IBM Supports Mobile Economy with Z13 Mainframe Computer Launch

IBM, notable for its innovative capabilities, is combining a couple of odd computing with the new trends, following a new machine that combines the mainframe, the old workhorse, and the smartphone, launched on Wednesday.

Apparently, IBM designed the latest version of the mainframe with the smartphone in mind.

The new mainframe, the z13, has been engineered to cope with the huge volume of data and transactions generated by people using smartphones and tablets.

“This is a mainframe for the mobile digital economy,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president in charge of IBM’s systems business, which includes mainframes. “It’s a computer for the bow wave of mobile transactions coming our way.”

IBM brings out a new mainframe about every three years, and the success of this one is critical to the company’s business.

Mainframes alone account for only about 3 percent of IBM’s sales.

But when mainframe-related software, services and storage are included, the business as a whole contributes 25 percent of IBM’s revenue and 35 percent of its operating profit, estimates A.M. Sacconaghi of Bernstein Research, as reported by Cyberoption.Net blog.

Over the years, IBM has done a good job of revamping the mainframe to handle new workloads.

Modern mainframes, for example, run a lot of open-source software, like the Linux operating system.

Today, though, IBM is in the midst of a transition challenge, it is investing to build large, growing businesses in new areas like cloud computing, big data analytics and mobile applications for corporations.

But those fields have not yet grown fast enough to make up for the erosion in some of its hardware, software and services offerings.

The mainframe is not a growth market for IBM.

But maintaining the mainframe franchise is a strategic imperative for IBM, giving it financial ballast and time as it pursues new opportunities.

“Ensuring the relevance of the mainframe, and with it deep ties into so many major corporate accounts, is crucial to IBM,” Sacconaghi said.

The new mainframe, Rosamilia said, has a host of technical improvements over its predecessor, including three times the memory, faster processing and greater data-handling capability.

IBM spent $1 billion to develop the z13, and that research generated 500 new patents, including some for encryption intended to improve the security of mobile computing.

Much of the new technology,  Rosamilia added, is designed for real-time analysis in business. For example, he said, the mainframe system can allow automated fraud prevention while a purchase is being made on a smartphone.

Another example, he said, would be providing shoppers with personalized offers while they are in a store, by tracking their locations and tapping data on their preferences, mainly from their previous buying patterns at that retailer.

These real-time applications, according to Donna Dillenberger, a distinguished engineer at IBM’s Watson lab, can be done in a mainframe environment.

They are not yet possible on clusters of smaller, industry-standard computers, she said. But there are several open-source software projects, like Apache Spark, that focus on real-time data processing across large numbers of computers.

Mobile computing is certainly accelerating the data-handling and transaction-processing challenges for businesses of all kinds.

The volume of purchases made on smartphones and tablets in the United States, estimated at $114 billion last year, is projected to more than double to $293 billion by 2018, according to Forrester Research.

That kind of growth trajectory in America and elsewhere is largely attributable to the popularity and steadily improving capabilities of mobile devices.

But the simplicity of a tap-and-swipe mobile computer also contributes to the complexity of the computing tasks a user never sees when, for example, making an online purchase.

A single consumer action can set off four to 100 computing transactions — with information sent securely — like confirming an identity or authenticating a credit card.

Howard Rubin, an independent analyst, calls this the “starburst effect.” The advance of mobile computing, he noted, leads to “a surge of back-end transactions.”

In developing the z13, IBM worked with 60 companies and government agencies, mainly longtime mainframe customers.

But IBM won a convert in Ronald J. Peri, chief executive of Radixx International. Radixx, based in Orlando, Fla., runs the computerized reservation systems for 40 airlines, mostly smaller and midsize carriers outside the United States.

In the late 1980s, while working for an insurance company, Mr. Peri was an early advocate of moving off mainframes and onto networks of personal computers. An article from that time in The Wall Street Journal cited Mr. Peri as being in “the vanguard of a revolution” against the high-priced tyranny of mainframe computing.

Today Mr. Peri is shifting the back-end computing engine in the Radixx data center from a cluster of industry-standard servers to a new c.

After testing out the mainframe, he has been impressed by its performance, security and even cost. He estimates the total cost of ownership including hardware, software and labor will be 50 percent less with a mainframe than on his “sprawling server farm,” given the growing complexity of managing hardware and software from several suppliers.

“We kind of rediscovered the mainframe,” Mr. Peri said.‎