IBM zEnterprise System

IBM has over 45 years of experience in developing the technical infrastructure needed to implement cloud computing. Beginning with Mainframe Virtualisation and rapid services deployment IBM has been innovating on the technology underpinnings of Cloud. IBM zEnterprise is the industry’s only heterogeneous cloud solution, enabling customers to build solutions optimised for the right platform instead of forcing everything onto only one platform. System z delivers these robust capabilities to provide the freedom to innovate with cloud computing:

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  Higher utilisation

  IBM mainframes have unique design features that enable 100 percent utilisation of CPU resources for extended periods of time without sacrificing service level agreements. Sophisticated System z virtualisation technology can help you run thousands of mixed workloads with priority settings that align application usage with business goals.

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  Increased efficiency

  The System z “shared everything” architecture has been finely tuned over the course of decades to provide the highest levels of service quality with the lowest requirements for energy, cooling, and floor space. No platform can “do more with less” than zEnterprise – allowing IT managers to deliver superior user experiences while driving down incremental IT costs as the business expands.

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  Improved productivity

  The scale and efficiency of a zEnterprise System gives your IT experts fewer parts to manage as you build out your cloud infrastructure. Rapid provisioning of virtual and real system resources means you can meet the demands of the business quickly and effectively.

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  Greater reliability and availability

  The most demanding set of IT users have entrusted their critical business processes and data to IBM mainframe systems since the 1960s. zEnterprise delivers even higher levels of reliability and availability – a key consideration when delivering cloud services that require rock-solid security and ready-when-you-are service availability.

A Bathwick Group whitepaper: The mainframe and the cloud

Nearly all of the discussion and debate surrounding cloud computing presumes that the ideal enterprise cloud environment will be built on x86 processors in a massively scaled-out architecture. Until recently there has been very little discussion about the potential benefits that the mainframe offers the enterprise as a host for a cloud computing environment.This paper presents the potential benefits that enterprises could derive from the mainframe as a cloud environment in terms of cost, reliability, scalability, security and flexibility. We also set out to highlight the changes that have taken place within the mainframe eco-system that mean many of the traditional criticisms of the mainframe platform are simply out of date.

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Bank of New Zealand reduces carbon footprint with Red Hat on the mainframe

"The choice to invest in Red Hat was largely based on its commitment to the ongoing development of the platform and its strong support capabilities, particularly in reference to supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the mainframe," - Lyle Johnston, infrastructure architect for BNZ

The University of Bari fosters innovation in the cloud Building a service-oriented cloud architecture on IBM System z and Linux

The University of Bari is strongly committed to developing cloud-based solutions for communities and businesses in southern Italy. The University needed a platform to facilitate cost-effective, flexible application development. The University leveraged the IBM System z Solution Edition for Cloud Computing—a virtualised infrastructure that uses IBM System z, IBM System Storage , SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for IBM System z and IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager to enable intelligent management of Linux virtual machines.

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Clabby Analytics Case Study: The Multi-faceted, Multi-service, Hybrid, Heterogeneous Cloud Environment at Marist College

When we think of cloud computing architecture, we immediately think: 1) virtualisation; and, 2) service delivery models. Cloud architecture is all about maximising the use of computing resources and virtualisation helps do this by increasing systems/storage/networking utilisation rates

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Clabby Analaytics - The Mainframe Virtualisation Advantage: How to Save Over Million Dollars Using an IBM System z as a Linux Cloud Server

Information technology (IT) executives should be aware that it is possible to save over a million dollars by consolidating Linux servers on a mainframe as opposed to deploying Linux on a group of x86-based multi-core blade servers.

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Solution Edition for Cloud Computing

The Solution Edition for Cloud Computing creates a framework for clients to get started with cloud computing. It is offered at an aggressive and competitive price point, and combines our industry-leading System z hardware, Tivoli software and IBM services.

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Clabby Analytics - The “Wow!” Factor: A Perfect Example of Using Business Analytics and Cloud Computing to Create Business Value

This case study is about how IBM found a way to extract additional business value from its existing sales pipeline database. But within this case study are numerous sub-stories and sub-themes, including:

• An innovation theme— how two individuals found the computing resources and tools needed to perform deeper analysis of IBM's sales pipeline database;
• A cloud computing story— how IBM quickly provisioned the computing resources needed to conduct this analysis by allocating resources from its own cloud pool;
• Business analytics story — how IBM's Cognos analytic tools were used to extract additional business value from the sales pipeline database;
• Workload optimisation story — how a mainframe proved to be the best system for the job when it came to analysing a very large database.

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