IBM System z: The Lowest-Cost Database Server Solution

Sometimes you just have to cut and paste!!!

 

IBM System z: The Lowest-Cost Database Server Solution

by Cal Braunstein in Enterprise Executive

Enterprises that trusted in the mainframe myths and moved their corporate databases to distributed platforms are spending 100 percent more than necessary on database servers, creating data integrity issues and increasing the data risk exposure by constraining the ever-shrinking backup window. By moving databases from shared-nothing distributed data servers to the shared storage environment of IBM zEnterprise systems and putting the applications on Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) processors and an IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX), IT executives can reduce their ecosystem costs by more than 50 percent per year. At Robert Frances Group (RFG), we completed a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis of the traditional distributed Linux and Microsoft Windows environment vs. a zEnterprise with zBX environment that consolidates the databases on the mainframe and found the distributed environment to be twice as expensive. Our study used the standard three-year zEnterprise leasing and refresh strategy and traditional five-year purchase plan for the distributed x86 scale-out scenario. IT executives should evaluate the shared zEnterprise database server alternative to lower costs, improve productivity and reduce data risk. Additionally, IT executives should work with IBM or a third-party lessor to structure a package that best meets current and future business, financial and IT objectives. We had several ideas and hypotheses in mind before conducting our analysis. Specifically:
• The scale-out distributed server model using shared-nothing databases is costly and inefficient, creates data integrity and operational exposures, and fails as a best practice. A switch to using the mainframe as a database server eliminates the need for database duplication and synchronization since the mainframe uses a shared-everything architecture. While the acquisition cost of the zEnterprise and zBX servers collectively runs more than distributed x86-based servers, this is more than compensated for by the drastic reduction in database arrays and their associated costs. IT executives should assess the platform options holistically rather than piecemeal to identify the optimal solution.
• A zEnterprise environment can place Linux applications on IFLs and Windows applications on a zBX. Using this tightly knit, workload-optimized solution reduces the number of processors required, improves application and system management, and uses a high-speed interconnect so performance isn’t diminished when shifting to a shared-everything database engine. A zEnterprise solution enables enterprises to improve automation, control, security and visibility to their applications and databases without degrading performance. IT executives should determine which applications and databases should move to a zEnterprise environment and perform a TCO analysis to gain executive buy-in for the shift.
• Several non-financial gains accrue when moving to a shared-everything storage environment and these should also be factored into the decision-making process. Having a single copy of data means there’s only one version of the truth, all outputs and reports will be consistent and keeping things in synch won’t require manual manipulation, which is error-prone. Most enterprises today spend between 25 and 45 percent of their time synchronizing the many database copies. The associated time consumption used for duplication also creates a backup exposure; some backups don’t occur when administrators are pressed for time. Business and IT executives should consider these data integrity and risk exposures.
• Most IT executives have blindly accepted as fact the theorem that distributed processing is the least expensive solution. This hypothesis has gained ground because of a focus on a Total Cost of Acquisition (TCA) perspective. If the only valid cost analysis is the TCA of servers, then this might hold water. However, when the entire ecosystem is analyzed—including administrator costs, application and middleware software license and maintenance fees, cabling, networking, servers, storage, floor space and power and cooling—this theory falls apart.
• When the zEnterprise is used as a database server and IFLs and zBX are fully leveraged—and the analysis occurs holistically—a different picture emerges. The zEnterprise environment costs more than 50 percent less than that of a distributed x86 ecosystem, mostly due to the savings on storage, administrator, warranty and software costs.
• The mainframe architecture supports shared-everything storage while all distributed operating system platforms use a shared-nothing architecture. The mainframe architecture is unique in that multiple workloads share processors, cache, memory, I/O and storage. Moreover, zEnterprise systems provide data, IT and storage management practices and processes that facilitate and simplify the centralized, shared environment and enable application and database multitenancy. This means mainframe applications can share a single instance of a database, such as customer data, while distributed systems force the creation of a copy for each application’s use.
• Often, companies have between seven and 50 copies of the same database in use, so every terabyte of data stored is expanded by requirements for archiving, backup, mirroring, snapshots, test systems and more (see Figure 1). This data store expansion is then duplicated by the number of copies the distributed systems require. Thus, 1 TB of data in a distributed environment could grow to in excess of 100 TBs—more than 10 times the amount needed when databases are shared using a zEnterprise. There are software clustering solutions to get around this distributed duplication phenomenon and some of the storage sprawls, but they’re partial fixes and only address certain data sets.
• Mainframe storage capacity requirements are a fraction of what’s required for distributed systems. Annual acquisition costs for additional storage on a mainframe will be far less than that for distributed storage solutions. The capital expenditure (CAPEX) savings from the differential in storage costs when mainframes are used as a database engine far exceed the added expense of the mainframe hardware. The mainframe’s smaller storage footprint will reduce the operational expenditures (OPEX) and lower the TCO.

The Methodology

We hypothesized that a large Small to Midsized Business (SMB) with revenues between $750 million and $1 billion might operate a more economical data center environment if it used the new zEnterprise architecture and the mainframe as a database server. Most SMBs run their applications on Windows and/or Linux on x86-architected servers that don’t offer the advantages of a scale-up architecture. Let’s assume AB Co. (ABCo) runs 500 applications with 75 percent of them (375) executing on top of the Windows operating system. The remaining applications (125) run on Red Hat's Enterprise Linux. Additionally, 10 percent are CPU-intensive and require their own blade servers. All other applications operate under either VMware or KVM, depending on whether they’re Windows or Linux applications, respectively. The application workload growth rate is at 20 percent per year.

We also assumed a Storwize V7000 Unified Storage System houses the databases for the mainframe and distributed environments. To keep the analysis from becoming too complex, only two sizes of databases are used (1 and 2 TBs) and each application accesses 10 databases, half of each size. The storage growth rate is 25 percent. There are a total of 70 unique databases, half of each size. For the purposes of the study, only the production servers and storage are included; excluded are the archive, backup and snapshot copies of data. Because a Storwize storage solution is used, we assume a 60 percent utilization is achieved in all environments.

We further assumed that 126 TB of storage is required to handle storage needs for the first 12 months of operation. This includes an additional 20 percent for duplicate databases for the mission-critical applications. On the x86 side, since this is a shared-nothing framework, a minimum set of seven copies of databases would be needed. This results in the total initial storage capacity of 770 TB being required to support the storage needs of the first year’s operation. Finally, note that DB2 10 for z/OS is the database software used to access all databases.

The x86 server scenario uses all IBM 16-core HX5 blade servers for application and database processing. The zEnterprise uses the Central Processing (CP) environment to handle all the database interactions, exploits IFLs for all of the Linux workloads and the zBX for the Windows workloads. In this way, each workload is allocated to the server platform best-suited to perform the task. We further assumed the x86 servers were purchased and kept in operation throughout the five-year analysis period while the zEnterprise boxes were leased and refreshed at the end of three years.

The Distributed Approach

We assumed the distributed environment used 24 16-core HX5 blade servers to handle the 500 Linux and Windows applications. Since these environments require shared-nothing storage, the Storwize solution ends up requiring 126 enclosures and 1,285 raw TB of storage. All the hardware was purchased with the financing of the purchase price spread out over the five-year period. To meet the additional capacity demands year-over-year, new servers or storage arrays were purchased using the same methodology.

The Mainframe Solution

We configured a zEnterprise z196 model 501 to handle the database management, along with 13 IFLs and a zBX containing 14 16-core HX5 blade servers. The only application in the CP is the DB2 database management package. None of the distributed applications are rewritten to run on the CP. The Linux applications are relocated to IFLs, where there’s better memory management, allowing for greater utilization (up to 60 percent) and performance. We assume that 10 Linux applications can run on each IFL. Due to the improved management capabilities of a zBX, we assume a 10 to 15 percent performance improvement per HX5 on the zBX compared to a standard distributed environment.

In the zEnterprise environment, the data I/O requests start from the applications in the IFLs and zBX blades and are relayed to the DB2 application in the CP for handling. Only the DB2 application in the CP interfaces with the Storwize storage arrays. This environment initially requires 21 shared-storage Storwize enclosures and 214 raw TBs of storage.

At the end of the three-year lease, the zEnterprise model 501 is upgraded to a model 601 so it could handle the database workload through the next three-year period. As is common when upgrading a mainframe, IFLs are also upgraded. The cost to upgrade each IFL is $6,000 and is factored into the new lease. When the HX5 blade servers are upgraded at the end of the third year, the number of servers shrinks by two. We assumed that even though there are two fewer servers in use in year four, the licenses and associated software maintenance should be continued. This way, when it’s necessary to add more servers in the last year of the analysis, only the software for two servers needs to be factored in instead of four.

Using the previous scenario, we find that, as expected, the cost of the mainframe environment exceeds that of the distributed x86 servers by $9.4 million to $5.3 million on a Net Present Value (NPV) basis. However, the $4.1 million differential is more than recouped on the storage side. The zEnterprise storage costs come in at $3.8 million on an NPV basis while the distributed storage costs exceed $21.7 million. This is a net savings in excess of $13.8 million. Moreover, this savings is more than the cost of the entire zEnterprise ecosystem.

Analysis Considerations

The TCO analysis was done over a five-year period. On the leasing side, the original zEnterprise processors (CP, IFLs and HX5 blades) are returned after 36 months and replaced by the latest-generation servers. By swapping out the old hardware and moving to more powerful processors, the CP growth is contained and excess capacity is minimized. The IFLs growth is retarded and maxed out at 25 while the HX5 blades shrink initially upon replacement and then expand to a total of 22 blade servers. The Storwize arrays grow from the initial 128 TBs (214 raw TBs) to 314 TBs (523 raw TBs). However, the number of enclosures only grows from 21 to 28. This small expansion is the result of leasing the storage and replacing the units with more dense storage at the end of the three-year lease period.

The purchase model assumes that all servers are kept in service for a full five-year cycle and that, whenever added capacity is required, additional servers are bought. Thus, with the purchase model, the 24 servers slowly expand at a 20 percent rate annually until it reaches 48 servers by the end of the five-year cycle. The Storwize arrays expand from an initial 771 TBs (1,285 raw TBs) to 1.9 PBs (3.14 raw PBs) over the five-year period. The number of enclosures jumps from 126 to 216 in the same period, as none of the arrays or enclosures are swapped out.

On the software side in the purchase model, we assumed that payments for all software licenses were financed over the five-year period. However, in the leasing model, the costs of software licenses were spread out over the term of the lease. The leasing model selected was a Fair Market Value (FMV) lease obtained from IGF at a reasonable, but not most favorable, lease rate. The cost of capital and the purchase financing rate were estimated to be 6 percent.

Findings

We found it’s more than 100 percent more costly to distribute database serving among the distributed x86 servers than to consolidate the databases onto a common shared database platform using the zEnterprise as a database server. This cost savings is true on a current dollar basis and NPV basis.

The primary inhibitor to selection of the zEnterprise database engine approach is the fact the zEnterprise server alternative is more than twice as expensive as the x86 servers. Business and IT executives see the price tag differential—$1.14 million for the x86-based servers vs. $3.88 million for the zEnterprise servers over the five-year period—and conclude mainframes aren’t the way to go. However, the server costs pale when the database environment is factored into the equation. The cost for the distributed shared-nothing x86 storage systems comes in at $10.7 million while the mainframe storage system only costs $2 million over the five-year period. The $8.7 million savings in storage acquisition costs more than compensates for the $2.74 million in added zEnterprise acquisition expenses.

When all the TCO factors are examined, the purchased x86 solution runs almost $34.8 million, or on an NPV basis, just over $27 million. The leased zEnterprise solution comes in at more than 50 percent less—$16.5 million on a current dollar basis, or $13.2 million on an NPV basis.

The zEnterprise solution costs remained fairly flat over the five-year period, with most of the yearly expenses in the low $3 million range. There were two years when that didn’t occur—years three and four, where the expenses jumped to $4 million and then dropped to $2.7 million. The purchased x86 solution saw its total annual costs climb from $4.8 million in year one to $9.4 million at the end of the five years (see Figure 2).

Details

The out-of-pocket charges to install the zEnterprise alternative is a wash compared to the installation costs of the x86 solution. However, there’s an $18.2 million savings that’s achieved by using the mainframe as a database server. Approximately one-third of that is hardware costs while another 27 percent savings comes from administrator costs.

In the purchased option, there was a requirement for additional software licenses and maintenance fees and growth in energy consumption. The total additional software expenditures in the purchase model exceeded $3.4 million, with most of that being software license and warranty fees. Similarly, power and cooling charges increased by more than $811,000 over the five years in the purchased model, or about 4 percent of the added expenditures (see Figures 3 and 4).

Other Considerations

There are several other advantages the zEnterprise platform offers that weren’t included in the cost analysis. Some of these are server-related while others are tied to the compressed storage footprint. Having just one copy of data reduces the risk of data integrity exposures caused by application or timing errors. This eliminates the need for syncing copies, which can consume between 25 and 45 percent of administrator time. Most companies today are concerned about the shrinking backup window; eliminating synchronization frees up time for backups. Companies often are hard pressed to get all their backups done as scheduled and are exposed, should a backup run fail to complete. There’s little time for a rerun. If a recovery is necessary, the most recent recovery point may not have been captured, potentially causing data integrity problems, lost revenues and customer dissatisfaction.

zEnterprise processors are architected for maximizing throughput and system utilization when consolidating multiple workloads on a server complex. Mainframes can consistently handle utilization levels of 80 to 100 percent without freezing or failing. Moreover, mainframes are recognized as the best platform for continuous and high availability, investment protection, performance, reliability, scalability and security. Because of its unique scale-up architecture, the cost per unit of work on a mainframe goes down as the workload increases; that isn’t the case with the scale-out architecture (see Figure 5). The cost/performance gains are due to the need for fewer administrators per unit of workload and higher levels of utilization. Mainframes can achieve higher utilization levels because of memory and processor sharing. Under the covers, there are hundreds of I/O processors to handle the data movements, freeing the central and specialty processors to focus on the application and task workloads.

This analysis didn’t examine the added costs of development systems. Here, too, the zEnterprise environment can share databases while each of the x86 test systems would have its own copies of the data. Moreover, users archive and back up the various databases and create snapshots. As shown in Figure 1, these database duplicates increase the rate of storage growth in the distributed environment over that of the mainframe solution. If these additional costs were added to the TCO, the zEnterprise advantage would improve even more.

Conclusion

We found that the zEnterprise reduced costs in all the TCO factors considered. zEnterprise hardware costs were 33 percent less than the x86 ecosystem costs while administrator costs were 28 percent lower. Warranty costs were 16 percent less and the cost of software dropped by 12 percent when the mainframe alternative was used. For much smaller SMBs or departmental systems, mainframes aren’t the answer, but for midsize to large enterprises, the economies of scale provided by mainframe solutions make a compelling case for organizations to re-examine their assumptions and consider the zEnterprise as a target environment.
Mainframe myths have led to higher data center costs and suboptimization. Organizations running hundreds of applications and multiterabytes of data should re-evaluate their architectural platform choices and evaluate whether or not a zEnterprise solution might provide them with a lower TCO. IT executives should insist on an evaluation that addresses the financial facts and ignores the religious platform wars. In today’s environment, IT must select and implement the best target platforms. The zEnterprise as a database server is a great choice.

Suggestions on how to save HP

As an ex-HP guy of 10-years standing, who is now an IBMer just want to put forward a simple plan for how to 'save' HP.

Sell the PC business to Samsung, Lenovo or Google
As IBM did with the PC business a few years back HP needs to get out of PC's.  HP has retained the Compaq brand for shelf space in large retailers, so my advice is to sell the PC business under this name which makes single digit profit margin to the likes of Samsung, Lenovo or Google.  The funds would right the balanace sheet and allow the business to exit the consumer market.  HP needs to retain the workstation and thin client business and scale down to focus on these high margin elements of the PC segment.

Get out of Printers!!!
Again being in the slowly declining but highly profitable printer business leaves HP exposed to the consumer market.  HP needs to retain printer maintenance and services, but exit the hardware and cartridge business.  The funds from this business would again aid the balance sheet.

What is left?
The business that is left is squarely focused on the corporate sector and has a healthy balance sheet.  With the war chest from the divestments HP can then go spending on acquiring software businesses in the space of Big Data, Analytics, Security and Cloud.  This would leave IBM focused on datacenter servers, storage, networking, consulting and outsourcing as well as software.

What to buy with the money?
Get serious about another segment in the software business, my suggestions would be:

• Symantec
• SAP
• Salesforce

These would all be expensive, but with the war chest from getting out of printers and PC's these acquisitions would be possible.

A hardware/software alternative would be to buy EMC/VMWare this would consolidate HP's position as number 1 in Enterprise Storage and they get the highly profitable VMWare...

In Summary
HP needs to be an enterprise focused IT player that innovates, rather than a dual focused enterprise/consumer company, because at the moment they are failing to execute on both fronts...

Language Barrier

Given all the recent press coverage of IBM's latest set of annual financial results and the prominence of the mainframe within these, figures the analyst coverage over the last couple of months around System z seems to be have in the main positive.  I have even had good feedback from a Enterprise Data Architect at a first meeting, following his recent attendance at a Gartner event. So against this largely recent positive backdrop I would like to focus on what I see as one of the barriers to the 'mainframe going mainstream' namely the language barrier.

What do I mean by the 'language barrier'?  Well as former colleague put it very succinctly when describing this issue - "we worship different gods and speak in different tongues" when we describe the characteristics of the mainframe than our distributed brethren.  Let me give you a few examples to illustrate my meaning:

OSA Cards Vs NIC
Now I am not going to attest to be a techie or a former hardware engineer, but why oh why do us z guys have to come up with a completely different TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for a network connector, namely an Open Systems Adapter when the whole industry called them Network Interface Controllers.  Check out IBM's very own website:

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/zos/basics/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.zos.znetwork/znetwork_25.htm

The first sentance for me completely encapsulates the issue I am discussing in this post:

Although the OSA card is the only NIC for z/OS, this is a bit of an understatement. The OSA card variants support Ethernet in all of its current implementations.

 If the OSA card is the only NIC for z/OS then call it a NIC and address the following issues which get replayed back to every mainframe advocate when they engage with senior IT management:

• Mainframe skills are in short supply
• Training people on the mainframe is time consuming and expensive
• Re-skilling existing staff will take too long

Now I fully appreciate to take a Windows admin and retrain him/her to be a Sys Prog will never be a 2-day training course, and rightfully so, do we really need to make it so hard?  At the end of the day the mainframe is only another server that connects to storage and a network?  If we want to make the mainframe mainstream again and attract the Gen Y'ers to the platform then we need to focus not only on GUI interfaces as is so often the discussion point, but make the underlying hardware concepts in-line at least in language terms with the rest of the industry. 

Take for example the area of storage, us mainframers talk ECKD and DASD when the whole rest of the industry talks SAN.  Now I am not going to open the debate here about what is better FICON, ESCON etc... but I raise it just to highlight that in every large shop I go to there is a mainframe storage team and distributed storage team, why? If as I say the mainframe is only a server (bear with me) then to have a separate storage team to administer it, can only be seen by the CIO as reinforcing any perceptions they may have (however correct or not) that the mainframe is expensive.

What am I proposing as the answer?
Well IBM can look through the lexicon of the mainframe and when it launches a new model (the z114 replacement for example) and take the bold step of proposing a Language Harmonization Program or LHP to bring in line mainframe terms with distributed terms.  If IBM changes what it calls the components of the box and the various interfaces the whole industry will come on board and within 3-years gone will be esoteric 'z-only' phrases and the mainframe again will have moved closer to becoming mainstream...

Feel free to comment here  for other LHP suggestions or raise them at the next #mainframedebate on the 8th April at 4-5pm GMT | 11-12pm EST. Or as always please don't hesitate to get in touch directly via my Twitter account @StevenDickens3

Febuary 5th Announcements for Systemz

If you haven't already seen the IBM announcements relating to System z let me give you my thoughts (for what they are worth) and why you should care:

zCloud
It really amazes me that Cloud on z or the much more snappily titled zCloud isn't getting more press.  Take for example:

US organisation Nationwide’s private cloud on IBM zEnterprise has replaced thousands of standalone servers,eliminating both capital and operational expenditure. The initial #consolidation exercise is estimated to have saved thecompany some $15 million over three years.

Check out the detail at http://ibm.co/13KWqeW

If you are doing Linux at scale (and by scale I mean more than 400 Virtual Machines) then the cost case for z is massively compelling.  If you want to throw enterprise software into the mix from the likes of Oracle or even IBM's DB2 and WebSphere, then the license savings alone can pay for the underlying tin twofold within a year.

The IBM Enterprise Linux Server platform as an underlying platform for a private/public Linux cloud is a great message and doesn't come with the 'legacy' bagage oft associated (incorrectly IMHO but don't get me started...) of System z.  For heavens sake it is a large virtualised server than runs Linux, how complex can that be.

Operational Analytics
As I have previously blogged, having a 'system of record' and then proliferating copies of this data to a myriad of distributed servers, just so you can do complex analytics against this data appears to me to be folly.  When organisations are taking between 8 and 12 copies of their core data and squirting this via a multitude of various ETL methods out to other platforms and then having to manage these disparate systems, then the costs, not surprisingly spiral out of control.  Not to mention the data management and consistency and operational decision making challenges this poses.  Why oh why not just keep your data where it lives and breathes i.e. in your core system and analyse it from there?  Surely this approach must be cheaper and not lead to a proliferation of data models...

Check out this Forester whitepaper for a banking discussion on this topic:

In today's dynamic economy, analytics delivers the new competitive advantage. Financial Services firms count on a consolidated, secure platform to perform real-time analytics. This Forrester Thought Leadership Paper, commissioned by IBM, examines global financial firms' perceptions on rapidly changing data - as well as the analytics landscape - and their plans to meet the challenges head-on.

Link to the paper: http://ibm.co/Xm5P7y

2013 The Year of the Mainframe

As we start to get up to speed in 2013 and following a week in IBM's Montpellier lab I thought I would kick off the year with some musings on two trends we should be looking for in 2013.

Analytics
As Big Data looks to replace cloud as the next buzz word in the IT industry, equal focus is also being placed on how you analyse this data.  From a mainframe perspective the box has always been the biggest data server in the datacentre and typically is the source of the organisation's most trustworthy data.  As the system of record or master data server the mainframe typically holds the one version of the truth when it comes to customer accounts or operational data.  The prevailing trend over the last 20-years has been to ETL data off the mainframe to distributed systems so that it can be analysed.  This logic was sound when the mainframe was unable to process long complex queries in a cost effective manner without buring excessive MIPS.  However as offload engines have matured and overall z core chip speed has increased this logic has eroded.  With the launch of IBM's DB2 Analytics Accelerator then the logic has been turned on its head.

Imagine if you will, the development of graphics accelerator cards in PC's and the rise of more complex games to take advantage of the underlying hardware capability.  Well imagine the IDAA (and I don't mean these guys http://www.idaa.org/) as a graphics accelerator card for the mainframe where graphics = analytics and you get the picture. Why take anywhere between 9-11 copies of your mainframe data on average and spread it around your distributed estate and then have to pay for the storage to store it, back it up and generally manage data that is at least a day old.  Especially when you can query 'fresh' operational data in-situ and trust its origin and security.

Cloud
Without wishing to labour a point the mainframe was the first 'Cloud' server and all my more 'senior' z colleagues will go misty eyed at the word 'bureau' and the parallels with the latest hip and trendy craze of Cloud.  So before I begin to sound like the metaphorical industry Dad let me elaborate on why zCloud should be a trend in 2013.  Looking at any industry definition of a cloud terms like; available, virtualised, scalable, secure and multi-tenant are central to a platforms claim to be a cloud.  Well the mainframe has had these attributes for the last 40-years.  However I fully get that this heritage has been based on z/OS and its predecessors and whilst there is still life in the old girl yet other O/S' are widely available.  So lets focus on Linux and particularly the likes of SUSE and RedHat in particular.  If you want a platform to handle extreme scale Linux consolidation and in particular handle workloads such as high I/O databases look no further than the mainframe.

In one recent RFI that my team responded to we positioned that a EC12 was able to easily accommodate 80 Virtual Machines per Core and in so doing be the cheapest platform for providing virtualised Redhat guests.  I know the last statement is up there with "the world isn't flat its round" but look at the numbers £131 per VM per month Vs £290 per VM per month for a comparable x86 and VMWare service...

If the above have whetted your appetite for exploring the world of z and how the mainframe continues to evolve in 2013, join me and my colleagues at the next #mainframedebate on Twitter on the 7th Febuary between 4-5pm GMT and 11-12pm EST to find out more.  Even if you think the above is heresy and you want to go 10-rounds on the numbers for zCloud join us and lets make it a lively #mainframedebate or contact me directly at @StevenDickens3...

2012 - A Year End Review

As we reach then end of 2012 I just wanted to reflect a little on the momentum I have seen in the mainframe marketplace over the last 12 months and give a personal view on some of my highlights for 2012, not all of these will be mainframe related so bear with me...

2012 has been a big year for the UK:

We have won the Ryder Cup in spectacular fashion as part of European team great comeback, in my case watched on an iPad whilst in bed next to the wife trying not to wake her up but wanting to cheer so bad.

The 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics, what a great few weeks to showcase all that is good about the UK and UK sport, so many great performances.

The Tour de France and Bradley Wiggins' epic ride as part of Team Sky's dominant display.

Enough about sport (unless you are Australian and then please contact me for more).

In the IT industry it has been another dramatic year:

At my former employer HP they seem to have lurched from one disaster to another, not all it seems of their own making.  This amazing company will rise again of that I am sure.  You only have to get past the press and analyst melee and look at some of the fundamentals, the storage business is strong, they have a top-5 software business (despite Autonomy), printer ink is more profitable by weight than cocaine, they are number 2 in enterprise networking kit etc... Meg Whiman will turn it around, she just needs time and to also get the analyst community to focus on the the 'real' value of the company not what they may or may not do in Tablets...

Perhaps a quote from the iconic film Wall Street needs to be applied:

"Stick to the fundamentals. That's how IBM and Hilton were built. Good things, sometimes, take time."

Lou Mannheim

Read more: http://www.finestquotes.com/movie_quotes/movie/Wall%20Street%20/page/2.htm#ixzz2Ef8OobVp

What a great segue into discussing IBM:

In my 2nd full year I have seen the good ship IBM sail on without any choppy water, we transition CEO's without fanfare or fuss in a slightly boringly efficient manner...

We have seen the EC12 launched, shame about the namebut z2101 would have been no better.  I am sure they could have done have been more creative, and perhaps we should look to our PureSystems colleagues when it comes to marketing and the fanfare they have managed to create...

 

In my own personal z world we have had a very interesting year:

 

• We have recruited 3 new z Business Partners
• Developed a zCloud proposition and demo facility
• Won some interesting new name, new business with non-traditional clients
• Built a strong foundation in a new vertical
• Worked with some interesting non-z IBMers to drive us into new client engagements
• Lost some valued colleagues (We miss you Mr. Gadbsy)
• Recruited 3 new grads into the z business in the UK (making 8 in total)

So as I start to look towards 2013 (if my manager is reading I will close all my deals first I promise) then I see a strong future, and watch out for these key themes in 2013:

Analytics on z - why on earth move your freshest data to another platform to analyse it, keep you master data on z and analyse it there.

zCloud - for a Linux based cloud, look no further, we are the cheapest, most secure, highest scale and the most license efficient - dare to be different.

So don't eat too many mice pies or drink too much Eggnog, have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and very prosperous New Year and please join us early in the New Year for the next #Mainframedebate

Cloud Computing and the Cult of x86

So firstly apologies, I have been a bit lazy of late on my own personal ramblings, and have been cut and pasting rather than being original, well that is going to change...

Over the last couple weeks I have observed a worrying trend in my interactions with clients and on the Twittersphere i.e. the cult of x86 and it's hold over the world of Cloud Computing...to quote a recent Twitter interaction, after asking a recent follower (you know who you are) for their views on cloud on z, I got the following response:

"Technically magnificent - totally impractical - won't run Intel Binary products. Chocolate teapot. (PS - I love Z and wish it were not so)"

 Well you can imagine my response!!!  For those with no imagination it went something like this:

 If cloud = intel and x86, then agree. What about Linux? (RHEL & SLES), we are seeing adoption for a Linux cloud on z 

I met with a large global outsourcer recently who has an x86 based cloud offering (which is losing money by the way) and we positioned DBaaS to them based on Linux on z.  Well after much mudslinging and a verbal battle they begrudgingly agreed that databases don't usually play nice with x86 virtualization and that there may be an alternative, especially since the approach we proposed was approx 40% cheaper!!!

It amazes me in this cash strapped times, that when you present a solution that is patently cheaper and has numerous other benefits such as industry leading security, availability and scalability, that you still get push back.  So let’s explore why we get pushback for Cloud on the Mainframe:

• Mainframe as a word has a dark meaning, in some languages it is a substitute word for old, in others it translates to proprietary.  Well my response to this is:

•  $5bn of R&D investment since 2010, and $1bn in the latest EC12 alone does not equal an ‘old’ platform and as for proprietary how does a server that runs 7 different operating (2 of which are Linux) systems and 13 databases sound?

•  Skills are hard to find – well there is some truth in this, but only because the box runs so damn efficiently that you don’t need and any army of IT Staff!!! I met with an energy supply company that has over 2 million active customers who has a mainframe team totalling one sys prog the other week and they only have their core billing system running on z, so nothing important…

• x86 is what everybody else is doing – well where do I start, have you heard the one about the lemmings? Or the one about the PC manufacturers who thought that Apple would never get a hold in the home computing space…I can go on but you get the picture.

So let’s be clear for all those x86 cult members who have found their way to the darker recesses of the blogsphere, namely here, read this whitepaper:

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/advantages/virtualization/platformmatters.html

And then contact me on Twitter at @StevenDickens3