IBM Unveils zEnterprise System, Ushers in Era of Smarter Data Centers

IBM (NYSE: 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.  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.
 
As a result, 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. With 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%.[4]
 
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 is aggravated by dramatic increases in cost and complexity amid a rising tide of sophisticated, data-intensive workloads in an increasingly interconnected world.
 
For example, using the zEnterprise System with the zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension and IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager, a financial services company managing credit card transactions on the mainframe using an IBM blade optimized for analytics can gain insights from the information in seconds. Previously, it would have taken hours for the two disparate systems to integrate their databases.  IBM estimates that complex database queries can experience up to a ten-fold performance improvement in this hybrid environment.In addition, with IBM's new design, the financial services company can extend the mainframe's always-on reliable qualities to its customer service applications running on IBM blades servers.
 
At Citi, IBM System z plays a major role as a core processing engine of virtually every line of business at the global financial services company. 
 
"The new IBM zEnterprise System represents a potentially revolutionary change to the platform and the next phase in the evolution of highly efficient, scalable processing opening up the possibility of hosting entire workloads on a single highly integrated system," said Martin Kennedy, Managing Director, Citi's Enterprise System Infrastructure.  “The new zEnterprise also paves the way to enhance the energy dynamics of our data centers.  As one of America's greenest banks we plan to take full advantage of the additional capacity and advanced power and cooling capabilities unique to zEnterprise.  Citi's unified technology decision making model and its recent efforts to gain efficiencies prepared us to invest in these innovative technologies that benefit our clients."
 
"The new IBM zEnterprise System represents a bold move to fundamentally change how data centers are managed," said Tom Rosamilia, General Manager, IBM Power and z Systems.  "The new mainframe is the fastest enterprise server in the world and represents a giant leap forward in performance.   This new dimension in enterprise computing-- extending mainframe governance to POWER7 and System x blades integrated into the zEnterprise System architecture--was developed over the past three years with direct involvement from a team of IBM's 30 top customers, which provided direct input at every stage of the development process."