IBM System z - Migrate to IBM

Migrate to System z

Migrating to System z has never been easier or more worthwhile

Leadership

Migrating to an IBM System z has never been easier. And that decision has never made more economic sense. System z leadership in virtualisation, storage connectivity, Linux, mixed workloads, and SOA presents a compelling case.

The new System z models, priced to satisfy a wide range of customer needs, mean mainframe Quality of Service is within reach of nearly all organisations. Highly granular upgrade options enable System z platforms to support optimum levels of system flexibility and control. Specialty processors (IFL's, zIIPs, zAAPs) that help reduce IBM software usage costs and accelerate workload execution make the migration case even stronger. So do security certifications like EAL 5, and the intrinsic security of hipersockets and other unique features.

Migrations that meet customer needs can benefit from decades of world wide experience. The System z staff can help move workloads to our platform to enable compelling levels of value, help reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), and enhance workload performance. With System z's emphasis on open and industry standards (Linux, Java etc), the applications and processes that customers need for business advantage can efficiently execute.

Highlights

System z, the flagship for IBM Systems innovation and the hub of the infrastructure, provides an advanced combination of security and resiliency features to enterprises that require high levels of application availability and information processing, and the capability to reallocate resources on the fly to match changing business priorities.

• Collaboration hub for Enterprise
  • enterprise security management
  • enterprise business resilience management
  • enterprise workload management
  • enterprise hub for data & SOA
• Built using open and industry standard technologies
• Provides capabilities to establish an enterprise-wide Service Oriented Architecture
• Built on a heritage of corporate data and transaction serving
• Built on nearly four decades of IBM virtualisation heritage and technology enhancement

Competitive comparison

Feature	Potential Benefit	IBM	HP
Binary Compatibility for Application Code	Smooth transition from one generation of technology to the next. No recompile of application code required by the customer.	Yes	Limited
Goal Mode workload scheduling provides autonomic systems management capabilities	Helps minimise need for operator intervention to allocate resources, lowering resources, helping to lower costs, and reduce the chance for human error. Helps maximise system utilisation, typically >70%	Yes	No – rules based scheduling
Dual Instruction and Execution Unit on PU	Fast check for soft errors allows recovery on the fly.	Yes	No

Migration pathways to IBM System z

Take a look at your current system and see how the System z platform can address your business needs.

Migrate from existing platform		Customer Requirements	Consider Migration to
HP Entry Integrity (rx1620, rx2620) HP Alpha servers HP 3000, HPTC Clusters and DIGITAL servers HP BladeSystem		UNIX or Linux applications on a platform with enterprise-class functionality Reduced space requirements Reduced power requirements Increased system availability Infrastructure simplification	IBM System z Integrated Facility for Linux with the sophisticated system virtualisation of z/VM

Featured case study

Overview

First National Bank of Omaha takes a distributed environment back to the mainframe and gains reliability, scalability and a simplified infrastructure. First National Bank is a 9 billion dollar financial institution within a 16 billion dollar holding company. Their primary business is financial services from credit card issuing to merchant acquiring to your traditional banking products and we also do investment products in insurance such as, brokerage, annuities, and equities.

FNBO decided to attack the costs of managing multiple platforms. With close to 600 different hardware computing platforms, FNBO was managing multiple operating systems running on multiple different vendor platforms. In addition, those platforms would not scale easily without buying additional hardware.

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Why proactive migration is a wise strategic choice

Migrating from one server platform to another can be challenging. But when you're faced with a server platform that can no longer support your business needs, proactive migration is a strategic step in the right direction.

Who should migrate?

Migrating from an HP platform can be an easy, well-traveled road. With IBM’s broad range of offerings, you can choose the system that is the best enabler for your business and IT objectives.

Who should migrate	Benefits	HP Server Migration Pathways
Large enterprise and mid-market HP server customers with installed mainframes who are also running UNIX and/or Linux on HP Entry Integrity (rx1620, rx2620), HP Alpha servers, HP 3000, HPTC Clusters and DIGITAL servers, Architects, DC managers and CIOs with Non-Stops and multiple HP 3000 installed in need of consolidation	Reduced cost and complexity of underutilised servers; gain high levels of security and resiliency	IBM System z™ (z10 or zEnterprise)

Migrating to IBM® can help customers optimize their IT while improving risk management and business flexibility. With flexible, powerful IBM server offerings, organizations are finding solutions to meet their critical technical needs and business goals.

LightEdge Solutions
LightEdge is a leading provider of fully managed network and business services, voice services and hosting for small — and medium-sized businesses. By migrating to an IBM System x™, BladeCenter® and System Storage™ solution, LightEdge has improved its response time to customers and decreased systems-management time.

"It was obvious with the IBM BladeCenter technology that IBM was light years ahead of the competition." — Joe Shields, Director of Systems Engineering and Operations, LightEdge Solutions

Devon Health Services
Devon Health Services, a national healthcare cost management company, helps customers identify and successfully combat the factors responsible for rising healthcare costs. Since 2005, when Devon began migrating its IT infrastructure to IBM BladeCenter, it has enjoyed notable savings in power usage. In addition, IBM disaster recovery solutions have significantly boosted the company's risk management efforts.

"When our applications exceeded the performance on the previous servers, we were able to go from an older HP on to a cutting-edge blade platform and our performance has increased." — Justin Hawley, Director of IT, Devon Health Services

Intel, and Itanium, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

Hear it from us, not our competition

The IBM System z is getting physically smaller, helping with power efficiency, becoming easier to operate, offering more security features and growing increasingly "open"

The following questions and answers address frequent inquiries by new-to-System z decision-makers whose interest in IBM System z™ technology has been sparked. The sales of IBM System z servers have been growing steadily since the year 2000.

The following Q & A provides some insight to explain the growth. IBM's System z servers—System z—are NOT going away. What System z is doing is getting physically smaller, helping with power efficiency, becoming easier to operate, offering more security features and growing increasingly "open." These attributes, among others, form the source of appeal for IBM System z.

Q: Will there be enough of a skilled workforce to cost-effectively support my mainframe in the future?

A: We intend to maintain a balance between the mainframe growth and the skilled workforce. Although much of the mainframe workforce is coming up on the age of retirement, IBM has initiated a program called the Academic Initiative to help provide continued availability of mainframe skills. The goal is to grow the System z skills base to 20,000 skilled people by 2010. The program is designed to increase the availability of System z competencies by providing mainframe courses, student contests, interactive e-learning modules, workshops, residencies, internships and hubs that schools around the world are using remotely.

Summary: In addition to educating the next generation of mainframe experts, our goal is to continue to simplify and enrich IBM z/OS® systems management capabilities. This can help customers to increase the size of their System z installations without necessarily increasing their staffing requirements. We are investing many millions in mainframe simplification, including a simpler management user interface.

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Q: Are ISVs interested in supporting the IBM mainframe over the long term and, if so, what are the benefits of their sticking with System z?

A: Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are enthusiastic about System z, and IBM continues to recruit ISVs aggressively for the platform. Over 1000 ISVs build, sell and support their software applications on IBM System z9™. ISVs develop solutions for the traditional critical operating environments like z/OS and z/VSE™, as well as Java™, Linux® and Open Source. Mainframes typically run large-scale, critical applications that help drive the business of the world's major enterprises. We are definitely not talking basic print-file type applications here.

These application vendors recognise that the majority of the world's critical business data resides on IBM System z servers, including applications such as SAP, PeopleSoft, and Oracle. The security and resilience capabilities of the System z platform are legendary, per the Evaluation Assurance Level — a numerical grade assigned after the completion of a common criteria security evaluation.

Summary: Every year for the past five years, the number of ISV applications overall has continued to grow. IBM delivers performance and flexibility which, in turn, help improve the performance of the ISV applications.

Q: Will putting Linux on System z provide me with superior application availability, performance and TCO?

A: Linux on System z grows more cost-competitive with each year, due to refinements to host operating system, pricing and flexibility. The IBM zEnterprise System is expanding the economy of server consolidation and IT optimization with z/VM and Linux. Consolidation of distributed servers onto a single IBM zEnterprise 196 (z196) server can result in:

• Up to 80% reduction in energy cost¹
• Up to 70% reduction in labor cost¹
• Up to 90% reduction in software costs²

Linux and z/VM on IBM zEnterprise extends its industry leadership in large-scale, cost-efficient virtual server hosting for server and application consolidation and IT optimization. Linux and z/VM continue to deliver unique business values that exist on the System z architecture only.

¹ When consolidating distributed environments on to Linux on System z. IBM Internal Study based on Oracle SW with Nehalem 4 core running 25% utilization. Results may vary.
² When consolidating distributed Oracle licenses on to Linux on System z. IBM Internal Study based on Oracle SW with Nehalem 4 core running 25% utilization. Results may vary.

• Linux on IBM zEnterprise

The System z is designed to handle multiple workloads, and IBM z/VM® extends this capability to Linux users who run Linux on an Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) under z/VM. By using these sophisticated systems-management capabilities, a single IFL might be able to replace numbers of Sun, HP or Intel® engines. In fact, many customers have realised significant savings by consolidating large numbers of servers onto a single System z footprint. The Nationwide Insurance Company recently reported at LinuxWorld 2006 that they were able to run 320 virtual machines (with a target by the end of this year of 600 virtual machines). In the December, 2005, issue of Byte and Switch, Hannaford Bros, Inc. reported successfully consolidating 300 HP Intel servers onto their System z. Although your mileage might vary, clearly there are significant potential benefits to be gained by consolidating large numbers of servers onto one, as Hannaford and Nationwide have done.

A primary strength of IBM System z servers is the capability to run multiple, concurrent enterprise applications and dynamically allocate resources designed to meet business requirements. This is different from dedicating a single server to a single application. The value of the System z is in its overall capacity and its ability to manage that capacity in a sophisticated cost-effective fashion, which is far more than the one-dimensional view of performance based on CPU clock speed.

IBM's virtualisation software can enable the server's disk storage, memory, processor and network resources to be shared among all of the virtual servers, leveraging z/VM capabilities to manage the virtual servers dynamically to help meet the business objectives set by the user.

Summary: This virtualisation software, coupled with advanced hardware technology like IBM System z HiperSockets™, can help eliminate the need for a potentially expensive and complex external network for inter-server communication, and the need to acquire dedicated resources for each individual server in the solution. Additionally, System z HiperSockets provides extreme security compared to the communication alternatives like TCP-IP, for example. System z provides the quality of service, flexibility and control, as well as the security IBM is renowned for — all within the price and value boundaries that customers seek.

Q: Select analyst whitepapers contend that other systems can deliver better availability at a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO) of the IBM System z mainframe. How do we respond to that?

A: We consider those contentions to be just that: strongly held opinions. It is a mistake to limit analysis of the total cost of a system to factors such as hardware and software costs. This approach fails to include critical TCO components, such as the cost of outages, and security breaches, and advantages of the System z.

Although a TCO analysis that compares only software and hardware costs at times might appear favorable to distributed servers, it is IBM's position that a comprehensive TCO for any system should include continuing costs, such as software support costs, cost of downtime, and the cost of personnel to manage the systems, not just acquisition costs. Availability, business continuity, security, utilisation and performance are critical elements to be considered in TCO analysis. Because mainframes typically provide higher utilisation and automated workload, per processor software costs can be lower, software management costs can be lower, overall administration costs can be lower, power and cooling can be lower and there can be less demand for expensive floor space.

Summary: The bottom line is that the when you consider all of these critical factors, the TCO for mainframes can be shown to be lower over the life of the asset. The mistake is to measure TCO with just two variables, hardware and software costs. Doing that is like measuring performance based solely on clock speeds.

Q: Is IBM maintaining its position as a technology leader?

The IBM System z continues to be a leader in the industry in many areas of technology, such as virtualisation and systems automation technology. For the last decade, clients around the world have benefited from the strengths of Linux on System z:

• Single server simplicity—easy to scale, easy to manage, easy to do more with less
• High flexiblity—outstanding virtualization for advanced resource utilization and dynamic resource allocation
• Efficient workload optimization—superior levels of systems management
• Unmatched qualities of service—rock-solid security and reliability
• Optimized infrastructure that can help reduce costs

• Read about client success stories and recommendations.

Summary: This claim to technology leadership in announcing 90 nm was a real surprise to IBM, since we had already been shipping 90 nm microprocessor technology in the IBM System z9 for months.

The mainframe at work
A new flash demo shows how IBM virtualized its own data centers on the IBM System z, known to offer best in the industry Total Cost of Ownership.

GTS Server Consolidation and Migration Solution
A new solution approach, calibrated by IBM’s own IT Transformation experience, for consolidation and migration of IT assets including those from 3^rd party providers such as Sun and HP.

Using exclusive analytics and modeling, IBM identified the potential for significant savings through virtualization on IBM System z and has now incorporated these capabilities into new services for our customers. The new Server Consolidation and Migration Solution from GTS leverages innovative automation techniques and a "Factory like" services delivery approach that can reduce the cost and improve the quality of the transformation.

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