IBM mainframe makes it possible

  Overview

IBM System z helped Panasonic support their e-commerce site, introduce new promotions quickly, and react effectively to unpredictable work loads.

  Challenges

Panasonic is serious about e-commerce. When planning for work load to support our e-commerce site, it's very different than the old in-house application when you know how many users you're going to have. You basically know what they're going to be doing and when they're going to be on. With the Internet, the work load is extremely unpredictable and you need to be ready to scale up or down to support it and be as cost efficient as possible.

We want to be able to come out with new promotions quickly, to be able to react to unpredictable work loads that you find on the Internet ... the System z processor gives us the best ability to be able to do that.

  Solution

And with that said, the System z Linux mainframe gave us the best scalability, we felt. The ability to add capacity on demand, scale, flexibility of creating LPARS on the fly, leveraging the technologies that we've invested in our infrastructure and also, leveraging the resources that we had at Panasonic made it the best fit, the best ROI that we could bring to the table.

  IBM System z Virtualization

The Z-series processor has helped Panasonic simplify its technology infrastructure.

What virtualization is allowing us to do is to make better use of the computing capacity that we put on the floor. In the past, in the strictly distributed environment, what would happen with a new application that needed to be deployed, we would have to go through a procurement for a new server, go through a sizing, go through bids, bring the server in, set it up. It would need connections.

For availability, it would need redundant connections. Everything needed to be maintained. It was very complex and time consuming. A nd when you look at the distributed computing, you would size it for peak utilization, which means it would be sized normally for the busiest day of the year. But that also meant the other 364 days of the year, the server would be underutilized. And when you're looking at one or two servers, that may not be a large problem. But when you have hundreds of servers in your data center, that results in a great deal of computing capacity that's not being utilized. That's a major investment for the company. It's something that we want to be able to tap into to use that computing capacity.

Virtualization gives that. The z-processor running Linux under zVM enables us to virtualize images and utilize those resources more efficiently.

  Open Source and Mainframe

The System z brings together more than just the mainframe world. It brings the open systems world to a mainframe legacy environment. I think that's the point people sometimes forget. The Z-series is not an old legacy mainframe. It's an open systems platform that allows you to leverage multiple applications, multiple operating systems on a hard core legacy infrastructure.

We felt it was the best solution of Panasonic leveraging the best of all worlds, because of the capability of running native zOS on that platform and running Linux. So the intent was to run DB2 on zOS and run the front application servers on zLinux, therefore taking advantage of the zOS being the database engine really, that nobody really could stand next to, and then leveraging the open systems where Linux fits best.

So the E-commerce application at Panasonic that we gave the decision on is of course, IBM's WebSphere. The value of that is basically selling Panasonic's products through the Internet. So when you go to www.panasonic.com, you're coming into the System z Linux server hosting that application.

We've taken advantage of Tivoli storage management for back-up and recoverability.

  Capacity On Demand

We have more and more to do and less and less time to do it. The ability to clone environments on the System z allows us to do upgrades, to do maintenance on systems without taking them out of production.

The capacity on demand capability of the System z server was a major component in our decision to move to System z processor. The ability to scale quickly, to meet growing demands of the business and of our applications was a key advantage.

  Scalability

The System z for on demand processing definitely gave us the leverage of adding capacity, meaning the flexibility of adding capacity when needed and scaling it back when not required. So once again, we're able to shift resources back and forth between work loads to meet the needs of the business, to meet the needs of the development, to meet the needs of any new application coming on board, especially with the WebSphere technology which is our core application running on the System z under VM, running Linux we were able to turn around over a million dollars' savings running on that technology, meaning the z990.

  Success

I would describe our experiences with the System z as very positive. It has really increased our ability to react to new business demands, to react more quickly, to scale more quickly, to be more available, to be more agile as a business.

The Mainframe is back.