IBM Ships 1000th IBM eserver z900

ARMONK, NY, September 24, 2001 — IBM announced that it shipped its 1,000th IBM z900 today to Boscov's, the largest family-owned department store company in the U.S. Boscov's plans to consolidate its Windows NT server farm on a single z900 running Linux.

Boscov's, which operates 35 department stores in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Maryland, will initially move its print and file server workloads from up to 44 servers to Linux virtual servers on the z900. The company also has plans to move its e-commerce and database applications to Linux on the mainframe and replace four Web servers with WebSphere Commerce Suite Pro Edition for Linux for z900. In addition, it will boost data storage throughput and application flexibility and scalability by connecting the z900 to the Linux-enabled IBM Enterprise Storage Server (code named "Shark").

"A mainframe running Linux is a winning solution for our business," said Harry Roberts, chief information officer, Boscov's Department Stores, LLC. "Over the last several years, we've added one server per month to our server farm. This meant adding a new server administrator for every 10 servers. The increasing complexity and difficulty of backing up the large and growing server farm was becoming a major concern."

"Selling the 1,000th IBM z900 is a major milestone for us," said John Morris, vice president, IBM zSeries. "More and more businesses are using Linux on the mainframe to help them achieve dramatic savings in space, energy and support costs. The power and reliability of the z900, the cost savings benefits of Linux and the ease of management when compared to a server farm are prompting customers like Boscov's to explore how Linux on the mainframe solves business problems with unmatched flexibility and efficiency."

Interest in Linux on the mainframe for server consolidation has helped drive three consecutive quarters of double-digit growth in IBM mainframe sales. In addition, industry analyst firm IDC recently released its 2Q 2001 worldwide server market share report, which showed that IBM gained 5.3 points of worldwide server market share, while Sun, HP and Compaq all lost share. IBM also recently launched a television commercial in the U.S. to promote the advantages of Linux for server consolidation on the z900 mainframe.

IT analyst firms Hurwitz Group and Matterhorn Group have concluded that the mainframe provides a cost-effective, energy-efficient alternative to the server farm for businesses. While a typical configuration of 750 Sun servers costs approximately $620/day in electricity to run, a single z900 -- running the same workload -- costs only $32/day, a power saving ratio of nearly 20-1. The savings are even more dramatic when floor space requirements of a server farm are considered. The average server farm requires some 10,000 square feet of floor space compared with only 400 square feet for a single z900. At an average of 100 Watts per square foot, the savings can be significant.

The z900 began shipping to customers around the world in December 2000.

IBM news releases and fact sheets are available at ibm.com. For more information about IBM enterprise servers, go to ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries.

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