The case for opening up the mainframe market
By Roger Bowler
Mainframe professional and creator of “Hercules”
March 4, 2009
I have been following the legal battles between IBM and Platform Solutions Inc. (PSI) and T3 Technologies (T3) over the last couple of years with great interest. As the founder of the Hercules open source mainframe emulator project [ http://www.hercules-390.org/ ] I feel that we are impacted by many of the same issues that put both PSI and T3 out of business. As a mainframe IT professional, it bothers me that there is no longer any competition in the mainframe platform space. While all the press coverage related to these cases has helped to raise awareness of how important this is, the fundamental issues sometimes get lost. In reality, these are very clear cases and once people understand the seriousness of the situation I hope action will be taken to open up this important market. In my mind there are three major issues here:
Let me provide some more detail on each of these areas.
While some might argue that the IBM mainframe is just a big server, based on my 20 years working with mainframes and mainframe professionals, it is clear that mainframes are in a class of their own. Mainframe applications use unique languages, systems and interfaces that simply don’t exist together on other platforms. Mainframe systems use very different concepts, terminology and processes than any other platform. Mainframe professionals who write applications or administer mainframe systems have unique skills that take years to master and are different than the skills required for any other platform. IBM states that mainframes have their own “style of computing [ http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/zos/basics/topic/com.ibm.zos.zmainframe/zconc_whatismainframe.htm ].” I couldn’t agree more. Simply put, mainframe workloads must run on IBM-compatible mainframes and cannot simply be moved to other non-mainframe systems. Ask any mainframe professional and I think they’ll agree with me on this.
This level of uniqueness doesn’t exist for any other major business platform in the industry. Java applications can be run on almost any platform. UNIX or Linux applications can easily be moved to virtually any hardware vendor’s platforms. Windows applications can run on servers from any of the leading server manufacturers. Yet a mainframe application can only run on an IBM mainframe with IBM system software. If the mainframe market were dying or if mainframes were no longer used in mission critical environments, then maybe this wouldn’t be a big deal. But based on news from IBM, mainframe use is increasing and mainframes continue to be a central platform for the world’s biggest businesses and governments. IBM recently reported that the shipment of System Z computing power grew by 12% [ http://www.ibm.com/investor/4q08/press.phtml ] over the year. IBM also claimed recently that IBM mainframes “power the top 50 banks worldwide and 22 of the top 25 US retailers [ http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/25973.wss ].” Some analysts estimate that a quarter of IBM’s US$100B in revenue comes from the mainframe. Clearly the use of mainframes is not only important to both IBM and its customers, but the business is also growing.
Not that long ago, there was a flourishing market for IBM plug-compatible mainframes. In fact, companies such as Amdahl, Hitachi, Olivetti, Comparex, RCA, Fujitsu and others competed with IBM in the mainframe hardware market for over 20 years. Over the last decade, a new wave of solutions came to market that used a new approach to emulate mainframes in software. As a European, it was great to see many of these innovations coming from European companies such as Comparex, UMX, Transitive and others.
I was the original author of one of these mainframe software emulators – the open source project called Hercules. By creating a virtual machine that allowed mainframe system software and applications to run on commodity hardware, people who wanted their own mainframe for development or testing now had the option to run a virtual mainframe on their PC. A group of ex-Amdahl engineers created their own emulation technology at PSI and Fundamental Software Inc. (FSI) became successful selling its FLEX-ES mainframe emulation product. Both of these technologies were designed to offer customers the ability run production mainframe workloads on substantially lower-cost hardware.
However, all these technologies – both the plug-compatible mainframes from the last century and the new software-based emulators – needed cooperation from IBM in order to be viable. IBM mainframe system software is needed to run IBM mainframe applications. For decades, IBM provided licenses to the customers of both the alternative mainframes and the solution providers that had platforms based on software emulators including FSI, T3, UMX and PSI. As the cost of engineering compatible hardware-based mainframes grew, the plug-compatible manufacturers gradually exited the market. However, the emulator vendors were able to use innovative software to keep pace with IBM’s new offerings and it appeared that there would be a flourishing market of alternative technologies for hosting mainframe workloads.
Several years ago, I was optimistic that this flurry of innovation in the mainframe emulation space would help to reinvigorate the mainframe market and make it more viable for mainframe professionals like myself. However, IBM made the decision a couple of years ago to discontinue all licensing of mainframe software for use on non-IBM systems. This has effectively killed all the competitors in the mainframe market and left us with only IBM as a provider of mainframe platform solutions.
The goal with the Hercules project has always been to provide the thousands of mainframe devotees around the world with the ability to run mainframe software on their PC but currently there is no legal way to run z/OS and other current IBM system software on Hercules. This is a real shame. The situation today is that IBM is the only choice for mainframe platforms, despite the fact that technologies exist today that would allow customers to run mainframe workloads on alternative platforms. By only allowing IBM mainframe software to run on IBM mainframe hardware, IBM has been able to eliminate all mainframe alternatives and totally own the mainframe market.
While I am not an economist or a marketing expert, I am a mainframe professional and in my day job I develop software for mainframe customers. With no other legal alternatives in the market, software developers and other mainframe users are at the whim of IBM’s pricing and licensing policies. Following the abrupt withdrawal of FLEX-ES from the market, many independent software vendors needed to find a new platform for developing mainframe solutions. Our only choices were to buy a new expensive IBM mainframe or lease time on one of IBM’s mainframes. Yet, as the creator of Hercules I know that we could be using much cheaper systems for doing our development. It is too bad that IBM will not allow independent software vendors to use Hercules or FLEX-ES or PSI’s technology to develop new IBM mainframe applications. There are rumors that IBM may offer a mainframe emulation package for developers in the future but this would still mean IBM is the sole provider of mainframe platform technology. Why not open up the market to a broader ecosystem of solution providers? In addition, some of our customers would love the option to run some of their mainframe workloads on a much smaller mainframe, such as the ones that T3 used to sell. Yet again, with IBM as the only option in the market, we only have IBM’s very expensive offerings as an option for running mainframe workloads. This not only impacts us but these higher costs must ultimately be passed to end users and customers. This just doesn’t seem right. Not right for mainframe users and developers and not right for consumers who pay higher prices for services hosted on mainframes.
I strongly believe that there needs to be fair and open competition in the mainframe market. Customers should have the ability to choose platforms that meet their needs not the needs of a single vendor. I believe Hercules users and others should be able to legally run mainframe applications on non-IBM platforms. I’m not asking IBM to give away its software or intellectual property. I simply want mainframe users to be able to license IBM’s software on reasonable terms for use on non-IBM mainframes. If this were to happen, I actually believe that the mainframe market would expand and IBM would benefit through greater adoption of mainframe technologies. With fair competition in the mainframe space, mainframe users and consumers would also benefit as the cost of mainframe computing would likely come down to prices closer to distributed servers. Opening up the mainframe market would be a win-win for all and have huge benefits for customers who rely on mainframe applications.
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Copyright 2009