports, exports and customs duties at the African country’s 30 border checkpoints.

Performance, security and reliability were the main reasons for selecting the mainframe, said Momar Fall, a manager and mainframe technical specialist in CFAO Technologies, an I.B.M. partner in Senegal. But another advantage in a developing nation, he said, is that the mainframes are constantly communicating over the Internet with a remote I.B.M. support center.

“So seven days a week, 24 hours a day, I.B.M. is looking after them,” Mr. Fall said.

Longtime mainframe customers say the technology has done a good job keeping up with the times. Last year, Primerica, a financial services company, purchased its 19th mainframe in 30 years.

David Wade, chief information officer, has worked for Primerica, based in Duluth, Ga., since its first mainframe arrived. With more than four million life insurance customers and more than two million investment-account clients, he said the company needs the reliable processing technology of the mainframe. “It works like nothing else,” Mr. Wade said.

IBM zEnterprise EC12 Mainframe is Culmination of $1 Billion in R&D

IBM zEnterprise EC12 Mainframe is Culmination of $1 Billion in R&D

Posted 08/28/2012 at 5:55am | by Paul Lilly

IBM's newest mainframe server, the zEnterprise EC12, is purportedly the most powerful and technologically advanced enterprise system Big Blue has ever assembled. It sports the world's fastest processor, a six-core 32nm part running at 5.5GHz, that offers 25 percent more performance per core than the 45nm quad-core chip used in the previous generation zEnterprise 196. According to IBM, zEC12 is the result of an investment of more than $1 billion in research and development.

The zEC12 supports up to 120 cores, offers 50 percent more total capacity than its predecessor, and boasts ironclad security. It's the only commercial server to achieve Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 5+ security classification, part of which is due to the inclusion of a state-of-the-art, tamper-resistant cryptographic co-processor called Crypto Express4S.

IBM equipped zEC12 with 3TB of system memory, along with a new type of memory called Flash Express designed to improve performance of data intensive applications.

"We continue to drive innovation on System z, allowing a broader set of clients to apply its leadership capabilities in security and resiliency to the current demands of their business, be they from analytics, cloud or mobile computing," said Doug Balog, general manager IBM System z. "Our end-to-end design approach for smarter computing -- from processors to systems to software optimization -- is targeted to handle complicated business challenges associated with managing, protecting and analyzing a client's most critical information. It’s what makes the mainframe the ultimate enterprise system."

The zEC12 will be available to commercial customers starting December 31.

IBM Launches New zEnterprise EC12 Secure Cloud-focused Mainframe System

IBM Launches New zEnterprise EC12 Secure Cloud-focused Mainframe System

By: Darryl K. Taft

2012-08-28

IBM announced a new version of its zEnterprise mainframe system with enhanced security for cloud computing and enterprise data handling.

IBM has announced a new mainframe system, the zEnterprise EC12 mainframe server.

Big Blue calls its new mainframe the most powerful and technologically advanced version of an IBM system that has been the linchpin of enterprise computing for 48 years.

The new enterprise system, unveiled on Aug. 28, features technologies that demonstrate IBM’s ongoing commitment to meet the growing need to secure and manage critical information with the System z mainframe, David Balog, IBM’s general manager for System z, told eWEEK.

“The new system has 25 percent more performance and 50 percent more capacity than its predecessor,” he said.

Mainframes support significant portions of the data environment at most large enterprises, IBM said. As these enterprises grapple with the well-documented growth of data, they are looking for new ways to secure and gain insights from such critical information as financial, customer and enterprise resource data that will enable them to provide their clients with new services. The new zEC12 offers enhanced security and robust support for operational analytics that can help clients efficiently sift through large volumes of raw data and transform it to gain knowledge that can be used for competitive advantage. For example, a retailer managing online transactions on zEC12 can gain insights from client information that will enable it to provide clients with a more customized shopping experience.

The IBM zEC12 enterprise system is the result of an investment by IBM Systems and Technology Group of more than $1 billion in IBM research and development primarily in Poughkeepsie, NY, as well as 17 other IBM labs around the world and in collaboration with some of IBM's top clients, Balog said.

The new IBM mainframe is one of the most secure enterprise systems ever, with built-in security features designed to meet the security and compliance requirements of different industries, he said. With operational analytics and near real-time workload monitoring and analysis, clients can use the new zEC12 for a variety of workloads leveraging the world’s fastest chip running at 5.5 GHz, IBM said.

Security is paramount in the new system. IBM System z is a leading platform for secure data serving and has achieved Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 5+ security classification, enabling enterprises to run many different applications containing confidential data on a single mainframe. The new zEC12 builds on this.

zEC12 includes a tamper-resistant cryptographic co-processor called Crypto Express4S that provides privacy for transactions and sensitive data. Crypto Express4S includes new hardware and software developed with IBM Research to help meet the security requirements of different industries and geographies. For example, it can be configured to provide support for high-quality digital signatures used with applications for Smart passports, national ID cards and online legal proceedings, replacing handwritten signatures as directed by the EU and the public sector, IBM said.

IBM said SC Data Center provides services to Colony Brands Inc., one of the world’s largest and most successful catalog companies, and uses encryption technology on zEnterprise to protect its call center applications when it services customers and takes orders, protecting its e-commerce platform that relies on System z for all sales and credit transactions and moves sensitive data safely to other platforms for processing.

Meanwhile, zEC12 advances performance for analytics, increasing performance of analytic workloads by 30 percent compared to its IBM predecessor, Balog said. In addition, support for the IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator that incorporates the Netezza data warehouse appliance into zEC12 enables clients to run complex business analytics and operational analytics on the same platform.

Balog added that the new mainframe also offers IT systems analytics capabilities based on technology from IBM Research. It analyzes internal system messages to provide a near real-time view of the system’s health, including any potential problems. Called IBM zAware, the technology learns from the messages to recognize patterns and quickly pinpoint any deviations, using the information to identify unusual system behavior and minimize its impact. IBM STG Lab Services will offer services to help with planning, configuration and implementation of IBM zAware.

“This is where transaction processing is going – there are more and more analytics going into the system,” Balog said.

In addition, users can consolidate thousands of distributed systems on to Linux on zEC12, lowering IT operating expenses associated with energy use, floor space and software licensing. zEC12 can offer a low total cost of acquisition for Linux consolidation of database workloads. One zEC12 can encompass the capacity of an entire multi-platform data center in a single system.

And another key innovation for the system is that zEC12 is the first IBM mainframe to include internal solid state technology with Flash Express, a new memory technology that can help improve the performance of data intensive applications or workloads where optimal service levels are vital such as customer facing or service applications used by banks, public sector companies and retailers, Balog said. It is designed to provide improved availability during bursts of system activity experienced at transitional periods such as when financial markets open or holiday periods when online retail transactions are heavy.

Moreover, enterprises can also opt to run zEC12 without a raised datacenter floor -- a first for high-end IBM mainframes. With new overhead power and cabling support, clients have more flexibility on where zEC12 is deployed. This can increase the appeal of System z for enterprise clients in growth markets, where System z revenue was up 11 percent year to year in the second quarter of 2012, according to IBM earnings reports.

Also, zEC12 is the first general purpose IBM server to incorporate transactional memory technology, first used commercially to help make the IBM Blue Gene/Q-based “Sequoia” system at Lawrence Livermore National Lab the fastest supercomputer in the world. In zEC12, IBM adapted this technology to enable software to better support concurrent operations that use a shared set of data such as financial institutions processing transactions against the same set of accounts.

“We continue to drive innovation on System z, allowing a broader set of clients to apply its leadership capabilities in security and resiliency to the current demands of their business, be they from analytics, cloud or mobile computing,” Balog said in a statement. “Our end-to-end design approach for smarter computing -- from processors to systems to software optimization -- is targeted to handle complicated business challenges associated with managing, protecting and analyzing a client's most critical information. It’s what makes the mainframe the ultimate enterprise system.”

Balog noted that in 2010, IBM introduced hybrid computing with the launch of the IBM zEnterprise System and the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX) to allow enterprises to deploy and integrate workloads across mainframe, Power7 and System x servers. Using zEnterprise Unified Resource Management, these diverse resources can be managed as a single, virtualized system.

Now IBM has introduced the zBX Model 003 to help extend customer’s ability to run integrated and dynamic workloads. With simplified operational control and an integrated, high-performance, private and secure network, the zBX Model 003 is designed to run with zEC12. Like its predecessor, the latest zBX includes specialty processors for specific workloads such as the IBM WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance XI50 for zEnterprise and select IBM BladeCenter servers.

As of second quarter 2012, IBM had shipped over 140 zBX units with more than 1,000 blade servers to clients, enabling them to take advantage of the management and reduced complexity of hybrid computing on the platform.

Meanwhile, IBM also announced it is growing its portfolio of System z industry-focused solutions that package software from IBM or ISV partners and services or assets from IBM Global Business Services. These include the IBM Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities, IBM Health Plan Integration Hub, two IBM Smarter Analytics: Anti-Fraud, Waste and Abuse Solutions – one for healthcare, one for insurance -- and the IBM Genelco Insurance Administration Solution. Offering these solutions on System z can allow clients to benefit from the mainframe’s oft-touted advantages of high-availability, resiliency and security.

IBM also announced new services and financing for its mainframe customers. To help clients build private clouds more rapidly, IBM today announced new implementation services for Linux-based clouds on the mainframe. The new services deliver IBM processes, tools, skills and best practices that enable a fast and accurate implementation.

To help current mainframe clients looking to upgrade to zEC12, IBM also offers newly enhanced setup and migration services to drive more long term economic value from their system investments. And IBM Global Financing (IGF) can help customers evolve and grow their zEnterprise investments with financing that promotes greater flexibility, lower total cost of ownership and predictability of payments, Big Blue officials said.

IBM revamps mainframe for cloud, launches zEnterprise EC12

IBM revamps mainframe for cloud, launches zEnterprise EC12

By Larry Dignan for Between the Lines

August 28, 2012 -- 04:00 GMT (21:00 PDT)

IBM on Tuesday launched the zEnterprise EC12 mainframe, which serves as a blueprint for the evolution of Big Blue's 48-year-old high-end system, with security, solid state storage enhancements, built-in analytics and the ability to be installed in a data center without a raised floor. Photo_zEnterprise EC12_external

According to IBM, the new mainframe can deliver 25 percent more performance and 50 percent more capacity with the same energy footprint as its predecessor, which was pitched as a data center consolidation building block. The price of the new mainframe is consistent with its predecessor z196, which starts at $1 million or so.

Among the key features:

A cryptographic co-processor and firmware via IBM Research designed to beef up security and meet the European Union's digital signing standards. The co-processor is called Crypto Express4S, which supports numerous standards around the world.

Automated information technology analytics embedded to learn from internal system messages. The analytics technology, called zAware, recognizes internal message patterns and spots unusual behavior. In many respects, zAware is a first step to self-healing systems. Jeff Frey, CTO of System z mainframes at IBM, said:

We've embedded technology to make it (zEnterprise EC12) a high performance resiliency analytics device. The system swallows up data from operational images and chews on it to provide insight on whether the system is behaving normally. We're taking analytics and applying it inward. We haven't yet introduced the ability for the system to make policy driven automatic recovery processes based on what it's learning. But this is the first step.

Solid state technology to handle bursts of activity at peak times. The ability to be installed without a raised data center floor. That feature is critical in emerging markets and allows the zEnterprise EC12 to offer more flexible layouts in a data center. Cabling and power supplies can be installed overhead.

Transaction memory technology. IBM said it adapted the transaction memory model from its IBM Blue Gene/Q-based "Sequoia" system at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The general idea is that EC12 can use that supercomputer technology to run applications concurrently and crunch multiple data sets. According to Frey, transaction memory technology allows a machine to create more throughput by committing memory, keeping track of all threads on a core and minimizing software interference.

IBM said it has spent more than $1 billion in research and development to enhance the mainframe, which is a staple at many large enterprises. IBM has been trying to position the mainframe as a cloud building block in key verticals such as e-commerce players and retailers.

Specifically, IBM is aiming the mainframe at the "hybrid cloud," which combines both internal systems and private and public clouds. The zEnterprise EC12 connects into IBM's Power7 and System x servers to distribute computing power as one virtualized system.

"The mainframe is a good foundation for cloud delivery because it has all the base characteristics such as efficient consolidation, virtualization and the ability to host multiple tenants," said Frey. As a result, large enterprises can deliver cloud services internally, he added.

IBM zEnterprise EC12 mainframe eyes Big Data analytics and hybrid clouds

IBM zEnterprise EC12 mainframe eyes Big Data analytics and hybrid clouds

By Patrick Thibodeau

Computerworld US

Published 16:49, 28 August 12

IBM's latest mainframe, the zEnterprise EC12, is big on data analytics and hybrid clouds.

This system, announced this morning, includes a new 5.5-GHz, six-core processor, versus the 5.2-GHz, quad-core processor that shipped with the zEnterprise 196, announced two years ago.

Analysts say that this might be the world's fastest commercial processor. Despite this, it is not as big a jump in sheer clock rate as some of the earlier leaps in mainframe CPU speed.

Regardless, IBM says this system has 25% more performance per core and some workloads will see performance gains by as much as 45%.

The trend among system and chip makers has been to add cores and turn to software parallelism to improve performance. But Jeff Frey, the CTO of the System Z platform and an IBM Fellow, says they aren't trading off single-thread performance in the mainframe.

"We continue to press on single-thread performance," said Frey, who added that it remains important for customers who have applications that execute processes serially, such as batch applications.

This latest chip was produced at 32 nanometres, versus 45nm in the earlier system. This smaller size allows more cache on the chip, in this case 33% more Level-2 cache. The system has doubled the L3 and L4 cache over the prior generation, said Frey. The system can support as many as 120 cores.

Joe Clabby of Clabby Analytics, who was briefed by IBM on the new system, said the increase in cache is particularly important for improving performance. "It's now gotten better at data intensive workloads," said Clabby. "The closer you can put the data to the processor, the faster it can be executed."

The zEC12 has 3TB of system memory, similar to z196, but also adds flash memory called Flash Express, with a maximum capacity of 6.4TB, to improve system performance. The memory is easily configurable and protected with 128-bit encryption, said Frey.

Initially, the flash memory will be used internally for efficient paging of virtual memory, diagnostics and better performance of workloads, said Frey.

But he said that in the future, DB2 and Java will have direct exploitation of the flash memory, providing "huge improvements" in performance and scale of DB2, buffer pools and Java.

There's no timeframe for that capability, but once DB2 and Java are allowed to use flash memory directly, "you'll be able to have DB2 exploit very large in-memory databases with extremely good performance," Frey said.

Overall, IBM said the new mainframe is delivering as much as a 45% improvement for multithreaded Java workloads, 35% in compute intensive, C and C++ based applications, and as much as 30% for transaction and transactional DB2 and relational analytical applications, as well as SAP workloads.

The zEC12 was also adapted to a type of data centre design that eliminates the raised floor. It has overhead power and cabling support. IBM says that is a first for the mainframe.

David Wade, CIO of the financial services firm Primerica, said he intends to upgrade from his zEnterprise 196 in a year to 18 months.

Wade has installed 19 mainframes in 32 years at Primerica, where he began as a production control technician. Their IT shop is primarily IBM, including its P Systems and Wintel platforms.

The company's database software is also IBM. Wade said they installed version one of DB2 in 1984 and are now on version 10.

Wade is proponent of continuous upgrades. He says some IT managers will add processors to gain performance but he believes you need to upgrade to latest version to get real gains. When his company installed their z196, "we took four hour off our batch cycle at night," Wade said.

He is committed to the IBM platform and says he has seen some of his peers migrate off mainframes only to return. Leaving the mainframe is "just a waste of time and money," Wade said.

It's because of people such as Wade that IBM has continued with the system, despite the increasing capabilities of alternative systems, including its own Power systems.

In every generational revision of the mainframe, "you always see an interesting mix of significant performance bumps mixed in with new features to support emerging workloads, and that's been a hallmark of IBM's mainframe strategy," said Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT who was also briefed on the new system.

King said it's important for IBM to adapt these systems to new workloads, such as analytics, "so it doesn't get stuck as just a credit card and bank statement transaction platform."

The mainframe can meet computational requirements that come from, for instance, RFID-generated data to smart electrical meters. IBM has taken a transaction model "and then adapts it to different kinds of transactions," said King.

Computer firms try to handle mainframe worker shortage