Everyone knows that mainframes are the best computers you can have. You can run them locally, you can hide them in the cloud, and you can link them together into a massive processing network. But we also know that there are smaller platforms out there that work differently. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if you could run them all from one place?
Last summer we were excited by the announcement from IBM of its new zBC12 mainframe computer. The zBC12 followed the previous year’s announcement of the zEC12 (Enterprise Class), and 2011 saw the z114, with 2010 giving us the z196. So what’s special about those mainframes?
Well, in addition to IFL, zIIP, and zAAP specialty processors, and massive amounts of processing power, they came with the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension (zBX), which lets users combine workloads designed for mainframes with those for POWER7 and x86 chips, like Microsoft Windows Server. So let’s unpick this a little.
One issue many companies have after years of mergers and acquisitions is a mixed bag of operating systems and platforms. They could well have server rooms across the world and not really know what was running on those servers.
IBM’s first solution to this problem was Linux on System z. Basically, a company could take hundreds of Linux servers and consolidate them onto a single mainframe. They would save on energy to drive the servers and cool them, and they would get control of their IT back.
IBM’s second solution, as we’ve just described, was to incorporate the hardware for Linux and Windows servers in its mainframe boxes. You’d just plug in the blades that you needed and you had full control over your Windows servers again (plus all the benefits of having a mainframe).
But what about if you could actually run Windows on your mainframe? That was the dream of some of the people at Mantissa Corporation. They did a technology demo at SHARE in August 2009. According to Mantissa’s Jim Porell, Network World read their abstract and incorrectly assumed that they were announcing a product – which they weren’t. The code is still in beta. But think about what it could mean: running all your Windows servers on a mainframe. That is quite a concept.
Again, according to Jim, they can now have real operating systems running under their z86VM, although, so far, they are the free versions of Linux. Their next step will be to test it with industrial strength Linux distros such as Red Hat and Suse. And then, they will need to get Windows running. And then they’ll have a product.
Speaking frankly, Jim said that currently they have a bug in their Windows ‘BIOS’ processing in the area of plug-and-play hardware support. Their thinking is that it’s a mistake in their interpretation of the hardware commands and, naturally, they’re working to resolve it.
The truth is that it’s still early days for the project, and while running Linux is pretty good, we can already do that on a mainframe (although you might quibble at the price tag for doing so). But once the Mantissa technical people have cracked the problems with Windows, it will be a product well worth taking a look at, I’m sure. But they’re not there yet, and they’re keen to manage expectations appropriately.
Jim goes on to say that once the problems are solved it’s going to be about performance. Performance is measured in a couple of ways: benchmarks of primitives, benchmarks of large-scale for capacity planning, end user experiences, and what they are willing to tolerate. So it seems that they have business objectives around performance where they could be successful if they supported only 10 PCs, then more successful with a 100 PCs, and even have even greater success if they can support a 1000 PCs.
Jim Porell describes z86VM as really just an enabler to solving a wide range of ‘customer problems’ by enabling direct access between the traditional mainframe and the PC operating systems that are co-located with it.
I think that anything that gets more operating systems running on mainframe hardware has got to be good. And I’m prepared to wait for however long it takes Mantissa to get Windows supported on a mainframe. I’ll definitely feel then that I’m having my cake and eating it!
Showing posts with label System z. Show all posts
Showing posts with label System z. Show all posts
Sunday, 15 June 2014
Sunday, 8 July 2012
Higgs boson exists
This week saw scientists at CERN pretty much claim to have found a new subatomic particle – the boson predicted half a century ago by theoretical physicist Peter Higgs. The discovery allows physics to work because particles can now have mass. But, of course, it opens the door to lots of other questions such as why is there more matter than anti-matter in the universe.
So, in a week when scientists and non-scientists have been talking about bosons and fermions, and quarks and leptons, IBM has been pushing the envelope with an Augmented Reality (AR) app for shoppers owning a smartphone! The app, they claim, can automatically deliver personalized coupons, offers, customer reviews, and hidden product details to the potential customer.
The app doesn’t rely on barcodes or RFID tags to recognize products, but it does need a camera. The app compares a captured image with those in its database. If the product packaging matches the image-processing algorithm, it will automatically overlay digital details of the product on the image.
These details could include nutritional information, price, reviews, and discounts. And, you can opt into a social networking feature that delivers comments or reviews from friends and family about that product.
While a shopping AR app may, in many ways, seem trivial, it is opening the door for a whole new world of living. AR could be as revolutionary as the Internet. Think about it – you visit a new city, say Paris, for the first time, and on your phone screen comes information about every building and statue that the guide books know about. Or, perhaps, your car won’t start, so you point your camera at the engine and it identifies where the oil should go, or the brake fluid, etc. Not that I’d trust these ones, but an inexperienced surgeon operating on a patient could see AR information, or someone who’d never flown a plane before but needs to land it successfully (come on, you’ve seen it often enough in the movies and on TV).
Other news this week is that Dell is continuing to reposition itself with its $2.4 billion bid for Quest Software. With the growth in sales of tablet devices and the drop in sales of desktop and laptop PCs, as well as the growth in cloud computing, Dell is moving away from being just the hardware supplier that we’ve known for so long.
Quest is probably best known for its TOAD product, which is used to build, manage, and maintain databases. But Quest also has a range of other products including Shareplex, Lightspeed, Netvault, and Foglight. Dell apparently plans to make Quest, which has 1,300 software developers, the core of its software group, which it expects to grow into a $2 billion-a-year business over the next three years.
Dell’s other recent acquisitions include Wyse Technology, Make Technologies, Clerity Solutions, AppAssure, SonicWALL, and Force10 Networks.
And finally, why not become part of the IBM System z poster? Go to http://part-of-z.de/, complete the form and upload your photo. You then have a chance of being one of the 150 faces that will appear on the poster. But if you’re not one of the chosen faces, you’ll still receive a printed poster afterwards. You’ve got until 31 July to send in your picture.
So, in a week when scientists and non-scientists have been talking about bosons and fermions, and quarks and leptons, IBM has been pushing the envelope with an Augmented Reality (AR) app for shoppers owning a smartphone! The app, they claim, can automatically deliver personalized coupons, offers, customer reviews, and hidden product details to the potential customer.
The app doesn’t rely on barcodes or RFID tags to recognize products, but it does need a camera. The app compares a captured image with those in its database. If the product packaging matches the image-processing algorithm, it will automatically overlay digital details of the product on the image.
These details could include nutritional information, price, reviews, and discounts. And, you can opt into a social networking feature that delivers comments or reviews from friends and family about that product.
While a shopping AR app may, in many ways, seem trivial, it is opening the door for a whole new world of living. AR could be as revolutionary as the Internet. Think about it – you visit a new city, say Paris, for the first time, and on your phone screen comes information about every building and statue that the guide books know about. Or, perhaps, your car won’t start, so you point your camera at the engine and it identifies where the oil should go, or the brake fluid, etc. Not that I’d trust these ones, but an inexperienced surgeon operating on a patient could see AR information, or someone who’d never flown a plane before but needs to land it successfully (come on, you’ve seen it often enough in the movies and on TV).
Other news this week is that Dell is continuing to reposition itself with its $2.4 billion bid for Quest Software. With the growth in sales of tablet devices and the drop in sales of desktop and laptop PCs, as well as the growth in cloud computing, Dell is moving away from being just the hardware supplier that we’ve known for so long.
Quest is probably best known for its TOAD product, which is used to build, manage, and maintain databases. But Quest also has a range of other products including Shareplex, Lightspeed, Netvault, and Foglight. Dell apparently plans to make Quest, which has 1,300 software developers, the core of its software group, which it expects to grow into a $2 billion-a-year business over the next three years.
Dell’s other recent acquisitions include Wyse Technology, Make Technologies, Clerity Solutions, AppAssure, SonicWALL, and Force10 Networks.
And finally, why not become part of the IBM System z poster? Go to http://part-of-z.de/, complete the form and upload your photo. You then have a chance of being one of the 150 faces that will appear on the poster. But if you’re not one of the chosen faces, you’ll still receive a printed poster afterwards. You’ve got until 31 July to send in your picture.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
So sue me!
OK, I don’t really mean me. It’s just that IBM seems to have been particularly litigious recently, and in many ways seems to have returned to its bunker mentality of old rather than the caring all-embracing modern self that we were just getting used to. Two particularly high-profile cases are IBM versus TurboHercules and IBM versus NEON Enterprise Software.
TurboHercules, you’ll remember, sells services around the open source Hercules project – there was an interesting article about it in the recent Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2010 (www.arcati.com/newyearbook10). Hercules basically emulates a System z mainframe on a PC. IBM has rattled its corporate sabre saying that it has “substantial concerns” about the Hercules project infringing its patents.
The Internet is abuzz with people rushing to mount their high horses to condemn IBM for alleged double standards. Last time, I was talking about 10 years of Linux – the well-known open source software – on mainframes, and here they are attacking another open source project. Well, they are probably right. I’m no apologist for IBM. I personally feel that these alternative entry points to mainframes are a good thing. But I can also see IBM’s point of view: they are a business, and they don’t get any income from the Hercules project. Some bean counter somewhere is going to flag this as a bad thing! And someone else looking at revenue income is going to view this as a hole through which they are losing money.
So, Hercules has filed an antitrust motion in the European Union asking for IBM to unbundle its mainframe operating system from its hardware. IBM claims the motion is unfounded and offers the metaphor that a software emulation business is just like selling cheap knock-offs of brand-name clothing.
Neon Enterprise Software, you’ll recall, produced zPrime, which allows “ordinary” mainframe work to be run on specialty processors – thus saving the users money because only work running on the main General Purpose Processor (GPP) is chargeable (although, of course, the specialty processors must be paid for). IBM sent out letters suggesting that people using zPrime would be breaking the terms of their contract with IBM. NEON sued claiming IBM was illegally using its powerful position in the marketplace to hurt sales of zPrime. IBM then countersued claiming that zPrime violates their (IBM’s) copyrights (that word again).
Grasping for metaphorical language again, IBM suggests that NEON’s business model is “no different than that of a crafty technician who promises, for a fee, to rig your cable box so you can watch premium TV channels without paying the cable company. Even if it could be accomplished technically, it is neither lawful nor ethical." Again, the blogosphere is full of people listing their “why I hate my cable provider” stories.
So, it’s a good year to be a lawyer. A good year for people writing metaphors for IBM. And probably a bad year for mainframers and would-be mainframers. And, in terms of publicity, a bad year for IBM.
TurboHercules, you’ll remember, sells services around the open source Hercules project – there was an interesting article about it in the recent Arcati Mainframe Yearbook 2010 (www.arcati.com/newyearbook10). Hercules basically emulates a System z mainframe on a PC. IBM has rattled its corporate sabre saying that it has “substantial concerns” about the Hercules project infringing its patents.
The Internet is abuzz with people rushing to mount their high horses to condemn IBM for alleged double standards. Last time, I was talking about 10 years of Linux – the well-known open source software – on mainframes, and here they are attacking another open source project. Well, they are probably right. I’m no apologist for IBM. I personally feel that these alternative entry points to mainframes are a good thing. But I can also see IBM’s point of view: they are a business, and they don’t get any income from the Hercules project. Some bean counter somewhere is going to flag this as a bad thing! And someone else looking at revenue income is going to view this as a hole through which they are losing money.
So, Hercules has filed an antitrust motion in the European Union asking for IBM to unbundle its mainframe operating system from its hardware. IBM claims the motion is unfounded and offers the metaphor that a software emulation business is just like selling cheap knock-offs of brand-name clothing.
Neon Enterprise Software, you’ll recall, produced zPrime, which allows “ordinary” mainframe work to be run on specialty processors – thus saving the users money because only work running on the main General Purpose Processor (GPP) is chargeable (although, of course, the specialty processors must be paid for). IBM sent out letters suggesting that people using zPrime would be breaking the terms of their contract with IBM. NEON sued claiming IBM was illegally using its powerful position in the marketplace to hurt sales of zPrime. IBM then countersued claiming that zPrime violates their (IBM’s) copyrights (that word again).
Grasping for metaphorical language again, IBM suggests that NEON’s business model is “no different than that of a crafty technician who promises, for a fee, to rig your cable box so you can watch premium TV channels without paying the cable company. Even if it could be accomplished technically, it is neither lawful nor ethical." Again, the blogosphere is full of people listing their “why I hate my cable provider” stories.
So, it’s a good year to be a lawyer. A good year for people writing metaphors for IBM. And probably a bad year for mainframers and would-be mainframers. And, in terms of publicity, a bad year for IBM.
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