Analysis on Mainframe

ANALYSIS ON MAINFRAME

OVERVIEW

IBM’s mainframe family has been an icon of the computer revolution. Its introduction lead the way to enterprise applied computing. Succeeding generations and new systems followed with the spotlight eventually shifting to distributed server-based and personal computing systems. Despite many obituaries, the mainframe never disappeared, providing an unassailable standard for critical and demanding enterprise computing. The introduction of the IBM System z family was one of two events that marked the beginning of the mainframe’s return to the spotlight.

The second event was the explosive growth in global economies as formally closed and underdeveloped countries became serious competitors in global markets. The basic law of economics tells us that limited resources become more expensive as more consumers compete for them. This, combined with the growing mobility of competition, drove a business focus on effective, efficient operation to maintain competitiveness and profitability. By raising price sensitivity, global competition makes being operationally efficient, secure, and dynamically adaptive to changing business conditions, critically important to business success.

With workloads hovering in the 12% to 20% range, distributed computing is notoriously underutilized. Mainframes are just as well-known for efficiency of operation, ability to handle fluctuating 90% to 100% workloads, and reliability. With little fanfare, user interfaces, styles of interaction with, and access to the mainframe adapted as the industry evolved. Changing computing styles, services-oriented computing, the rise of virtualization, the need for end-to-end views of service delivery, security concerns, etc; all play to mainframe strengths. For many in the industry – the changes taking place in the mainframe were unnoticed. Twenty years out of the spotlight left too many myths unchallenged and information outdated.

A combination of inattention, dated styles of cost tracking and allocations, based on presumptive distribution rather than actual costs incurred and resources used, meant that stark differences in mainframe vs. distributed server in TCO, ROI, and efficiency were obscured. IBM tapped the resources of its server, software and services groups to change that. A prime influence is the management software with which IBM Tivoli provides solutions that accurately track computing costs, identify resource consumption, and even dynamically adjusts processor configurations and workload allocations to maximize performance and minimize costs using policies tied to business conditions. These management tools document the mainframe as financially attractive and highly competitive to distributed systems Linux and UNIX mainframes are a growing market segment.

LEGACY TECHNOLOGY; MODERN CHALLENGES FOR MAINFRAME

Organizations with significant processing requirements continue to maintain many of their most important applications on mainframes. Often, their most visible and mission critical business services rely on the performance and availability of these mainframe applications to users within and outside the organization. As IT infrastructures increase in complexity and business demands escalates, mainframes