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.

zEC12 Drives Buoyant IBM Results

IBM posted strong 4Q 2012 and full year 2012 financials on Tuesday.  So strong that the results beat Wall Street’s expectations, as did the technology bellwether’s guidance for the current year. The results bumped up IBM’s stock and helped fuel a market rally for a couple of days at least.

DancingDinosaur particularly liked the performance of the System z. Q4 2012 revenues from System z increased 56% compared with the year-ago period, reflecting the contribution of the zEC12 introduced in 3Q 2012. System z revenue in the growth markets increased 68%. Total delivery of System z computing power, as measured in MIPS, increased 66% versus the prior year and represented the largest MIPS shipment quarter in the company’s history, according to IBM.  New workload specialty engines, including the Linux IFL, represented one-half of the MIPS shipped, a further sign that Linux on z is finally gaining real traction after a decade.

Revenues from Power Systems decreased 19% compared with the 2011 period. DancingDinosaur expects that to turn around in 2013 as more Power products using the new Power7+ processor catch on and will get a further boost when machines running the POWER8 processor come out, maybe even in late 2013. DancingDinosaur wrote about Power7+ here back in October.

Let’s let IBM’s top boss, Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and chief executive officer gloat a little: “We achieved record profit, earnings per share and free cash flow in 2012.  Our performance in the fourth quarter and for the full year was driven by our strategic growth initiatives—growth markets, analytics, cloud computing, Smarter Planet solutions—which support our continued shift to higher-value businesses. Looking ahead, we continue to invest to deliver innovations for the enterprise in key areas such as big data, mobile solutions, social business and security, while expanding into new markets and reaching new clients.  We are well on track toward our long-term roadmap for operating EPS of at least $20 in 2015. If you are an IBM fan, it doesn’t get much better than this.

DancingDinosaur was surprised that the System z was driving the bus this quarter. It expected the front position to be taken by services or software, not hardware and certainly not the z, which sometimes comes across as a multi-billion dollar afterthought.

Software was another high point. According to IBM, software rang up $7.9 billion, an increase of 3% (up 4%, adjusting for currency) from 4Q 2011. Of more interest to DancingDinosaur was IBM’s key middleware products, which are key to driving new workloads on the z.

The middleware products, which include WebSphere, Information Management, Tivoli, Lotus, and Rational rang up $5.5 billion, an increase of 5% (up 6%, adjusting for currency) versus 4Q 2011. Specifically, revenues from the WebSphere family of software products increased 11% year over year.  Information Management software revenues increased 2% and revenues from Tivoli software increased 4%.  The best performers were Lotus software (including IBM Connections), which increased 9%, and Rational software, up 12%.  It is these products, along with Linux on z and Java that enable the kind of new workloads mainframe shops are likely to run.

So, DancingDinosaur has to conclude that this was a pretty good week for IBM and particularly for those invested in the mainframe.

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 Clouds Pay Off

From its introduction last August, IBM has aimed the zEC12 at cloud use cases, especially private clouds. The zEC12’s massive virtualization capabilities make it possible to handle private cloud environments consisting of thousands of distributed systems running Linux on zEC12.

One zEC12, notes IBM, can encompass the capacity of an entire multi-platform data center in a single system. The newest z also enables organizations to run conventional IT workloads and private cloud applications on one system.  If you are looking at a zEC12 coupled with the zBX you can have a hybrid private cloud running Linux, Windows, and AIX workloads.

There are three main reasons why z-based data centers should consider a private cloud:

1. The z does it so naturally and seamlessly
2. It boosts IT efficiency, mainly through user self service
3. It increases enterprise agility, especially when it comes to provisioning and deploying IT resources and applications fast

Organizations everywhere are adopting private clouds (probably because C-level execs are more comfortable with private cloud security).  The Open Data Center Alliance reports faster private cloud adoption than originally predicted. Over half its survey respondents will be running more than 40% of their IT operations in private clouds by 2015.

Mainframes make a particularly good private cloud choice. Nationwide, the insurance company, consolidated 3000 distributed servers to Linux virtual servers running on a variety of z mainframes, creating a multi-platform private mainframe cloud optimized for its different workloads. The goal was to improve efficiency.

Nationwide initially intended to isolate its Linux and z/OS workloads on different physical mainframes. This resulted in a total of seven machines – a mixture of z9 and z10 servers – of which two were dedicated to Linux. To optimize this footprint, however, Nationwide ended up consolidating all workloads to four IBM zEnterprise 196 servers and two z10 servers, putting Linux and z/OS workloads on the same machines because its confidence level with Linux on the mainframe and the maturity of the platform made the Nationwide IT team comfortable mixing workloads.

The key benefit of this approach was higher utilization and better economies of scale, effectively making the mainframes into a unified private cloud—a single set of resources, managed with the same tools but optimized for a variety of workloads. The payback:  elimination of both capital and operational expenditures, expected to save about $15 million over three years. The more compact and efficient zEnterprise landscape also means low costs in the future. Specifically, Nationwide is realizing an 80% reduction in power, cooling and floor space despite an application workload that is growing 30% annually, and practically all of it handled through the provisioning of new virtual servers on the existing mainframe footprint.

Another z cloud was built by the City and County of Honolulu. It needed to increase government transparency by providing useful, timely data to its citizens. The goal was to boost citizen involvement, improve delivery of services, and increase the efficiency of city operations.

Honolulu built its cloud using an IFL engine running Linux on the city’s z10 EC machine. Between Linux and IBM z/VM the city created a customized cloud environment. This provided a scalable self-service platform on which city employees could develop open source applications, and it empowered the general public to create and deploy citizen-centric applications. Other components included IBM XIV storage, IBM Maximo Asset Management, IBM Tivoli OMEGAMON, Tivoli Workload Scheduler, and Tivoli Storage Manager.

The results: reduction in application deployment time from one week to only hours, 68% lower licensing costs for one database, and a new property tax appraisal system that increased tax revenue by $1.4 million in just three months.

There are even more examples of z clouds. For z shops a private cloud should be pretty straightforward; you’re probably over half-way there already. All you need are a few more components and a well-defined business case.  Give me a call, and I’ll even help you pull the business case together.

Late 2012 zEnterprise Action

In a flurry of December activity, IBM announced the German manufacturer, ARBURG GmbH, upgraded to two z114 machines. In addition, a pair of Australian companies, Tonkin Consulting and Harris Farm Market, jumped on the PureSystems bandwagon.

It’s particularly nice to see IBM PureSystems gaining traction.  These are hybrid expert systems that can significantly lower the cost of a company’s IT. As for the z114, it has been a bargain since it was introduced.  DancingDinosuar expects a similar low end model of the zEC12 to come out sometime in 2013.

Let’s start by looking at ARBURG, which upgraded to a pair of zEnterprise 114 machines to drive down costs and accelerate its time-to-market. In the process it also wanted to improve customer satisfaction but without compromising on product quality. Specifically, it needed to make better use of the large amounts of data generated daily across its core business areas—development, procurement, production, sales, and services. ARBURG runs the two z114 machines with IBM System Storage DS8800, IBM DB2, and IBM Tivoli Monitoring solutions to support its SAP application environment.

The payback will come fast: reduced energy consumption by 80%. Likewise, implementing the IBM System Storage DS8800 storage cut power consumption for zEnterprise disk storage by 25%, according to the company. In addition, ARBURG runs applications on IBM System x servers with IBM SVC and Storwize V7000 systems. By consolidating on IBM System x servers with virtualization, ARBURG shrunk its number of physical servers by more than 50% and lowered energy requirements by 60%. The company also expects to leverage IBM Easy Tier technology built into the Storwize V7000 to automatically migrate data between spinning drives and SSDs dynamically, moving the most-accessed data to SSDs for better performance and the less-used data to lower-priced, standard drives.

ARBURG would like to grow its SAP environment gradually, avoiding the need to frequently invest in new hardware, thereby saving even more money, minimizing complexity, and maximizing performance. Long term the company plans to use SAP on the IBM technology platform to optimize processes and improve transparency and quality, which it expects will lead to shorter development cycles and reduced time-to-market.

The Aussies took the PureSystems route. Tonkin Consulting, an engineering, environmental and spatial consulting practice, is replacing its existing HP switching hardware and servers with IBM PureFlex. The new system will be the core component of the firm’s new enterprise-wide IT strategy to address its future needs and growth. It opted for the integrated PureFlex System for its a highly automated, simple-to-manage system. It also chose the integrated v7000 storage as well as additional IBM system networking, system x and tape storage products. The company expects the new system to significantly reduce IT costs, potentially halving management costs overall, while dramatically increasing its ability to rapidly scale operations up and down. Additionally, the technology will enable Tonkin to quickly create and deploy a private cloud, which will enable disaster recovery for its offices in South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.

Harris Farm Markets opted for an IBM Flex System to help support its business growth and reduce IT costs and complexity. It expects Flex to significantly boost the performance of its critical systems, especially its enterprise resource (ERP) system. The IBM Flex System deployment underpins a broader IT strategy intended to support Harris Farm’s continuing growth for at least ten years. As part of its emphasis on scalable efficiency, the strategy will reduce Harris Farm’s data footprint by up to 80% through real-time data compression; and optimize application performance using IBM’s Easy-tier functionality. The customized Flex System will include an IBM Flex System Enterprise Chassis; two IBM Compute nodes; and an IBM Storwize V7000 storage system. The Flex System will replace Harris Farm’s existing IBM systems and is expected to be delivered by mid-January 2013.

Let’s hope these late 2012 wins are good signs for 2013.

Updated Software for IBM zEC12

Everyone gets excited by a new piece of hardware, but it is the software that enables the new machine to work its magic. This certainly is the case with the zEC12. On Oct. 3 IBM announced  upgrades to zEnterprise workhorse software like CICS, Omegamon, Cognos, and zSecure intended to better tap the capabilities of zEC12. Even IMS and Sterling are getting a refresh.

Also getting increased attention is Netezza, which has emerged as a key component of IBM’s data analytics approach. Netezza enables IBM to counter Oracle’s Exalytics, another in-memory data analytics appliance. In fact, IBM’s announcement of the newest PureSystems, the PureData System, earlier this week gives IBM another counter punch.

For the zEnterprise IBM adds a flexible storage capability that provides the performance of the IDAA while removing the cost of storage from the z. Netezza will work with whatever IBM storage the organization prefers.  A new incremental update capability propagates data changes as they occur, making it possible to analyze activity almost immediately. This resolves the problem of the data currency, in effect providing as close to real-time analytics as most organizations will get or need.

CICS, which already had become a mainframe workhorse through SOA and web services, now adds rich cloud capabilities too. CICS v5.1 brings new web app capabilities built on the WAS Liberty Profile. New PaaS capabilities enable it to host SaaS apps based on CICS applications. It also employs a new lightweight Java web container that combines Java Servlets and JSPs with fast local access to CICS applications.  IBM reports the enhanced CICS v5.1 delivers a 25% performance gain.

Various online discussion groups are buzzing about the zEC12 software enhancements.  A sampling:

• IBM provides DB2 10 performance enhancements for z/OS. As importantly for mixed platform (hybrid) shops DB2 10 LUW (Linux UNIX Windows) also will provide similar performance improvements.
• There is added support for Oracle’s PL/SQL for DB2 10 for stored procedures and Oracle application interfaces for Java, Pro*C, Pro*COBOL, and Forms.
• IBM also announced significant transactional performance improvements when running WebSphere on the zEC12.
• IBM has started a Beta Testing Program for the new CICS Transaction Server 5.1 release that has a significant number of enhancements to support Web Applications and CICS application modernization, mainly through IBM’s Rational HATS.
•  IBM has also improved performance of the C/C++ V1.13 compiler, Metal C feature of the IBM z/OS XL C/C++ compiler; and PL/1 V4.3 compiler for the zEC12.

Maybe less of a buzz generator but IBM Sterling gets a boost with the Sterling B2B Integrator V5.2.4 and Sterling File Gateway V2.2.4 for integration and file-based exchanges. IBM’s zSecure suite V1.13.1 brings new integration with QRadar, expanded integration points with DB2, enhanced RACF database cleanup capabilities, and support for the new enhanced CICS Transaction Server.

IBM also used the announcement to promote the relaunch of zEnterprise Analytics System 9710 (previously called IBM Smart Analytics System 9710) an unusual combo data decision system for analytics. It joins high performance data warehouse management with System z availability and recoverability using the z114. When the IDAA is added the result is a hybrid system of MPP and SMP technologies that combines mixed workload capabilities—both transaction and high speed analytical applications—on single platform tuned for operational business analytics.

Independent Assessment, publisher of DancingDinosaur, has finally released its newest white paper, zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX): the Case for Adopting Hybrid Computing. It is the most updated look at the zBX yet, including details on the zEC12. Available for free. Click here.

IBM Introduces POWER7+ and More

IBM’s Systems and Technology Group (STG) introduced a slew of new products and enhancements, both hardware and software, for the System z and Power. The System z announcements, which DancingDinosaur will take up in subsequent posts, focused mainly on software enhancements, such as new revs of CICS and Omegamon, for the zEC12. The Power announcements covered new capabilities as well as new machines. And all the announcements in one way or another address IBM’s current big themes: Cloud, Analytics, and Security.

Of the new Power announcements, Power7+ certainly is the star.  Other capabilities, such as elastic capacity on demand and dynamic Power system pools, may prove more important in the long run. Another new announcement, the EXP30 Ultra SSD I/O Drawer, may turn out quite useful as organizations appreciate the possibilities of SSD and ramp up usage.

Power7+, with 2 billion transistors, promises to deliver 40% more performance, especially for Java workloads, compared to Power7.  Combined with other enhancements Power announced, it looks particularly good for data and even real-time analytics workloads.  The new processor boasts 4.4 GHz speeds, a 10MB L3 cache per core (8 cores =80 MB), and a random number generator along with improved single precision floating point performance and an enhanced GX system bus. IBM invested the additional transistors primarily in the cache. All of this will aid performance.

The enhanced chip also brings an active memory expansion accelerator and an on-chip encryption accelerator for AIX. Previously this was handled in software; now it is done in hardware for better performance and efficiency.  Power7+ also can handle 20 VMs per core, double the number of Power7 VMs. This allows system administrators to make VM partitions, especially development partitions, quite small (just 5% of the core).  With energy enhancements, it also delivers 5x more performance per watt. New power gating also allows the chip to be configured in a variety of ways. The upshot: more flexibility.

Elastic capacity on demand (CoD) and Power System Pools work hand in hand.  Depending on the server model, you can create what amounts to a huge pool of shared system resources, either permanent or temporary. IBM has offered versions of CoD for years, but they typically entailed elaborate set up and cumbersome activation routines to make the capacity available.  Again, depending on the model IBM is promising more flexible CoD and easier activation, referring to it as instant elasticity.  If it works as described, you should be able to turn multiple Power servers into a massive shared resource. Combine these capabilities to create a private cloud based on these new servers and you could end up with a rapidly expandable private cloud. Usually, it would take a hybrid cloud for that kind of expansion, and even that is not necessarily simple to set up. The payback: greater agility.

There are, however, limitations to elastic CoD and Power Systems Pool. An initial quantity of CoD credits are offered only with new Power 795 and Power 780 (a Power7+ machine). There also is a limit of 10 Power 795 and/or 780 servers in each pool.

Enterprises are just starting to familiarize themselves with SSD, what it can do for them, and how best to deploy. The EXP30 Ultra SSD I/O Drawer, scheduled for general release in November, should make it easier to include SSD in an enterprise infrastructure strategy using the GX++ bus. The 1U drawer can hold up to 30 SSD drives (387 GB) in that small footprint.  That’s a lot of resource in a tight space: 11.6 TB of capacity, 480,000 read IOPS, and 4.5 GB/s of aggregate bandwidth. IBM reports that it can cut batch window processing by up to 50% and reduce the number of HDD by up to 10x. Plus, you can still attach up to 48 HDD downstream for another 43 TB. The result: great scalability and efficiency.

And this just touches on some of what IBM packed into the Oct. 3 announcement. DancingDinosaur will look at other pieces of the Power announcement, from enhancements of PowerVM to PowerSC for security and compliance as well as look at the enhancements made to zEC12 software.

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.

zEnterprise EC12: the Next Hybrid Mainframe

On Tuesday, IBM launched the zEnterprise EC12 (zEC12), a machine it had been hinting at for months as zNext, the next hybrid mainframe. As you would expect from the latest release of the top-of-the-line mainframe, the zEC12 delivers faster speed and better price/performance. With a 5.5 GHz core processor, up from 5.2 GHz in the z196, and an increase in the number of cores per chip (from 4 to 6) IBM calculates it delivers 50% more total capacity in the same footprint. The vEC12 won’t come cheap but on a cost per MIPS basis it’s probably the best value around.

More than just performance, it adds two major new capabilities, IBM zAware and Flash Express, and a slew of other hardware and software optimizations. The two new features, IBM zAware and Flash Express, both promise to be useful, but neither is a game changer. IBM zAware is an analytics capability embedded in firmware. It is intended to monitor the entire zEnterprise system for the purpose of identifying problems before they impact operations.

Flash Express consists of a pair of memory cards installed in the zEC12; what amounts to a new tier of memory. Flash Express is designed to streamline memory paging when transitioning between workloads. It will moderate workload spikes and eliminate the need to page to disk, which should boost performance.

Unless you are finding it difficult to keep your z machines running or are experiencing paging problems these capabilities won’t be immediately helpful.  They really are intended for shops with the most demanding workloads and no margin for error. The zEC12 also continues IBM’s hybrid computing thrust by including the zBX and new capabilities from System Director to be delivered through Unified Resource Manager APIs. You’ll need a zBX mod 3 to connect to the zEC12.

This is a stunningly powerful machine, especially coming just 25 months after the z196 introduction. The zEC12 is intended for optimized corporate data serving. Its 101 configurable cores deliver a performance boost for all workloads. The zEC12 also comes with the usual array of assist processors, which are just configurable cores with the assist personality loaded on. Since they are EC12 cores, they bring a 20% MIPS price/performance boost.

The processor has been optimized for better software performance, particularly for Java, PL/1, and DB2 workloads.  As with the z196, it handles out of order instruction processing and multi-level branch prediction for complex workloads. The new machine’s larger L2, L3, and L4 caches deliver almost 2x more on the chip to 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).

IBM estimates up to a 45% improvement in Java workloads, up to a 27% improvement in CPU-intensive integer and floating point C/C++ applications, up to 30% improvement in throughput for DB2 for z/OS operational analytics, and more than 30% improvement in throughput for SAP workloads. IBM has, in effect, optimized the zEC12 from top to bottom of the stack. DB2 applications are certain to benefit as will WebSphere and SAP.

IBM characterizes zEC12 pricing as follows:

• Hardware—20% MIPS price/performance improvement for standard engines and specialty engines , Flash Express runs $125,000 per pair of cards (3.2 TB)
• Software—update pricing will provide 2%-7% MLC price/performance for flat-capacity upgrades from z196, and IFLs will maintain PVU rating of 120 for software  yet deliver more 20% MIPS
• Maintenance—no less than 2% price performance improvement for standard MIPS and 20% on IFL MIPS

IBM is signaling price aggressiveness and flexibility to attract new shops to the mainframe and stimulate new workloads. The deeply discounted Solution Edition program will include the new machine. IBM also is offering financing with deferred payments through the end of the year in a coordinated effort to move these machines now.

As impressive as the zEC12 specifications and price/performance is DancingDinosaur is most impressed by the speed at which IBM delivered the machine. It broke with its with its historic 3-year release cycle to deliver this potent hybrid machine just two years after the z196 first introduced hybrid computing.