Next Generation zEnterprise Developers

Mainframe development keeps getting more complicated.  The latest complication can be seen in Doug Balog’s reference to mobile and social business on the zEnterprise, reported by DancingDinosaur here a few weeks ago. That is what the next generation of z developers face.

Forget talk about shortages of System z talent due to the retirement of mainframe veterans.  The bigger complication comes from need for non-traditional mainframe development skills required to take advantage mobile and social business as well as other recent areas of interest such as big data and analytics. These areas entail combining new skills like JSON, Atom, Rest, Hadoop, Java, SOA, Linux, hybrid computing along with traditional mainframe development skills like CICS and COBOL, z/VM, SQL, VSAM, and IMS. This combination is next to impossible to find in one individual. Even assembling a coherent team encompassing all those skills presents a serious challenge.

The mainframe industry has been scrambling to address this in various ways.  CA Technologies added GUI to its various tools and BMC has similarly modernized its various management and DB2 tools. IBM, of course, has been steadily bolstering the Rational RDz tool set.   RDz is a z/OS Eclipse-based software IDE.  RDz streamlines and refactors z/OS development processes into structured analysis, editing, and testing operations with modern GUI tools, wizards, and menus that, IBM notes, are perfect for new-to the-mainframe twenty- and thirty-something developers, the next generation of z developers.

Compuware brings its mainframe workbench, described as a modernized interactive developer environment that introduces a new graphical user interface for managing mainframe application development activities.  The interactive toolset addresses every phase of the application lifecycle.

Most recently, Micro Focus announced the release of its new Enterprise Developer for IBM zEnterprise.  The product enables customers to optimize all aspects of mainframe application delivery and promises to drive down costs, increase productivity, and accelerate innovation. Specifically, it enables both on- and off-mainframe development, the latter without consuming mainframe resources, to provide a flexible approach to the delivery of new business functions. In addition, it allows full and flexible customization of the IDE to support unique development processes and provides deep integration into mainframe configuration management and tooling for a more comprehensive development environment. It also boasts of improved application quality with measurable improvement in delivery times.  These capabilities together promise faster developer adoption.

Said Greg Lotko, Vice President and Business Line Executive, IBM System z, about the new Micro Focus offering:  We are continually working with our technology partners to help our clients maximize the value in their IBM mainframes, and this latest innovation from Micro Focus is a great example of that commitment.

Behind all of this development innovation is an industry effort to cultivate the next generation of mainframe developers. Using a combination of trusted technology (COBOL and mainframe) and new innovation (zEnterprise, hybrid computing, expert systems, and Eclipse), these new developers; having been raised on GUI and mobile and social, can leverage what they learned growing up to build the multi-platform, multi-device mainframe applications that organizations will need going forward.

As these people come on board as mainframe-enabled developers organizations will have more confidence in continuing to invest in their mainframe software assets, which currently amount to an estimated 200-300 billion lines of source code and may even be growing as mainframes are added in developing markets, considered a growth market by IBM.  It only makes sense to leverage this proven code base than try to replace it.

This was confirmed in a CA Technologies survey of mainframe users a year ago, which found that 1) the mainframe is playing an increasingly strategic role in managing the evolving needs of the enterprise; 2) the machine is viewed as an enabler of innovation as big data and cloud computing transform the face of enterprise IT—now add mobile; and 3) companies are seeking candidates with cross-disciplinary skill sets to fill critical mainframe workforce needs in the new enterprise IT thinking.

Similarly, a recent study by the Standish Group showed that 70 percent of CIOs saw their organizations’ mainframes as having a central and strategic role in their overall business success.  Using the new tools noted above organizations can maximize the value of the mainframe asset and cultivate the next generation mainframe developers.

IBM Big Data Innovations Heading to System z

Earlier this week IBM announced new technologies intended to help companies and governments tackle Big Data by making it simpler, faster and more economical to analyze massive amounts of data. Its latest innovations, IBM suggested, would drive reporting and analytics results as much as 25 times faster.

The biggest of IBM’s innovations is BLU Acceleration, targeted initially for DB2. It combines a number of techniques to dramatically improve analytical performance and simplify administration. A second innovation, referred to as the enhanced Big Data Platform, improves the use and performance of the InfoSphere BigInsights and InfoSphere Streams products. Finally, it announced the new IBM PureData System for Hadoop, designed to make it easier and faster to deploy Hadoop in the enterprise.

BLU Acceleration is the most innovative of the announcements, probably a bona fide industry first, although others, notably Oracle, are scrambling to do something similar. BLU Acceleration enables much faster access to information by extending the capabilities of in-memory systems. It allows the loading of data into RAM instead of residing on hard disks for faster performance and dynamically moves unused data to storage.  It even works, according to IBM, when data sets exceed the size of the memory.

Another innovation included in BLU Acceleration is data skipping, which allows the system to skip over irrelevant data that doesn’t need to be analyzed, such as duplicate information. Other innovations include the ability to analyze data in parallel across different processors; the ability to analyze data transparently to the application, without the need to develop a separate layer of data modeling; and actionable compression, where data no longer has to be decompressed to be analyzed because the data order has been preserved.   Finally, it leverages parallel vector processing, which enables multi-core and SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) parallelism.

During testing, IBM reported, some queries in a typical analytics workload ran more than 1000x faster when using the combined innovations of BLU Acceleration. It also resulted in 10x storage space savings during beta tests. BLU acceleration will be used first in DB2 10.5 and Informix 12.1 TimeSeries for reporting and analytics. It will be extended for other data workloads and to other products in the future.

BLU Acceleration promises to be as easy to use as load-and-go.  BLU tables coexist with traditional row tables; using the same schema, storage, and memory. You can query any combination of row or BLU (columnar) tables, and IBM assures easy conversion of conventional tables to BLU tables.

DancingDinosaur likes seeing the System z included as an integral part of the BLU Acceleration program.  The z has been a DB2 workhorse and apparently will continue to be as organizations move into the emerging era of big data analytics. On top of its vast processing power and capacity, the z brings its unmatched quality of service.

Specifically, IBM has called out the z for:

• InfoSphere BigInsights via the zEnterprise zBX for data exploration and online archiving
• IDAA (in-memory Netezza technology) for reporting and analytics as well as operational analytics
• DB2 for SQL and NoSQL transactions with enhanced Hadoop integration in DB2 11 (beta)
• IMS for highest performance transactions with enhanced Hadoop integration  in IMS 13 (beta)

Of course, the zEnterprise is a full player in hybrid computing through the zBX so zEnterprise shops have a few options to tap when they want to leverage BLU Accelerator and IBM’s other big data innovations.

Finally, IBM announced the new IBM PureData System for Hadoop, which should simplify and streamline the deployment of Hadoop in the enterprise. Hadoop has become the de facto open systems approach to organizing and analyzing vast amounts of unstructured as well as structured data, such as posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, online transaction records, and cell phone location data. The problem with Hadoop is that it is not intuitive for conventional relational DBMS staff and IT. Vendors everywhere are scrambling to overlay a familiar SQL approach on Hadoop’s map/reduce method.

The new IBM PureData System for Hadoop promises to reduce from weeks to minutes the ramp-up time organizations need to adopt enterprise-class Hadoop technology with powerful, easy-to-use analytic tools and visualization for both business analysts and data scientists. It also provides enhanced big data tools for management, monitoring, development, and integration with many more enterprise systems.  The product represents the next step forward in IBM’s overall strategy to deliver a family of systems with built-in expertise that leverages its decades of experience in reducing the cost and complexity associated with information technology.

Oracle’s Tough 3Q and New SPARC Chip

Almost like a good news/bad news joke, Oracle announced dismal financials last week along with the next rev of its SPARC processor. The company clearly is hoping that the new processor will revive its rapidly fading hardware business and pose some sort of challenge to IBM’s zEnterprise and Power Systems.

Hardware systems product revenue was $671 million. That’s sounds good for a quarter until you realize it was down 23% over the previous year. Ouch. Hardware systems support didn’t do much better, falling to $570 million even as Oracle’s hardware maintenance prices continued to climb, noted Timothy Sipples, who writes a blog called Mainframe.  Hardware platforms go through refresh cycles, as DancingDinosaur readers know, but Oracle has been struggling at this with Sun for three years.

Note that these figures include what Oracle calls its engineered systems like Exadata and Exalogic. These types of systems combine Oracle’s Sun hardware with its software in an optimized product. Such systems were expected to provide the synergies necessary to justify the initial Sun acquisition. And maybe they will someday, but Oracle stockholders have to be getting impatient. Along with the engineered systems was Oracle’s SPARC SuperCluster.  During that time IBM has been delivering its own highly optimized systems, hybrid systems, a new generation of  HPC systems, and expert-integrated systems.

Oracle’s 3Q report didn’t even mention its storage business, which consists mainly of StorageTek tape products and Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance family.  By comparison, IBM has been advancing its storage offerings with products like Storwize, XIV, Real-time Compression, SSD, and more.

About the only bright spot Oracle could point to was its cloud effort. In the 3Q report it declared: “The Oracle Cloud is the most robust and comprehensive cloud platform available with services at the infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS) and application (SaaS) level. In Q3, our SaaS revenue alone grew well over 100% as lots of new customers adopted our Sales, Service, Marketing and Human Capital Management applications in the Cloud,” according to Oracle President, Mark Hurd. And even here IBM has been busily building out its SmartCloud as-a-service offerings and putting them into a slew of SmarterPlanet initiatives.

From the standpoint of DancingDinosaur readers, who tend to focus on the System z, zEnterprise, and Power Systems, the most interesting part of Oracle’s recent activity is the new SPARC processor, the T5. New T5 servers can have up to eight microprocessors while Oracle’s new M5 system can be configured with up to thirty-two microprocessors. The M5 runs the Oracle database 10 times faster than the M9000 it replaces, according to Oracle. For the record, the top end zEC12 includes 101 cores. The zEC12 chip runs at 5.5 GHz.

Elizabeth Stahl, IBM’s chief technical strategist and benchmark guru, wrote this on her blog about Oracle’s T5 claims: Many of the claims are Oracle’s own benchmarks that are not published and audited. For price claims, Oracle, as they’ve done in the past, only factors in the price of the pizza box – make sure you add in the all-important software and storage. Stahl goes on to directly address Oracle’s benchmark claims here.

DancingDinosaur has been waiting for a rebound of the SPARC platform in the hopes that it might revive the Solaris on z initiative led by David Boyes and others. They actually had it working and at least one serious bank was piloting it. Lack of support from Oracle/Sun and IBM killed it. Solaris on z could have attracted Sun customers to the zEnterprise, mainly those in banking and financial services where Solaris and Sun were strong.  In case you are interested, Oracle still offers Solaris, now Oracle Solaris 11, and touts it as the first cloud OS.

zEnterprise Workload Economics

IBM never claims that every workload is suitable for the zEnterprise. However, with the advent of hybrid computing, the low cost z114, and now the expected low cost version of the zEC12 later this year you could make a case for any workload that benefits from the reliability, security, and efficiency of the z is fair game.

John Shedletsky, VP, IBM Competitive Project Office, did not try to make that case. To the contrary, earlier this week he presented the business case for five workloads that are optimum economically and technically on the zEnterprise.  They are:  transaction processing, critical data workloads, batch processing, co-located business analytics, and consolidation-on-one-platform. None of these should be a surprise; possibly with the exception of analytics and consolidated platform they represent traditional mainframe workloads. DancingDinosaur covered Shedletsky’s z cost/workload analysis last year here.

This comes at a time when IBM has started making a lot of noise about new and different workloads on the zEnterprise. Doug Balog, head of IBM System z mainframe group, for example, was quoted widely in the press earlier this month talking about bringing mobile computing workloads to the z. Says Balog in Midsize Insider: “I see there’s a trend in the market we haven’t directly connected to z yet, and that’s this mobile-social platform.”

Actually, this isn’t even all that new either. DancingDinosaur was writing about organizations using SOA to connect CICS apps running on the z to users with mobile devices a few years ago here.

What Shedletsky really demonstrated this week was the cost-efficiency of the zEC12.  In one example he compared a single workload, app production/dev/test running on a 16x, 32-way HP Superdome and an 8x, 48-way Superdome with a zEC12 41-way. The zEC12 delivered the best price/performance by far, $111 million (5yr TCA) for the zEC12 vs. $176 million (5yr TCA) for the two Superdomes.

When running Linux on z workloads with the zEC12 compared to 3 Oracle database workloads (Oracle Enterprise Edition, Oracle RAC, 4 server nodes per cluster) supporting 18K transactions/sec.  running on 12 HP DL580 servers (192 cores) the HP system priced out at $13.2 million (3yr TCA). That compared to a zEC12 running 3 Oracle RAC clusters (4 nodes per cluster, each as a Linux guest) with 27 IFLs, which priced out at $5.7 million (3yr TCA). The zEC12 came in at less than half the cost.

With analytics such a hot topic these days Shedletsky also presented a comparison of the zEnterprise Analytics System 9700 (zEC12, DB2 v10, z/OS, 1 general processor, 1 zIIP) and an IDAA with a current Teradata machine. The result: the Teradata cost $330K/queries per hour compared to $10K/queries per hour.  Workload time for the Teradata was 1,591 seconds for 9.05 queries per hour. That compared to 60.98 seconds and 236 queries per hour on the zEC12. The Teradata total cost was $2.9 million versus $2.3 million for the zEC12.

None of these are what you would consider new workloads, and Shedletsky has yet to apply his cost analysis to mobile or social business workloads. However, the results shouldn’t be much different. Mobile applications, particularly mobile banking and other mobile transaction-oriented applications, will play right into the zEC12 strengths, especially when they are accessing CICS on the back end.

While transaction processing, critical data workloads, batch processing, co-located business analytics, and consolidation-on-one-platform remain the sweet spot for the zEC12, Balog can continue to make his case for mobile and social business on the z. Maybe in the next set of Shedletsky comparative analyses we’ll see some of those workloads come up.

For social business the use cases aren’t quite clear yet. One use case that is emerging, however, is social business big data analytics. Now you can apply the zEC12 to the analytics processing part at least and the efficiencies should be similar.

Getting the Payback from System z Outsourcing

A survey from Compuware Corporation on attitudes of CIOs toward mainframe outsourcing showed a significant level of dissatisfaction with one or another aspect of mainframe outsourcing. Check out the survey here.

Mainframe outsourcing has been a fixture of mainframe computing since the outset. The topic  is particularly interesting in light of the recent piece DancingDinosaur posted on winning the talent war a couple of weeks ago. Organizations intending to succeed are scrambling to find and retain the talent they need for all their IT systems, mainframe and otherwise.  In short, they need skills in all the new areas, like cloud computing, mobile access, and most urgently, big data analytics.  In addition, there is the ongoing need for Java, Linux, WebSphere, and CICS in growing System z data centers.  The rise of z-based hybrid computing and expert integrated hybrid PureSystems to some extent broadens the potential talent pool while reducing the amount of skilled experts required. Still, mainframe outsourcing remains a popular option.

The new Compuware survey found that reducing costs is a major driver for outsourcing mainframe application development, maintenance, and infrastructure. Yet multiple  associated costs are frustrating 71% of CIOs. These costs result from increases in MIPS consumption, as well as higher investments in testing and troubleshooting due mainly to poor application quality and performance.  In fact, two-thirds (67%) of respondents reported overall dissatisfaction with the quality of new applications or services provided by their outsourcer. The source of the problem: a widening in-house skills gap and difficulties with knowledge transfer and staff churn within outsource vendors.

Compuware has published a related white paper titled, Mainframe Outsourcing: Removing the Hidden Costs, which expands on the findings from the study. The company’s recommendations to remove the costs amount to reverse engineering the problems revealed in the initial survey. These include:

• Utilize MIPS better
• Explore pricing alternatives to CPU-based pricing
• Improve the quality of new applications
• Boost knowledge transfer between outsourcers and staff
• Measure and improve code efficiency at the application level
• Take advantage of baseline measurement to objectively analyze outsourcer performance

The System z offers numerous tools to monitor and manage usage and efficiency, and vendors like Compuware, CA, BMC, and others bring even more.

The MIPS consumption problem is typical. As Compuware reports: mainframes are being used more than ever, meaning consumption is naturally on the rise. This is not a bad thing.

However, where consumption is escalating due to inefficient coding, adding unnecessary costs. For example, MIPS costs are increasing on average by 21% year over year, with 40% of survey respondents claiming that consumption is getting out of control. Meanwhile, 88% of respondents using pay structures based on CPU consumption (approximately 42% of those surveyed) think their outsourcer could manage CPU costs better, and 57% of all respondents believe outsourcers do not worry about the efficiency of the applications that they write.

New workloads also are driving costs. For example, 60% of survey respondents believe that the increase in applications like mobile banking are driving higher MIPS usage and creating additional costs. Just think what they’d report when big data analytic applications start kicking in although some of this processing should be offloaded to assist processors.

The Compuware study is interesting and informative. Yes, outsourcers should be pressed to utilize MIPS more efficiently. At a minimum, they should shift workloads to assist processors that have lower cost per MIPS.  Similarly, developers should be pressed to boost the efficiency of their code. But this will require an investment in tools to measure and benchmark that code and hire QA staff.

A bigger picture view, however, suggests that focusing just on MIPS is counterproductive. You want to encourage more workloads on the z even if they use more MIPS because the z can run at near 100% utilization and still perform reliably. Higher utilization translates into lower costs per workload. And with the cost per MIPS decreasing with each rev of the zEnterprise the cost per workload keeps improving.  Measure, monitor, and benchmark and do whatever else you can to drive efficient operation, but aim to leverage the zEnterprise to the max for your best overall payback.

Winning the Talent War with the System z

The next frontier in the ongoing talent war, according to McKinsey, will be deep analytics, a critical weapon required to probe big data in the competition underpinning new waves of productivity, growth, and innovation. Are you ready to compete and win in this technical talent war?

Similarly, Information Week contends that data expertise is called for to take advantage of data mining, text mining, forecasting, and machine learning techniques. The System z data center is ideally is ideally positioned to win if you can attract the right talent.

Finding, hiring, and keeping good talent within the technology realm is the number one concern cited by 41% of senior executives, hiring managers, and team leaders responding to the latest Harris Allied Tech Hiring and Retention Survey. Retention of existing talent was the next biggest concern, cited by 19.1%.

This past fall, CA published the results of its latest mainframe survey that came to similar conclusions. It found three major trends on the current and future role of the mainframe:

1. The mainframe is playing an increasingly strategic role in managing the evolving needs of the enterprise
2. The mainframe as an enabler of innovation as big data and cloud computing transform the face of enterprise IT
3. Demand for tech talent with cross-disciplinary skills to fill critical mainframe workforce needs in this new view of enterprise IT

Among the respondents to the CA survey, 76% of global respondents believe their organizations will face a shortage of mainframe skills in the future, yet almost all respondents, 98%, felt their organizations were moderately or highly prepared to ensure the continuity of their mainframe workforce. In contrast, only 8% indicated having great difficulty finding qualified mainframe talent while 61% reported having some difficulty in doing so.

The Harris survey was conducted in September and October 2012. Its message is clear: Don’t be fooled by the national unemployment figures, currently hovering above 8%.  “In the technology space in particular, concerns over the ability to attract game-changing talent has become institutional and are keeping all levels of management awake at night,” notes Harris Allied Managing Director Kathy Harris.

The reason, as suggested in recent IBM studies, is that success with critical new technologies around big data, analytics, cloud computing, social business, virtualization, and mobile increasingly are giving top performing organizations their competitive advantage. The lingering recession, however, has taken its toll; unless your data center has been charged to proactively keep up, it probably is saddled with 5-year old skills at best; 10-year old skills more likely.

The Harris study picked up on this. When asking respondents the primary reason they thought people left their organization, 20% said people left for more exciting job opportunities or the chance to get their hands on some hot new technology.

Some companies recognize the problem and belatedly are trying to get back into the tech talent race. As Harris found when asking about what companies are doing to attract this kind of top talent 38% said they now were offering great opportunities for career growth. Others, 28%, were offering opportunities for professional development to recruit top tech pros. A fewer number, 24.5%, were offering competitive compensation packages while fewer still, 9%, offering competitive benefits packages.

To retain the top tech talent they already had 33.6% were offering opportunities for professional development, the single most important strategy they leveraged to retain employees. Others, 24.5%, offered opportunities for career advancement while 23.6% offered competitive salaries. Still a few hoped a telecommuting option or competitive bonuses would do the trick.

Clearly mainframe shops, like IT in general, are facing a transition as Linux, Java, SOA, cloud computing, analytics, big data, mobile, and social play increasing roles in the organization, and the mainframe gains the capabilities to play in all these arenas. Traditional mainframe skills like CICS are great but it’s just a start. At the same time, hybrid systems and expert integrated systems like IBM PureSystems and zEnterprise/zBX give shops the ability to tap a broader array of tech talent.

System z Application Modernization

People still complain about how they are held back by old green-screen mainframe applications. It’s not the underlying business logic or application performance they usually are complaining about—that apparently remains rock solid and relevant and has been, in some cases, for decades—but the user interface. Granted, 3270 apps are clunky to use and require plowing through cumbersome screen sequences to complete even a simple task and scream for modernization but they can be modernized through CICS.

Another complaint is that the applications are difficult to change, especially now when organizations want to provide access to mainframe logic and data to users with smartphones or tablets. The question then is what degree of modernization: a pretty GUI facelift or something more structural or maybe a migration to a new platform.  In the age of IBM hybrid computing, you actually have a lot more options than you did even a year ago.

IBM, mainly through the Rational Software group, offers a variety of ways to modernize z applications. You can start with the System z tools here. They enable you to develop mainframe-based applications in COBOL, PL/I, Assembler, C/C++, and Java, as well as workstation-based applications in COBOL, PL/I, and Java.

WebSphere, the app server, is another way to modernize z apps using Java and J2EE. IBM Rational Application Developer for WebSphere accelerates the development and deployment of not only Java, Java EE, Web 2.0 but mobile, portal, and service-oriented architecture (SOA) applications by providing integrated tools for development, testing, profiling, and delivery of applications. Recent upgrades to CICS also make SOA-based modernization even more appealing with support for some of the latest goodies like Atom feeds, RESTful interfaces, and more.

For several years DancingDinosaur has been touting SOA as the most direct way to modernize and repurpose mainframe logic and data. IBM Rational Developer for SOA Construction enables you to create and maintain RPG and COBOL applications as well as modernize them with a variety of techniques using IBM HATS. IBM’s developerWorks has the latest on SOA and web services. Ball State University has been using SOA to modernize its z applications for several years. For example, the school made the critical student schedule app, a CICS system, available to students anywhere, anytime, from any device.  You can read Independent Assessment’s case study here.

Since social business promises to be the next thing, you can develop social business applications through Linux on z, either Red Hat or SUSE, using IBM Connections and WebSphere.  Social business will become of interest to z shops as companies begin collecting social sentiment data on the z and want to analyze it fast.

System z shops actually have been doing some of this for a while.  IBM reports an ISV seeking to increase efficiency and improve time to market for its z software products took advantage of the Metal C feature of the IBM z/OS XL C/C++ compiler to enable its programmers to write code in the C syntax and leverage advanced optimization technology in the z/OS XL C/C++ compiler. The IBM compiler’s Metal C feature cut development time by up to 66% while the company capitalized on C programming skills.

Even IBM reports its CICS dev team tapped IBM Rational Team Concert and IBM Rational Developer for System z software to convert its product development cycle from the existing waterfall development processes to agile development methods. The team used the Rational products to create a highly configurable, end-to-end integrated development environment. Adopting an agile approach and using IBM Rational software has helped the team reduce the amount of preparation required for status meetings by 75% and improved the efficiency of status meetings, decreasing meeting times by 33%. Anything that shortens meetings is worth its weight in gold.

The point is that z shops can do all the sexy app dev stuff—Java, cloud, social, mobile, agile, SOA—to produce richer, more flexible apps faster. And do so without abandoning the z or eating its considerable investment in the mainframe and still bring the z’s compelling virtues it brings to the party.

IBM zEC12 vs. Itanium HP Superdome 2

Last week HP introduced its newest, top-of-the-line HP Integrity Superdome 2 server. This is the closest HP offers as a direct rival to the zEnterprise mainframe family.  The new machine is based on HP enhancements and the Intel Itanium processor 9500 series.  It can handle transactions 3x faster than previous generations while using 21% less energy. According to HP, users can realize a 33% savings in TCO over the previous generation of Superdome 2.

The new HP server is part of HP’s Converged Infrastructure, which is designed to provide hybrid computing by supporting its HP-UX, HP NonStop and OpenVMS operating systems. Over time, HP notes, the Converged Infrastructure will encompass mission-critical x86 platforms to deliver a single, unified infrastructure for UNIX, Windows Server, and Linux environments.

This sound a lot like IBM’s zEnterprise hybrid computing strategy, which IBM introduced over two years ago through the zEnterprise-zBX combination.  Earlier this week IBM reported over 150 zBX cabinets and 1200 blades have been shipped, somewhat more than the 100+ zBX cabinets IBM had reported shipping a few months back when DancingDinosaur last checked. Clearly, z-based hybrid computing is gaining traction. Today, the IBM top-of-the-line hybrid computing server is the zEC12.

The Intel Itanium 9500 is the latest Itanium processor; the one Oracle prematurely announced dead and planned to stop supporting. It took HP over a year to win its lawsuit against Oracle, currently being appealed, to even get to this point.

The Itanium 9500 indeed is high performance.  It contains 3.1 billion transistors and supports up to 8 cores, twice as many as the previous-generation Itanium. According to published specs, it offers up to 54 MB of on-die memory, and enables up to 2 TB of low voltage DIMMs in four-socket configurations. The Itanium 9500 provides up to 2.4x performance scaling and 33% faster I/O speed over the previous generation, with frequencies ranging from 1.73 GHz at a power level of 130 watts, to 2.53 GHz at 170 watts.

In most key ways, the zEC12 beats the Itanium 9500, starting with its 5.5 GHz core processor and an increase in the number of cores per chip (from 4 to 6). Itanium touts 8 cores per chip but they are slower, half the speed or less.  The zEC12 indeed is faster and brings 101 user-configurable engines. IBM calculates the machine delivers 50% more total capacity in the same footprint.

The zEC12 also supports up to 3TB of RAIM (Redundant Array of Independent Memory), which protects against memory loss. In addition, the processor has been optimized for better software performance, particularly for Java, PL/1, compilers, and DB2.  Like its predecessor it handles out of order instruction processing and multi-level branch prediction for complex workloads. Large caches, almost 2x more on the chip, speed data to the processor. In addition, Flash Express provides 1.6 TB of usable capacity (packaged in pairs for redundancy, 3.2 TB total) to streamline database paging.

The Itanium 9500 chip and HP’s Superdome 2 server certainly won’t be a dog.  Let the chip geeks and benchmark zealots debate the finer technical points in the coming months.  But with the zEC12’s new availability and security enhancements, and a robust hybrid infrastructure it will be hard to beat the zEC12 for almost any mix of workloads, and that may be the key—the wide mix of workloads. While maintaining IBM’s core mainframe strengths in data serving and transaction processing, the zEC12 also brings a scalable and secure data repository for the enterprise, especially with the new Crypto Express4S card.  More than that, it can perform as a private enterprise cloud almost out of the box, and it is also a cost-effective solution for large-scale consolidation. With the zEC12, DB2 for z/OS, and the IBM DB2 Analytics Accelerator (IDAA) you can run both your OLTP and data warehouse workloads as one integrated workload in real time.

And then there is the new Transactional Execution Facility, which IBM brought over from supercomputing and is designed to help eliminate software locking overhead that can impact performance. It uses parallelism to drive higher transaction throughput. IBM’s Java Runtime Environment is expected to exploit the Transactional Execution Facility in an upcoming maintenance release. The new XL C/C++ compiler also is planned to leverage the Transactional Execution Facility. And there is much more.

In short, DancingDinosaur does not expect z shops to flock to Itanium.  However, a little reinvigorated competition is always good to drive innovation and restrain pricing.

BMC Mainframe Survey Bolsters z-Hybird Computing

For the seventh year, BMC conducted a survey of mainframe shops worldwide. Find a copy of the study here and a video explaining it here. Most of the results probably won’t surprise you:

• 90% of respondents consider the mainframe to be a long-term solution, and 50% expect it will attract new workloads.
• Keeping IT costs down remains the top priority—not exactly shocking—as 69% report cost as a major focus, up from 60% from 2011.
• 59% expect MIPS capacity to grow as they modernize and add applications to address expanding business needs.
• More than 55% reported a need to integrate the mainframe into enterprise IT systems comprised of multiple mainframe and distributed platforms.

The last point especially suggests IBM is on the right track with hybrid computing. IBM also is on the right track in terms of keeping costs down, especially by enabling organizations to maximize the use of specialty engines in an effort to reduce consumption of costly GP MIPS.  The specialty engine advantage continues with the new zEC12, incorporating the same 20% price/performance boost, essentially more MIPS bang for the buck.

Two-thirds of the respondents were using at least one specialty engine. Of all respondents, 16% were using five or more engines, a few using dozens.  Not only do specialty engines deliver cheaper MIPS but they often are not considered in calculating software licensing charges, which lowers the cost even more.

About the only change noticeable in responses year-to-year is the jump in the respondent ranking of IT priorities. This year Business/IT alignment jumped from 7th to 4th in priority ranking. Priorities 1, 2, and 3 (Cost Reduction, Disaster Recovery, and Application Modernization respectively) remained the same.  Priorities 5 and 6 (Efficient Use of MIPS and Reduced Impact of Outages respectively) fell from a tie for 4th last year.

The greater emphasis on Business/IT alignment isn’t exactly new. Industry gurus have been harping on it for years.  Greater alignment between business and IT also suggests a strong need for hybrid computing, where varied business workloads can be mixed yet still be treated as a single system from the standpoint of efficiency management and operations. It also suggests IT needs to pay attention to business services management.

Despite the mainframe’s reputation for rock solid availability and reliability, the survey also noted that 39% of respondents reported unplanned outages. The primary causes for the outages were hardware failure (cited by 31% of respondents), system software failure (30%), in-house app failure (28%), and failed change process (22%). Of the respondents reporting outages, only 10% noted that the outage had significant impact. This was a new survey question this year so there is no comparison to previous years.

Respondents (59%) expect MIPS usage to continue to grow. Of that growth, 31% attribute it to increases in legacy and new apps while 9% attributed it to new apps. Legacy apps were cited by 19% of respondents.

In terms of modernizing apps, 46% of respondents planned to extend legacy code through SOA and web services while 43% wanted to increase the flexibility and agility of core apps.  Thirty-four percent of respondents hoped to reduce legacy app support costs through modernization.

Maybe the most interesting data point came where 60% of the respondents agreed that the mainframe needed to be a good IT citizen supporting varied workloads across the enterprise. That’s really what zEnterprise hybrid computing is about.

20% Price/Performance Boost for IBM Hybrid Computing

Hybrid computing promises to boost IT flexibility and efficiency in a significant way. The zEnterprise EC12 (zEC12) continues IBM’s hybrid computing initiative by connecting to it through a new zBX, the model 003. The zBX, a robust blade cabinet, is where the multiplatform blades reside.

As with previous new machines, IBM gave the EC12 an approximately 20% MIPS price/performance kick. There also are savings on software and maintenance.

For hybrid computing, the zEC12/zBX combination support x86 blades, including Windows, and Power blades, which can run AIX or Linux. It also supports the DataPower blade. The Smart Analytics Optimizer blade has been discontinued in favor of the Netezza appliance that connects directly to the zEC12. Connecting the zEC12 and the zBX is a dedicated 10Gb link, far faster than the usual link. The Canadian Dept. of National Defense turned to the zEnterprise/zBX combination to execute its strategy of multi-platform enterprise hosting.

The z196 and z114, also hybrid systems, connect to the zBX model  002. Although the zBX model 003 connection is specific to the zEC12, everything else about the zBX is the same, the same total number of blades in the system (112), and the same option for single or doublewide blades as needed. Doublewide blades, of course, reduce the total number of blades.

This hybrid environment is managed as a virtual system through the zEC12 using the Unified Resource Manager. Additional management capabilities and higher level management automation is provided through Tivoli.

Hybrid computing actually isn’t new. Mainframe data centers typically support numerous platforms, including Windows, Linux, AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, and more. The problem is that these are deployed and operated as separate platforms, which substantially increases the management overhead. A few skilled IT data centers can cobble together the appearance of a unified hybrid environment through technologies like SOA. This requires considerable skill to set up and maintaining it as things inevitably change becomes a challenge. The zEnterprise/zBX hybrid environment streamlines all this through the Unified Resource Manager and Tivoli.

IBM offers a second hybrid platform call PureSystems. DancingDinosaur wrote about it here. The Flex System Manager provides similar unified hybrid management for PureSystems as the Unified Resource Manager does for the zEC12/zBX.

Watch for an upcoming white paper on zBX adoption trends from Independent Assessment, the publisher of DancingDinosaur and BottomlineIT.

The zEC12 alone is an impressive machine. A departure from the previous quad core chip architecture, the zEC12 uses a 5.5 GHz six (hexa) core, out-of-order CISC processor architecture, which enables IBM to pack significantly more power into what is essentially the same footprint.  The zEZ12 handles a maximum of 36 processors, for a total of 120 cores, 101 of which are directly available to run operating systems and applications. The rest are used by the system to manage its own operations.

The number of cores available in a particular model of the zEC12 is embedded in the model name. The H20 has 20 cores available for direct customer use, plus spare and service processor cores. The HA1 brings 101 cores. Any combination of configurable cores can be designated as an assist processor; either a zIIP, zAAP, IFL, Internal Coupling Facility (ICF), or a System Assist Processor.

Find all the pertinent specs directly from IBM here.