IBM zSystem and Power Score in IDC 4Q 2015 Rankings

IBM retained the number 3 spot with 14.1% share for the quarter as revenue increased 8.9% year-over-year to $2.2 billion in 4Q15. More impressively, IBM experienced strong growth for POWER Systems and double-digit growth for its z System mainframes in the quarter, according to IDC. You can check out the IDC announcement here. IDC credits z and POWER for IBM’s strong platform finish in 2015.

zSystem-based LinuxONE

DancingDinosaur has expected these results and been reporting IBM’s z System and POWER System successes for the past year. You can check it out here (z13s) and here (LinuxOne) and here (Power Systems LC).

Along with deservedly crowing about its latest IDC ranking IBM added:  z Systems saw double digit growth due to a number of new portfolio enhancements. The next-generation z13 mainframe, optimized for digital businesses and hybrid cloud environments, is designed to handle mobile transactions securely and at scale, while enabling clients to run analytics on the system and in real time. IBM expanded its commitment to offering open-source on the mainframe by launching a line of Linux-only systems in August of 2015. LinuxONE is based on the latest generation of z Systems technology and enables popular open-source tools and software on the mainframe. IBM also added what amounts to a Business Class z with the z13s to go along with a Business Class dedicated Linux z, the LinuxONE Rockhopper.

Meanwhile, IBM has started to get some uptake for its Open Mainframe Project. In addition to announcing support from the usual mainframe suspects—IBM, CA, Compuware, SUSE, BMC, and others—it also announced its first projects. These include an effort to find ways to leverage new software and tools in the Linux environment that can better take advantage of the mainframe’s speed, security, scalability, and availability. DancingDinosaur is hoping that in time the Open Mainframe Project will produce the kind of results the Open POWER Foundation has recently generated for the POWER Platform

IBM attributes the growing traction of Linux running on POWER Systems in large part to optimized solutions such as DB2 BLU, SAP HANA, and other industry big data software, built on POWER Systems running Linux. In October 2015, IBM expanded its Linux on Power Systems portfolio with the LC line of servers. These servers are infused with OpenPOWER Foundation technology and bring the higher performance of the POWER CPU to the broad Linux community. The POWER-based LC line along with the z-based LinuxONE Rockhopper should give any data center manager looking to run a large, efficient Linux server farm a highly cost-competitive option that can rival or even beat the x86 option. And given that both platforms will handle Docker containers and microservices and support all of today’s popular development tools there is no reason to stick with x86.

From a platform standpoint, IBM appears to be in sync with what IDC is reporting: Datacenter buildout continues, and the main beneficiary this quarter is the density-optimized segment of the market, where growth easily outpaced the overall server market. Density-optimized servers achieved a 30.2% revenue growth rate this quarter, contributing a full 2 percentage points to the overall 5.2% revenue growth in the market.

“The fourth quarter (of 2015) was a solid close to a strong year of growth in the server market, driven by on premise refresh deployments as well as continued hyperscale cloud deployments,” said Kuba Stolarski, Research Director, Servers and Emerging Technologies at IDC. “As the cyclical refresh of 2015 comes to an end, the market focus has begun to shift towards software-defined infrastructure and hybrid environment management, as organizations begin to transform their IT infrastructure as well as prepare for the compute demands expected over the next few years from next-gen IT domains such as IoT and cognitive analytics. In the short term, 2016 looks to be a year of accelerated cloud infrastructure expansion with existing footprints filling out and new cloud datacenter buildouts across the globe.”

After a seemingly endless string of dismal quarters DancingDinosaur is encouraged by what IBM is doing now with the z, POWER Systems, and its strategic initiatives. With its strategic focus on cloud, mobile, big data analytics, cognitive computing, and IoT as well as its support for the latest approaches to software development, tools, and languages, IBM should be well positioned to continue its platform success in 2016.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst and writer. Please follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his IT writing at technologywriter.com and here.

New IBM z13s Brings Built-in Encrypted Security to Entry Level

Earlier this week IBM introduced the z13s, what it calls World’s most secure server, built for hybrid cloud, and sized for mid-sized organizations.  The z13s promises better business outcomes, faster decision making, less regulatory exposure, greater scale, and better fraud protection. And at the low end it is accessible to smaller enterprises, maybe those who have never tried a z before.

z13s features embedded cryptography that brings the benefits of the mainframe to mid-sized organizations . Courtesy IBM

A machine like the low end z13s used to be referred to as a business class (BC) mainframe.  IBM declined to quote a price, except to say z13s will go “for about the same price as previous generations for the equivalent capacity.”  OK, back in July 2013 IBM published the base price of the zEC12 BC machine at $75,000. IBM made a big deal of that pricing at the time.

The key weasel phrase in IBM’s statement is: “for the equivalent capacity.”  Two and a half years ago the $75k zEC12 BC offered significantly more power than its predecessor. Figuring out equivalent capacity today given all the goodies IBM is packing into the new machine, like built-in chip-based cryptography and more, is anybody’s guess. However, given the plummeting costs of IT components over the past two years, you should get it at a base price of $100k or less. If not, call Intel. Adds IBM: The infrastructure costs of z13s are comparable to the Public Cloud infrastructure costs with enterprise support; significant software savings result from core consolidation on the z13s.

But the z13s is not just about price. As digital business becomes a standard practice and transaction volumes increase, especially mobile transaction volumes, the need for increased security becomes paramount. Cybercrime today has shifted. Rather than stealing data criminals are compromising data accuracy and reliability. This is where the z13s’ bolstered built-in security and access to APIs and microservices in a hybrid cloud setting can pay off by keeping data integrity intact.

IBM’s z13s, described as the new entry point to the z Systems portfolio for enterprises of all sizes, is packed with a number of security innovations. (DancingDinosaur considered the IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper as the current z entry point but it is a Linux-only machine.) For zOS the z13s will be the entry point. The security innovations include:

• Ability to encrypt sensitive data without compromising transactional throughput and response time through its updated cryptographic and tamper-resistant hardware-accelerated cryptographic coprocessor cards with faster processors and more memory. In short: encryption at twice the speed equates to processing twice as many online or mobile device purchases in the same time, effectively helping to lower the cost per transaction.
• Leverage the z Systems Cyber Security Analytics offering, which delivers an advanced level of threat monitoring based on behavior analytics. Also part of the package, IBM® Security QRadar® security software correlates data from more than 500 sources to help organizations determine if security-related events are simply anomalies or potential threats, This z Systems Cyber Security Analytics service will be available at no-charge, as a beta offering for z13 and z13s customers.
• IBM Multi-factor Authentication for z/OS (MFA) is now available on z/OS. The solution adds another layer of security by requiring privileged users to enter a second form of identification, such as a PIN or randomly generated token, to gain access to the system. This is the first time MFA has been tightly integrated in the operating system, rather than through an add-on software solution. This level of integration is expected to deliver more streamlined configuration and better stability and performance.

Hybrid computing and hybrid cloud also play a big part in IBM’s thinking latest around z Systems. As IBM explains, hybrid cloud infrastructure offers advantages in flexibility but can also present new vulnerabilities. When paired with z Systems, IBM’s new security solutions can allow clients to establish end-to-end security in their hybrid cloud environment.

Specifically, IBM Security Identity Governance and Intelligence can help prevent inadvertent or malicious internal data loss by governing and auditing access based on known policies while granting access to those who have been cleared as need-to-know users. IBM Security Guardium uses analytics to help ensure data integrity by providing intelligent data monitoring, which tracks users as they access specific data and help to identify threat sources quickly in the event of a breach. IBM Security zSecure and QRadar use real-time alerts to focus on the identified critical security threats that matter the most.

Conventional z System data centers should have no difficulty migrating to the z13 or even the z13s.  IBM told DancingDinosaur it will continue to protect a client’s investment in technology with serial number preservation on the IBM z13s.  The company also is offering upgrades from the zEnterprise BC12 (zBC12) and from the zEnterprise 114 (z114) to the z13s.   Of course, it supports upgradeability within the IBM z13 family; a z13s N20 model can be upgraded to the z13 N30 model. And once the z13s is installed it allows on demand offerings to access temporary or permanent capacity as needed.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst and writer. Please follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his IT writing at technologywriter.com and here.

IBM Gets Serious about Linux on z Systems

 

It has taken the cloud, open source, and mobile for IBM to finally, after more than a decade of Linux on z, for the company to turn it into the agile development machine it should have been all along. Maybe z data centers weren’t ready back then, maybe they aren’t all that ready now, but it is starting to happen.

LinuxONE Rockhopper, Refreshed for Hybrid Cloud Innovation

In March, IBM will make its IBM Open Platform available for the IBM LinuxONE (IOP) portfolio available at no cost. IOP includes a broad set of industry standard Apache-based capabilities for analytics and big data. The components supported include Apache Spark, Apache HBase and more, as well as Apache Hadoop 2.7.1. Continuing its commitment to contributing back to the open source community, IBM has optimized the Open Managed Runtime project (OMR) for LinuxONE. Now IBM innovations in virtual machine technology for new dynamic scripting languages will be brought to enterprise-grade strength.

It doesn’t stop there. IBM has ported the Go programming language to LinuxOne too. Go was developed by Google and is designed for building simple, reliable and efficient software, making it easier for developers to combine the software tools they know with the speed, security and scale offered by LinuxONE. IBM expects to begin contributing code to the Go community this summer.

Back in December IBM brought Apple’s Swift programming to the party, first to the IBM Watson iOS SDK, which gives developers a Swift API to simplify integration with many of the Watson Developer Cloud services, including the Watson Dialog, Language Translation, Natural Language Classifier, Personality Insights, Speech To Text, Text to Speech, Alchemy Language, or Alchemy Vision services – all of which are available today, and can now be integrated with just a few lines of code.

Following Apple’s introduction of Swift as the new language for OS X and iOS application development. IBM began partnering with Apple to bring the power of Swift open source programming to the z. This will be closely tied to Canonical’s Ubuntu port to the z expected this summer.

Also, through new work by SUSE to collaborate on technologies in the OpenStack space, SUSE tools will be employed to manage public, private, and hybrid clouds running on LinuxONE.  Open source, OpenStack, open-just-about-everything appears to be the way IBM is pushing the z.

At a presentation last August on Open Source & ISV Ecosystem Enablement for LinuxONE and IBM z, Dale Hoffman, Program Director, IBM’s Linux SW Ecosystem & Innovation Lab, introduced the three ages of mainframe development; our current stage being the third.

1. Traditional mainframe data center, 1964–2014 includes • Batch • General Ledger • Transaction Systems • Client Databases • Accounts payable / receivable • Inventory, CRM, ERP Linux & Java
2. Internet Age, 1999–2014 includes–• Server Consolidation • Oracle Consolidation • Early Private Clouds • Email • Java®, Web & eCommerce
3. Cloud/Mobile/Analytics (CAMSS²) Age, 2015–2020 includes– • On/Off Premise, Hybrid Cloud • Big Data & Analytics • Enterprise Mobile Apps • Security solutions • Open Source LinuxONE and IBM z ecosystem enablement

Hoffman didn’t suggest what comes after 2020 but we can probably imagine: Cognitive Computing, Internet of Things, Blockchain. At least those are trends starting to ramp up now.

He does, however, draw a picture of the state of Linux on the mainframe today:

• 27% of total installed capacity run Linux
• Linux core capacity increased 16% from 2Q14 to 2Q15
• 40% of customers have Linux cores
• 80% of the top 100 customers (in terms of installed MIPS) run Linux on the mainframe
• 67% of new accounts run Linux

To DancingDinosaur, this last point about the high percentage of new z accounts running Linux speaks to where the future of the z is heading.

Maybe as telling are the following:

• 64% of companies participate in Open Source projects
• 78% of companies run on open source
• 88% of companies to increase open source contributions in the next 2-3 year
• 47% to release internal tools & projects as OSS
• 53% expect to reduce barriers to employee participation in open source
• 50% report that more than half of their engineers are working on open source projects
• 66% of companies build software on open source

Remember when open source and Linux first appeared for z, data center managers were shocked at the very concept. It was anti-capitalist at the very least, maybe even socialist or communist. Look at the above percentages; open source has gotten about as mainstream as it gets.

It will be interesting to see how quickly developers move to LinuxONE for their CAMSS projects. IBM hasn’t said anything about the pricing of the refreshed Rockhopper model or about the look and feel of the tools. Until the developers know, DancingDinosaur expects they will continue to work on the familiar x86 tools they are using now.

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst and writer. Please follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his IT writing at technologywriter.com and here.

IBM LinuxONE and Open Mainframe Project Expand the z System

Meet the new IBM z System; called LinuxONE Emperor (named after the Emperor Penguin.) It is a z13 running only Linux. Check out the full announcement here.

Courtesy of IBM, LinuxONE Emperor, the newest z System

DancingDinosaur is excited by several aspects of this announcement:  IBM is establishing, in conjunction with the Linux Foundation, an Open Mainframe Project; the company is breaking with its traditional mainframe pricing model; it also is putting KVM and Ubuntu on the machine; and it is offering a smorgasbord of app-dev options, including some of the sexiest in the industry today. DancingDinosaur never believed it would refer to a mainframe as sexy (must be time to retire).

Along with LinuxONE Emperor IBM announced an entry dedicated Linux machine, the LinuxONE Rockhopper. (BTW; notice the new playfulness in IBM’s product naming.) Rockhopper appears to be very similar to what IBM used to call a Business Class z, although IBM has stepped away from that designation. The closest you may get to a z13 business class machine may be LinuxONE Rockhopper. Rockhopper, according to IBM, is designed for clients and emerging markets seeking the speed, security and availability of the mainframe but in a smaller package.

The biggest long term potential impact from the announcement may come out of the Open Mainframe Project. Like many of IBM’s community project initiatives, IBM is starting by seeding the open community with z code, in effect creating the beginning of an open z System machine.  IBM describes this as the largest single contribution of mainframe code from IBM to the open source community. A key part of the mainframe code contributions will be the z’s IT predictive analytics that constantly monitor for unusual system behavior and help prevent issues from turning into failures. In effect, IBM is handing over zAware to the open source community. It had already announced intentions to port zAware to Linux on z early this year so it might as well make it fully open. The code, notes IBM, can be used by developers to build similar sense-and-respond resiliency capabilities for other systems.

The Open Mainframe Project, being formed with the Linux Foundation, will involve a collaboration of nearly a dozen organizations across academia, government, and corporate sectors to advance development and adoption of Linux on the mainframe. It appears that most of the big mainframe ISVs have already signed on. DancingDinosaur, however, expressed concern that this approach brings the possibility of branching the underlying functionality between z and Linux versions. IBM insists that won’t happen since the innovations would be implemented at the software level, safely insulated from the hardware. And furthermore, should there emerge an innovation that makes sense for the z System, maybe some innovation around the zAware capabilities, the company is prepared to bring it back to the core z.

The newly announced pricing should also present an interesting opportunity for shops running Linux on z.  As IBM notes: new financing models for the LinuxONE portfolio provide flexibility in pricing and resources that allow enterprises to pay for what they use and scale up quickly when their business grows. Specifically, for IBM hardware and software, the company is offering a pay-per-use option in the form of a fixed monthly payment with costs scaling up or down based on usage. It also offers per-core pricing with software licenses for designated cores. In that case you can order what you need and decrease licenses or cancel on 30 days notice. Or, you can rent a LinuxONE machine monthly with no upfront payment.  At the end of the 36-month rental (can return the hardware after 1 year) you choose to return, buy, or replace. Having spent hours attending mainframe pricing sessions at numerous IBM conferences this seems refreshingly straightforward. IBM has not yet provided any prices to analysts so whether this actually is a bargain remains to be seen. But at least you have pricing option flexibility you never had before.

The introduction of support for both KVM and Ubuntu on the z platform opens intriguing possibilities.  Full disclosure: DancingDinosaur was an early Fedora adopter because he could get it to run on a memory-challenged antiquated laptop. With the LinuxONE announcement Ubuntu has been elevated to a fully z-supported Linux distribution. Together IBM and Canonical are bringing a distribution of Linux incorporating Ubuntu’s scale-out and cloud expertise on the IBM z Systems platform, further expanding the reach of both. Ubuntu combined with KVM should make either LinuxONE machine very attractive for OpenStack-based hybrid cloud computing that may involve thousands of VMs. Depending on how IBM ultimately prices things, this could turn into an unexpected bargain for Linux on z data centers that want to save money by consolidating x86 Linux servers, thereby reducing the data center footprint and cutting energy costs.  LinuxONE Emperor can handle 8000 virtual servers in a single system, tens of thousands of containers.

Finally, LinuxONE can run the sexiest app-dev tools using any of the hottest open technologies, specifically:

• Distributions: Red Hat, SuSE and Ubuntu
• Hypervisors: PR/SM, z/VM, and KVM
• Languages: Python, Perl, Ruby, Rails, Erlang, Java, Node.js
• Management: WAVE, IBM Cloud Manager, Urban Code Openstack, Docker, Chef, Puppet, VMware vRealize Automation
• Database: Oracle, DB2LUW, MariaDB, MongoDB, PostgreSQL
• Analytics: Hadoop, Big Insights, DB2BLU and Spark

And run the results however you want: single platform, multi-platform, on-prem and off-prem, or multiple mixed cloud environments with a common toolset. Could a combination of LinuxONE alongside a conventional z13 be the mainframe data center you really want going forward?

DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran IT analyst and writer. Please follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his IT writing at technologywriter.com and here.