Mainframes show strong signs of resurgence with Unisys entering the fray alongside IBM

Rethink IT, May, 2004

MARKET OVERVIEW

There are strong signs of the mainframe resurgence with even Unisys making an announcement just days before the z890 announcement from IBM. This is the main problem for IBM of making announcement dates, and the content, so public well in advance of the day.

The Unisys announcement offered much of what IBM is promising, with true on-demand computing and payments geared to the actual usage rather than the total system capacity. In a future edition I will compare the two companies' solutions, but for now the biggest difference is that Unisys is promising payment by business model rather than the system utilization for the future. To me this is the way to go, but it does create a problem for users in deciding what business model will drive the IT costs.

THE APRIL 7 MAINFRAME ANNOUNCEMENTS

IBM duly announced the successor to the z800, called the z890 rather than the z880 as I had named it. Delivery is not until the end of May so the announcement is in fact earlier than IBM would have liked--but the fortieth anniversary of the original 360 processor announcement was too good an opportunity to miss. This is because, as I have reported before, being able to introduce a system that is effectively compatible with a system that was first shipped 40 years ago is unique in this industry. It's just a pity that the presenter at the analysts briefing knew so little about the original 360 that he made a number of incorrect statements--surely IBM could have found a 'senior' officer or even a pensioner to get the comparisons right?

General availability will be two years after z800 introduction (well, 27 months to be exact) which allows for a 40-45% growth per annum for users of these models, although the G4/5/6 (and last remaining PCM) users are likely to be at least as big a target market. Then, of course, there are the non-mainframe users who are well catered for with this announcement, which for the first time takes the new product range both down below the z800 (by 30%) as well as upward by as much as 120%. All previous announcements have raised the entry level into the mainframe world.

There was also a 'mini' Shark announced for smaller users offering from 1.1 to 4.5Tb which will be called the ESS750. This looks like being priced at as little as $50,000 including software in its base configuration.

The z890, at the top end, will be upgradeable to the full blown z990 which, along with the remarkable absence of any technology photographs, suggests that the z890 is nothing other than a 'slugged' (or slowed down) z990 A08.

The z890 comes in just one model, the A04, but can be configured as any one of 28 different capacity settings. These will be numbered as below.

This provides for an extremely high level of granularity, but it still seems likely that within these 28 capacity settings (or models?) there will be a lot of performance overlap. The performance range will be from 4 to 210 MSUs (20/25 to 1050/1200 Mips) when all processors are allocated to s390 applications. However, the top end of this range is based upon the four processor model having an up to 11% better MP ratio than the z800-004. This is indicated by the z890 performance claims of 1.98 to 2.09 times the z800 uniprocessor performance and 2.19 to 2.28 times the four processor performance. Such an MP improvement seems unlikely as I indicated on the z990.

Memory ranges from 8 to 32Gb with 420 Escon channels and quadrupuled HiperSocket support up from four to 16 compared to the z800. All models except the entry model (capacity setting 110) can support up to 30 LPARS.

One of the major advances with this model is the zSeries Application Assist Processor (zAAP). A specialized Java execution environment optimised for the execution of applications based upon the J2EE open programming model. Such applications will now run more efficiently on zSeries and without incurring any zOS related software charges. This new offering is also available on the z990 where it is likely to be more relevant as for the z890 a problem is likely to occur when utilizing such specialized processors due to the four processor limit. Allocating one as a zAAP and another as a Linux engine leaves just two for normal applications, if in addition a CBU is required then this reduces the capability still further to just one normal s390 engine, around 250-300 Mips.

At the z890 level a zAAP would also require a large amount of work to fill it--for mixed applications possibly more than the system could generate.

The fact that any special engines reduces the number of s390 engines has already caused problems for some users on the 32 processor z990, so it is obvious that this will be worse on the z890 and IBM may well be forced to enhance the system to eight processors (very easy using the A08 z990 as the base) before long.

Another big issue for IBM will be that the manufacturing costs of the four and 210 MSU model will be identical although the sales price will vary substantially. This may lead to 'unbalanced' pricing, with the slower models costing substantially more per MSU (or Mip) than the larger models. Indeed, during the analyst briefing an entry price of $200,000 was suggested, which equates to $50,000 per MSU--five to 10 times the current market price of the z990! IFL and zAAP engines will be priced at $125,000 in the US but probably closer to 125,000 [euro] elsewhere--a 20% premium.