MICROSOFT WINDOWS ON A MAINFRAME—CAN IT HELP YOUR BUSINESS

Earlier this month IBM published a general statement of direction that essentially said the zEnterprise, its latest mainframe, will run Windows later this year. The announcement reads, in part, “IBM intends to offer select IBM System x blades running Microsoft Windows in the IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension Model 002.”

The IBM zEnterprise BladeCenter Extension Model 002 (zBX) is an extension rack for IBM’s newest mainframe, announced last July. WiredFINANCE wrote about it then. Industry wisdom says that if you don’t already have a mainframe, don’t bother to get one now. With this new hybrid mainframe capable of running applications from different server platforms and now native Windows too, it may be time to reconsider this so-called wisdom.

That’s what Payment Solution Providers (PSP), an e-payment, smart card, and, networks and enterprise fleet management application provider did. It consolidated its entire IT infrastructure on the mainframe and expects to improve operating efficiency and lower costs by 35%.

For its first decade in business PSP had built its IT infrastructure around HP and Oracle/Sun technology. That worked until PSP rolled out its Atlantics Payment Switch technology and wanted to offer it to clients as a license or cloud service. For that its existing IT infrastructure proved inadequate.

Specifically, PSP’s HP and Oracle infrastructure lacked the security needed to meet the banking industry’s PCI compliance standards. In addition, PSP was using separate servers for each of its clients’ development, production, and availability requirements. To continue that way would result in a sprawling, inefficient infrastructure that would require too much floor space and run up excessive costs for IT management, power and cooling, and software licenses.

Instead, the company selected the z10 Business Class mainframe with tightly integrated IBM DB2 database software to support the new business channels for card processing. PSP also will use the new technology to offer banking clients worldwide PSP’s Atlantics Payment Switch Technology as a license or cloud service that will allow them to rapidly support Europay, MasterCard, and Visa chip card or smart card transactions.

The net result: the new mainframe will allow PSP to dramatically simplify its infrastructure and lower IT costs per client transaction by reducing the number of servers needed as well as substantially lowering the costs associated with power and cooling, database licensing, administrative staff, and compliance.

PSP ignored Windows on the mainframe initially. Later it may revisit that question as its business evolves. For others, however, the question of which Windows workloads might be best moved to the mainframe may be of more immediate interest.

IBM’s suggestion: move those Windows apps that make use of large amounts of data and/or tap processing dispersed across multiple servers. For finance that might be business intelligence or business analytics applications or maybe some CRM or compliance applications.

IBM is not expecting a wholesale migration of Windows applications to the mainframe. Most likely are those that rely on big data serving and dispersed application components, whether it is DB2, WebSphere, or Oracle.

With the System x blade and Windows on the mainframe IBM can make a strong case for re-centralizing IT to take advantage of the mainframe’s management efficiency, the potential for greater optimization, and the resulting performance improvements. From a financial standpoint, the three-year and five-year ROI can be quite attractive and the TCO unbeatable. Best of all, as PSP discovered, IBM is offering excellent deals to attract new mainframe customers.