It's fair to say that industry conversation has moved on from predicting the mainframe's demise to admiring its resilience and acknowledging its bright future. Not only does IBM's zEnterprise mainframe continue to be a success, but a number of surveys we've commissioned have confirmed that the mainframe is essential to the IT strategies, including cloud computing for many of the world's most successful companies. With the mainframe continuing to be firmly entrenched in IT plans, companies are looking for ways to leverage it to help achieve an almost unanimous business expectation - accomplish more while lowering costs. And that's what's fueling the continuing popularity of Linux on the mainframe.
Enter the Penguin
The Linux Penguin has been around since 1996, five years after Linus Torvalds introduced the market disrupting operating system. Originally, Linux was used mostly on smaller systems, but today it is used across a wide variety of computer hardware, ranging from mobile phones, tablet computers, routers and video game consoles, to desktop computers, mainframes and supercomputers. One of key reasons for its broad adoption is its low cost of ownership - an important value proposition across every IT platform.
Linux Adoption on the Mainframe
Given the priority of cost control across IT platforms, it's no surprise that our customers cite cost advantages as the number one driver for mainframe Linux adoption. And adoption has grown significantly over the last decade. In fact, I've read recent industry analyst research stating that approximately one-third of the IBM System z mainframe installed base runs Linux on System z, with Linux on System z MIPS growing from 16% to 19% from 2009 to 2010, totaling over 3 million Linux MIPS installed. The research also pointed out that IBM shipped approximately 2,000 Integrated Facilities for Linux (IFLs) in 2010.
While it seems that the Linux surge on mainframe has been primarily driven by federal agencies and large corporations, I think that a recent announcement by IBM should add fuel to the fire down-market. In July, they announced an entry level zEnterprise mainframe with increased flexibility and performance in a lower cost package. With a starting price under $75,000, it's designed to allow mid-market users such as mid-sized banks and retailers to consolidate distributed workloads to the mainframe.
Barriers to Adoption
It also makes sense that a number of customers I've spoken to have cited the lack of Linux management tools on the mainframe as a barrier to adoption. To realize the cost savings Linux offers they are looking for world class software to manage key areas like Security, Performance, Workload Automation, Storage, Event Automation, Application Development and Data Transport. Software vendors need to step up to the plate and deliver.
For our part, last week at SHARE's bi-annual user conference for enterprise technology professionals, we announced a new release of the CA VM:ManagerTM Suite for Linux on System z, a new capability for CA Solve Operations Automation and partnerships with INNOVATION Data Processing and Velocity Software that are designed to help customers increase cost savings by optimizing management of Linux on System z.