In February 2008, IBM announced the System z10 and a new marketing initiative aimed at improving the perception (and, eventually, sales) of the new mainframe. CIOs in larger enterprises will begin to see more emphasis from IBM on mainframes as the solution. What the CIO needs to ask is “A solution to what?”
History Is on IBM’s Side
The mainframe has a long history as a reliable and secure computing solution. With the ability to handle heavy transaction loads and massive batch processing, the mainframe has been a mainstay for the largest enterprises for decades. The advent of microcomputers and minicomputers introduced lower cost (and lower performance) processing to the masses. With the dramatic increase in power of the x86/64-based processors in recent years, many enterprises, including the largest, have implemented Web services, e-mail, file and print serving, database and many other critical business applications on these, so-called, low-end servers.
