Smart Data Centers Feature Editorial

IBM has announced the zEnterprise mainframe server and a new systems design enabling workloads on mainframe, POWER7 and System x servers to share resources and be managed as a single, virtualized system. 

The new mainframe which is the most powerful and energy-efficient mainframe ever combines IBM's (News - Alert) new zEnterprise mainframe server with new technology--the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension and the IBM zEnterprise Unified Resource Manager.

Using the new mainframe customers can integrate the management of zEnterprise System resources as a single system and extend mainframe qualities, such as governance and manageability, to workloads running on select IBM POWER7 and System x blade servers. By the efficient management of workloads across systems as one, the zEnterprise System can drive up to 40 percent lower acquisition costs and reduce cost of ownership by 55 percent.

The zEnterprise System has been designed to address the issue of corporate data centers; the mix of disparate technologies that have been added over time to run specific applications operating in silos. Often these jumbles of technologies are unable to communicate with each other in real time and requiring separate staff and software tools to manage. This issue is further aggravated by a rise in cost and complexity amid ever increasing data-intensive workloads in an increasingly interconnected world.

Martin Kennedy, managing director, Citi's Enterprise System Infrastructure commenting on the new IBM zEnterprise System said that this heralded a revolutionary change to the platform and the next phase in the evolution of highly efficient, scalable processing opening up the possibility of hosting entire workloads on a single highly integrated system. 

Tom Rosamilia, general manager, IBM Power and z Systems said that the new IBM zEnterprise System represented changes on how data centers are managed. He added that the mainframe was the fastest enterprise server in the world which has been developed with direct involvement and input from IBM's top customers during the development process.