Customer are GROWING Capacity!:  62% of respondents report they are growing capacity, and in large shops over 10,000 MIPS it is an astonishing 86%!

Customers are getting BUSINESS VALUE:  Respondents report they are growing the platform because of SUPERIOR TRANSACTION PERFORMANCE, AVAILABILITY, DATA SERVING STRENGTHS, and SECURITY advantages.  Over ¾ of large shops cite these attributes!

Customers are focused on operational excellence:  The number one pressure cited for mainframe customers it the continued drive to reduce costs and improve productivity.  Over 70% of the respondents highlighted this issue, over 12 points ahead of the next closest issue (which happens to be staff skills)

Business Service Management customers EXPECT mainframe support!:  An overwhelming number of customers (well over 60%) consider mainframe or enterprise coverage extremely important for ITIL disciplines such as change management, service desk, and service level management.

BMC mainframe products are considered best in class:  Respondents rated BMC the #1 or #2 competitor in terms of leadership and innovation in every product category we compete in.

I'll try to get more details soon.

Maybe the time is right for Microsoft to rebuild their relationship with IBM and think about leveraging the zSeries instead of containers of Intel Servers. They could then roll in the "box" rather than "drop it in". This would decrease the amount of dead space which would be required by the cargo craine for maneuvering. They could put the disk drives into boxes as well and attach it to the CPU "box".

There are two approaches to make this a reality ... one is to develop a WINTEL specialty engine with IBM ... the other is to bring out the Linux Server variants that Microsoft MUST have developed as part of a fallback plan. I remeber years ago they had 40,000 ZLinux machine running. I'm sure the were models have surpassed that limit ... kinda makes 2,000 somewhat insignificant. Anyways Ron has a blog which can tell you more about zVM and zLinux.

If you want to further reduce the temperatures in a data center .. build it where the ambient temperature is cold. This doesn't mean to have to move it to the artic circle ... dig a hole ... a deep hole and build the data center there ... or drill into the side of a mountain and build it there. If you built a data center in the ocean .. you might be able to power it via waves ... and let the icy cold depths do the cooling ... now that is Green.

The article mentions that the mainframe of old was more efficient than today's hardware populating data centers. A McKinsey researcher suggests bringing them back into the data center. So are we that close to a resurgence of the mainframe?

Certainly the beating Microsoft appears to be taking from Apple, combined with their unsuccesful attempt to upgrade everyone from XP may play into the resurgence of the mainframe. The minimalization of Windows and continue popularity of Linux as a server platform coupled with the balance of client machines provides the necessary environment to support distributed workload deployment on z10 hadrware.

What are you seeing? .... Has the mainframe become the talk of progressive data centers? Is there a chance? Or is IT management in denial clinging to Distributed Systems hoping the energy problems are temporary ... and that the chilled fluid rack mounted shower heads will avert the problem?

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I was immediately reminded of the new open systems technology a few years ago called "virtualization". before that it was mult-tasking ....

While I'd love to compare the costs of power for 40k Linux servers rack mounted against the costs of a mainframe with zLinux x40k .... I think I'll wait till 2011 when the cost of cooling is anticipated to be 2 times the cost of powering the dense silicon. Gartner states that the cost of cooling today is only 60% of powering .....

I wonder what new technology open systems will 'invent' next year ... maybe a bus and tag system for more robust peripheral communications.

As an equal partner in the delivery of business services the mainframe can be leveraged as "just" another technology, and its strengths can be exploited. In order to exploit those strengths, SOA architects,  SOA programmers and SOA vendors unfamiliar with the mainframe need to get spec'd up. Exploitation is only possible with the knowledge of the capabilities and strengths of the platform. Think of the possibilities ...

When the internet bubble began to increase in size ... and the ASP model became the talk of the town there were thoughts that the ability to cloak the platform behind the internet might support a resurgence for more mature platform like the mainframe and the AS/400. There were some providers actually offering services over the internet which were delivered by these platforms. I believe psychological barriers proved to be insurmountable, and the need to have data (a companies crown jewels) within the confines of the company's walls thwarted acceptance of this model.

SOA does not suffer from the remoteness of data, but does cloak and exploit mainframe systems. It allows mainframes to do the heavy lifting, and GUI enabled platforms to make life easy for users. This is just what the mainframe needs ... a way to appeal to the non-mainframe techies ... and to continue to support business. SOA is the 'Screen' providing a gender neutral approach to computing platforms.

The point is that mainframe software costs more than distributed software for a number of sound economic reasons and thus it is more expensive. But as most users know it has a much more rapid ROI, and provides more business value (savings) and thus delivers more value.

What is most disturbing is that mainframe software provided by vendors other than IBM has been relatively flat for years. I know for fact that is true with BMC mainframe software and market intelligence supports that the vendor constantly raising the price of software is …. IBM. Few users may have figured this out, and certainly procurement is still in the dark about the fact that with IBM IPLAs you don’t license a product you license a product number. While this may not seem like much … you need to upgrade the product every time the product number changes, regardless of ongoing maintenance. This upgrade has nothing to do with capacity changes; it is totally dependent on when a new version of the product is introduced by IBM. With each product number change carries an additional upgrade charge. Then there is the subsystem licensing, i.e. MLCs. When was the last time a new release of DB2 or IMS didn’t go up?

With BMC Software you license a product … reflected by a product name. Your maintenance insures the best possible support as well as your entitlement to new release and versions of the product as long as maintenance is maintained. I’ll let you do the math … but it is clear to see why they can afford to give away a free software license when in a competitive pinch.

The savings that IBM has delivered in regards to the hardware as been taken away with the price increases the levee on the software... and that is a reality!

I recently had the opportunity to host Bill Kerwin at a webinar which outlined a holistic approach which reduces the overall costs of IT while delivering higher levels of service to the business ... and isn't that what IT is all about.

I believe the key to these reduced costs is automation, and with automation errors and problems introduced by change are reduced leading to better service levels and that can't be done without software.

1. Yes mainframe skills are on the decline .. as are IT skills in general. Many companies and organizations such as BMC, CA, SHARE and IBM are addressing the specific shortage in MF skills through educational programs at all levels. It is working.

2. Mainframe as always hosted more internally developed applications than ISV applications, and the adage that "if something works ... don't mess with it". The requirement for ISV apps seems to have always been less of a concern on the mainframe. Thus, nothing has changed.

3. Yes, hardware is more expensive ... but that is only one of the 5 components supporting a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) methodology. However, you need less people to manage, the platform supports higher levels of service and provides greater business value then alternatives .... HP is mixing in Linux here ... so imagine the power and A/C required to support 40,000 rack mount Linux servers .... I'll bet a mainframe needs less juice and A/C ... certainly takes up less space.

4. Looks like a little teaming with Microsoft on this one ... titled "Linux on the Mainframe ..." but the text talks about the performance of Windows 2003. This is a real stretch ... mixing facts to get the desired results I guess. Enough said.

5. It seems they ran out of meat after bullet 1 ... I don't see any problem re-compiling applciations for a specific hardware platform ... especially given the reliability inherent with the mainframe. There is no reason for every hardware platform to mimic Intel. As the demand for Linux on mainframe apps increases the market will deploy mainframe specific compiles. Oh ... btw way don't you need to recompile for the variety of UNIX implementations including HP's UNIX?????

6. The analyst data supporting the low HP TCO appears to be a self-serving paper .. too short in length to understand the methodology and frankly my perception is that is would have been more meaningfult to compare the HP system to a comparable system. I got the impression they were comparing the TCO of palm applications on a hadheld and then the mainframe ... and the mainframe lost. DUH!

7. Yes, sales of mainframes are down but no one has ever said this was a growth market .... it is a stable high business value market.

It seems that everyone not actice in the mainframe market is standing at the edge casting stones .. interestingly enough you couldn't get all of them in a room long enough to combine forces ... could you imagine; Microsoft, Intel, Sun, HP, Dell and Oracle ... 

I wonder when Oracle will announce their new and improved mainframe migration effort now that they've assimilated Peoplesoft into their company ... it should be coming rather soon ...

Hello Al .... up until the Candle acquisition just a mere year and a half ago IBM had a pretty empty portfolio in support of zSeries monitoring ... they had virtually nothing. In fact, prior to the acqusition only the Tivoli executives could spell mainframe and that was only because a number had come from  VTAM software backgrounds in Ralegh, NC.

I would not include BMC nor CA in the camp with "artifical walls". I can speak directly for BMC, and we have been supporting mainframe and distributed for years .. and now that our customers' DS and MF organizations are merging we are meeting their needs for wholistic support for all computing platforms within Business Service Management. Our current products in Mainframe and Distributed go way beyong just monitoring, and including fixing things before they break, automating trouble tickets and most importantly; linkage with a customer's business services.

Oh, by the way ... we recognize Oracle as a leading DB vendor and offer support for Oracle environments as well as UDB in the distributed space. So when it comes to your end-to-end transaction management story ... don't forget the facts.

IBM, BMC and CA are all making investments in mainframe education at the college level. Maybe the tide will start to turn, and the fear of insufficient backfilling of mainframe talent by the world's largest companies will become a distant memory.

What other ways can the mainframe community provide assistance in recruiting mainframe talent? What about technical schools. It seems to me that a programmer can do without art apprecitation, advanced physics et. al. 

I remember years ago, IBM retrained a lot of administrative folks as programmers when they decided to get into the software business. Maybe it is time to look at the old logic / aptitude test they used to determine the ability to be successful as a programmer. What do you think? Are we aiming to high? Should we be recruiting at a high school level and offering students a college and technical school path to the mainframe?

An interesting item arose out of these focus groups which was more organizational in nature. It seemed that there was a planned merging of organizations to breakdown the old mainframe v. distributed cultures to more directly facilitate cross-training. This view was expressed by the majority of participants. Over the last few years we've seen this trend continue with Europe adopting quicker than in the States.

The concept we introduced was a graphical user interface to existing mainframe database tools to provide a more comfortable environment for distributed DBAs. The feedback was positive, so we developed the concept and have been delivering a set of DB2 and IMS products with GUIs. In essence we are putting lipstick on the mainframe to facilitate cross-training and operational efficiencies.

Last year I made a customer visit to a leading retailer in the U.S.. I met with their senior IMS and DB2 managers. When I asked them if they had seen SmartDBA (GUI interface for BMC mainframe products) they folded their arms (in a form of protest) and exclaimed that GUIs were not for their team, they were experienced Pros. They relaxed when I informed them it had been built for their successors, not for their existing DBAs. For you experienced mainframe DBAs don't dispare ... this interface is in addition to the ISPF interface ... and is meant more the new recruits who will be toiling away as you enter your retirement.

A side note: After meeting with the DBA managers, I met their Director who disclosed that after two years of proposing, the business was finally going to allow him to reorganize the DBAs and merge the Distributed and Mainframe departments into one organization. It's nice when plans come together.

It appears as if the distributed environment, with specialization in Oracle and Windows is the fashionable trend. This makes some sense ... these kids grew up with windows and graphical game machines, sothe slick GUIs today are comfortable for them. 

You career is like a product. The product's name is "yourself". You find this out when you have your first interview. In the interview is becomes quite apparent that you are selling "yourself". If not on the first interview by the second you'll know you need to sell. In product management, your product needs to be different if you want a better chance at selling it as well as reducing the sell cycle. This is no different than what you need to develop in "yourself"... differentiation.

While analysts are predicting a skills shortage across IT, it will be a larger problem happening sooner in the mainframe space. Mainframe aren't going away ... so differentiate your self. Think about a career in mainframe computing. 

So what happened? While there is no denying the positive effect of these smaller machines, they have not replaced the mainframe. The mainframe still has a prominent place in corporations which had earlier developed their mission critical business applications, and those focused on the key attributes of high availability, security, reliability and most importantly high transaction rates.

In most large corporations, the mainframe platform is still considered as a deployment platform when developing new business applications. When one of the previously discussed attributes is required, the price performer is still the mainframe. In spite of this equality the mainframe it is regarded as a second-class platform by the majority of IT personnel. With the obvious exception of those working directly with the platform.

In my opinion, the mainframe will never die. It will as it has in the last 50 years adapt to the needs of IT and continue to deliver on the critical attributes required for business critical applications.