Solution offerings
System Z Server Consolidation
IT complexity in the form of server sprawl has become an epidemic in today’s business environment, and the primary remedy is consolidation. While a variety of options are available, System z and Linux offer a uniquely powerful and comprehensive solution for virtualising, consolidating, managing and sharing resources with optimum efficiency.
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It’s bigger, and smaller. As a later scalable platform, Linux on System z can accommodate more applications, including technologies like Web 2.0 and Java. A single System z mainframe can scale up to millions of web transactions per day, or scale out to manage tens to hundreds of virtual servers. All this capacity comes in a smaller footprint, reducing space, energy and management costs.
Single-server simplicity. Having all your modern applications on the mainframe saves time as well as space. Through its advanced virtualisation and automation features, System z allows you to achieve higher resource utilisation, from a single point of control. With its faster provisioning capabilities, you can create and deploy virtual Linux servers in minutes rather than days, accelerating time to market. Communication among applications is both smoother and faster on a single server.
Linux makes it easy to consolidate on System z. You can run multiple, heterogeneous workloads simultaneously and seamlessly, without cross-application conflict – resulting in higher quality of service.
Powerful results. Consider Bank of Russia’s transformation from more than 200 distributed servers to four IBM System z servers combining virtualised Linux applications with mainframe databases, saving an estimated $400 million per year and reducing technical staff by more than 80%. And the ultimate proof point: IBM’s own consolidation, which has reduced energy consumption by 80% and footprint by 85% with a System z/Linux solution. While Linux brings advantages to all platforms, only Linux on System z adds the unrivaled core strengths of the mainframe. The ultimate result: better performance, higher efficiency, top-tier security, lower costs, and faster response to business needs.
Linux on System z: simple, scalable, available, secure.
Linux on System z servers can do more with less, helping IT organisations to eliminate server sprawl and complexity and to build a cloud environment. Linux on System z combines the open standards of Linux with the unmatched power of IBM System z server and virtualisation technlogies.
Are you getting the most out of that infrastructure?
Answer a few simple questions about your business and your current IT setup and discover what a smarter computing infrastructure can do for your IT budget. Based on real-world, industry experience, the simulator will show you potential cost savings from consolidating your current distributed infrastructure to a smarter computing solution based on IBM zEnterprise.
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Clabby Analytics: IBM’s New z114: A Replacement for SPARC/Itanium Servers?
This report provides an excellent overview of our zEnterprise 114 announcement, takes a competitive stance, and gives Oracle and HP clients something to think about as they consider their next steps.
White Paper: TCA/TCO Benefits of Consolidating Databases and x86 Servers on IBM zEnterprise Servers with Linux
This white paper details the operational and financial benefits of consolidating databases and distributed x86 servers on IBM zEnterprise with Linux. Based on analysis using their independent ROI tool and industry-standard performance benchmarks, WinterGreen makes the following recommendations: "The larger, faster IBM zEnterprise servers have compelling TCO and TCA metrics that show considerable cost savings over VMware consolidation implementations. IBM zEnterprise is a viable data and server consolidation option. Linux on z is a solution available to the line of business to promote enterprise class capability while reducing distributed server systems operations costs ... As an executive responsible for controlling IT costs, you can use the approach outlined herein to analyse your situation and to quickly identify potential IT cost reduction benefits by doing a proper TCA/TCO analysis. The IBM zEnterprise Linux server technology cost advantages presented herein are achieved in part through server consolidation. Fewer application and database software licenses, fewer people, and less energy costs provide compelling savings in IT acquisition and operations costs."
The Bathwick Group: A foundation for database simplification, consolidation and cost reduction
This white paper positions zEnterprise with Linux as a foundation for database simplification, consolidation and cost reduction. The paper asserts that "modern mainframe technology represents a viable scale-up alternative to the current vogue for racks filled with blades, looking in particular at the way organisations can benefit in terms of improved agility, increased reliability and cost savings by consolidating Oracle databases onto IBM’s zEnterprise and Enterprise Linux Servers (ELS). The key to the zEnterprise proposition lies in the fact that it can be used as a scale-out within environment, providing a highly secure platform within which multiple independent workloads can be hosted ... If you are running more than 50 Linux servers, or have an Oracle cluster with more than 10 nodes you should, at the very least, be prepared to consider System z or the Enterprise Linux server as a 'scale out within' alternative to deploying cabinets crammed with blades."
Forrester: Server sprawl and cost reduction bring new customers to mainframe/Linux platform
This case study discusses the benefits new-to-z client Payment Solution Providers has realised since moving from Oracle on HP servers to DB2 and Linux on System z. It also includes discussion of the z114. The paper concludes, "On July 12, 2011, IBM took a more aggressive stance on pricing mainframe configurations at the lower end of the MIPS range with the announcement of the next chapter of zEnterprise — the z114. The z114 retains all the options of its larger sibling, the z196, but it is aimed at midsize firms whereas the z196 supports the largest customers. The announcement offers aggressive pricing, performance, and product bundling for hardware and software configurations ranging from 26 MIPS to 3,100 MIPS."
Clabby Analytics: Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina case study
This case study features Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, its approach to IT, and its implementation of Linux on System z. The paper notes that during the past two years, the client has removed 1,000 Intel-based servers and re-hosted the applications on Linux on the IBM mainframe. The paper concludes: "We found that BCBSSC is in lockstep with our perspectives on the primary role of IT is to serve business process flow (not the other way around); and that workloads should drive system choices (no one microprocessor does all jobs well)."
Transworld Data: Primerica case study
This case study features zEnterprise client Primerica. Since deploying its z196 in October 2010, Primerica has seen measurable benefits, as evidenced by the following quotes from CIO David Wade: “The zEnterprise is an unbelievable piece of technology. We have gone from 80 gigabytes of internal memory on the System z9 to 128 gigabtyes of internal memory on zEnterprise. We’ve seen a 30 to 40 percent improvement in performance over System z9 with zEnterprise. This gives us much more processing capability for the over 850,000 daily transactions per day that we process in CICS—and the 98 percent of our transaction load that we continue to process through TSO. In total, we process around six million transactions per month, and that is a conservative number.”
Endress+Hauser maximises availability and resiliency with Linux on System z: Ensuring disaster recovery measures up
The need: With limited IT resources and highly restricted maintenance windows, Endress+Hauser needed to improve the speed and reliability of disaster recovery, and also to reduce the total cost.
The solution: Moved SAP environment to two IBM System z10 Enterprise Class servers running z/OS and z/VM. Activated a total of 80 Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) engines supporting virtualised Linux servers. The benefit: The System z solution offers a highly flexible platform that enables rapid recovery from disaster. Virtualisation makes scaling up or down and provisioning new Linux environments easy andc ost-effective.
Clabby Analytics: IBM’s New z114: A replacement for SPARC/Itanium servers?
This white paper on the z114 announcement concludes, "The new z114 aggressively attacks the 'mainframes are too expensive' argument with significantly reduced hardware, software, and maintenance pricing — and with bundled Solution Edition pricing. It has loads of capacity; it offers the highest quality-of-service level in the industry; and it has the ability to efficiently handle workloads now found on Itanium and SPARC servers. For these reasons, we believe IT executives considering migrating away from Oracle’s SPARC- and Hewlett-Packard (HP) Itanium-based servers should look very closely at IBM’s new z114!"
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What is Smarter Computing
As the demand for computing on the Smarter Planet continues to grow, a new model is evolving to help us keep up. It's based on advances in system design, analytics, and service delivery, and it has the potential to transform the way we utilise IT. We call it Smarter Computing.
Smarter Computing Workload Simulator
The smarter computing workload simulator shows you the potential cost savings your organisation can realise through optimisation. It evaluates your current infrastructure based on a few basics questions.
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