IBM's $1,500 Mainframe Announcement

ttugarygregory@...

Apr 28, 2004

I ran across this article this afternoon and thought that I would pass it
along to the group. Now, if the operating system is as cheap as the hardware
...

Regards,

Gary

I.B.M. plans today to announce new server computers that behave more like
mainframes and are priced as low as $1,500. The servers will be able to run as
many as 10 operating systems on a single machine. One processor can divvy up the
workload - packing the capability of several machines into one - by building
several virtual machines that run on the underlying hardware. It is a
technology that has existed for decades in the mainframe market long ruled by
I.B.M.
The first of the server computers, which uses I.B.M.'s virtualization engine
technology, will begin shipping next month, and the prices of some models will
range up to $1 million. The machines, I.B.M. said, are the result of a
three-year research and development effort.
"Much of the technology is harvested from our mainframe business," said
William Zeitler, senior vice president of I.B.M.'s computer systems group.
I.B.M. asserts that its new technology promises to simplify the management of
corporate data centers and improve the utilization rates of the server
computers that run those data centers. Mainframes, analysts say, typically run
at 80
percent of capacity on average, compared with 10 to 30 percent for servers
running the Unix operating system, Windows or GNU Linux.
Many companies are working on data center management and virtualization
technologies, including Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Dell, Intel, EMC,
Veritas, Opsware and others. And virtualization is even being brought to
personal
computer technology, enabling several versions of Linux or Windows to run on
Intel microprocessors or Intel-compatible Advanced Micro chips. In December, EMC
paid $635 million to buy VMware, which makes virtualization software for
running Windows and Linux. And Microsoft last year bought Connectix, which makes
virtualization software.
I.B.M. will offer some of its new technology on its Intel-based servers, but
analysts say the company's real advantage should come in servers using
I.B.M.'s Power family of microprocessors. In the Power machines, the
virtualization
software is built right into the chip, as microcode, instead of as a separate
layer of software. Today, I.B.M. uses the Power chips in servers that run Unix
and in its midrange I-series machines, the former AS-400 minicomputers.
But virtualization technology opens the door to eliminating the tight link
between a specific microprocessor and a certain operating system. Microsoft's
Windows, for example, runs on Intel and Intel-compatible microprocessors.
Strategically, the I.B.M. approach is quite different from technology
leaders, like Intel and Microsoft, that specialize in either hardware or
software.
"In the future, advantage is not going to be so much in the chip or the
operating system, but in the management and control layer of technology," Mr.
Zeitler
said.
No company, analysts say, has more different pieces of technology it can
deploy, so the integrated hardware-and-software strategy makes sense for I.B.M.
Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company.

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9:35 pm