It's nearly a year before the next generation of mainframes is expected from IBM, and that means the marketing and sales people are going to have to get clever about packaging and pricing to peddle more MIPS. That is what the new Linux-only, mainframe-based Enterprise Linux Server is mostly about.
IBM has been selling Linux on mainframes for years. In fact, it's the adoption of Linux by some 1,300 customers that has helped prop up the mainframe business over the past nine years. As of today, 3,000 of the 6,300 unique third party applications that are available on the mainframe platform run atop Linux and IBM says that third quarter MIPS shipments for Linux-based mainframe engines was more than double that of the third quarter two years ago. (The mainframe business nonetheless had a 26 per cent revenue decline in the third quarter of this year, and the aggregate MIPS capacity shipped fell by 20 percent. It takes a lot of cheap Linux MIPS to make up for expensive z/OS MIPS).
Full Story: IBM punts Linux-only mainframes - Register
IBM has been selling Linux on mainframes for years. In fact, it's the adoption of Linux by some 1,300 customers that has helped prop up the mainframe business over the past nine years. As of today, 3,000 of the 6,300 unique third party applications that are available on the mainframe platform run atop Linux and IBM says that third quarter MIPS shipments for Linux-based mainframe engines was more than double that of the third quarter two years ago. (The mainframe business nonetheless had a 26 per cent revenue decline in the third quarter of this year, and the aggregate MIPS capacity shipped fell by 20 percent. It takes a lot of cheap Linux MIPS to make up for expensive z/OS MIPS).
Full Story: IBM punts Linux-only mainframes - Register
