IBM today announced the zEnterprise mainframe server and a new systems design that allows workloads on mainframe, POWER7 and System x servers to share resources and be managed as a single, virtualized system. IBM says the new mainframe is also the most powerful and energy-efficient mainframe ever.
The new systems design combines IBM's new zEnterprise mainframe server with new technology - the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension and the IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager - that enable it to manage workloads running across System z, and select POWER7 and System x servers. The new technology is the result of an investment of more than $1.5 billion in IBM research and development as well as more than three years of collaboration with some of IBM's top clients around the world.
With the new technology, customers can integrate the management of zEnterprise System resources as a single system and extend mainframe qualities, such as governance and manageability, to workloads running on select IBM POWER7 and System x blade servers. According to IBM, the ability to manage workloads across systems as one, the zEnterprise System can drive up to 40% lower acquisition costs and reduce cost of ownership by 55%.
IBM designed the zEnterprise System to address an important issue for corporate data centers - the jumble of disparate technologies added over time to run specific applications and which operate in silos, sometimes unable to communicate with each other in real time and requiring separate staff and software tools to manage. This long-standing challenge for customers, IBM says, is aggravated by sharp increases in cost and complexity as well as increasingly sophisticated, data-intensive workloads in an ever more interconnected world. For more details, go here.