IBM’s New Mainframe Takes On The Cloud
August 28, 2013
Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Tony Kontzer.
IBM unleashed its latest mainframe for the masses, the zBC12, last month. The new mainframe builds on IBM’s strategy of providing the technologies companies need to build their own clouds. A sleek beast that IBM says offers a faster 4.2 GHz processor and double the available memory of its two-year-old predecessor, the z114, the zBC12 starts at the same price as the z114: $75,000. For some perspective, IBM’s z990, aka the "T-Rex," started at $1 million when it came out in 2003.
Despite that price difference, mainframes figure to be an IBM staple for the foreseeable future. "There’s really too much at stake for IBM to let the mainframe die," said John Abbott, distinguished analyst at 451 Research, in an email interview. "It’s still at the core of IBM’s most profitable business, and still runs the most challenging enterprise workloads at the world’s largest companies."…
In fact, Abbott said that not only will zBC12’s low price draw new customers, but IBM’s previous moves to lower prices on mainframe software and maintenance motivated companies running older IBM mainframes to invest in updating those systems…
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