The mainframe is a big sign of IBM, a "hundred-year-old store" in the technology industry. Since its birth, it has always represented the industry's top level in computer systems.
This product, which dates back to 55 years ago, has incredible vitality. With the technological innovation that keeps pace with the times, it still efficiently supports the operation of core business applications in many enterprises. Today, two-thirds of Fortune 100 companies use IBM Z mainframes, 44 of the world's top 50 banks, and 90% of major airlines operate their businesses on IBM Z mainframes.
Into the mixed multi-cloud era, based on the accurate grasp of industry trends, the IBM mainframe is reinventing itself. Taking the new generation of IBM z15 released a few months ago as an example, with data privacy passports, instant recovery and other industry-first black technologies, z15 can become an important help for enterprises to implement a hybrid cloud strategy and help users fully enjoy the value of cloud.
Recently, the author had the honor to visit IBM China System Center. Under the introduction of Mr. Xie Dong, Vice President of IBM, Chief Technology Officer of IBM Greater China, and General Manager of IBM China System Technology Center, I deeply understood the past and present of IBM mainframe, In the hybrid multi-cloud era, the unique value of the mainframe is reflected.
Beginning in 1964, from the moon landing to bank transactions, there are mainframes
In his speech, Mr. Xie Dong summarized the development process of IBM mainframe into three phases: System phase, zSeries and zEnterprise phase.
"System" was the original name for the IBM mainframe. In 1964, IBM released the first mainframe, the IBM System / 360, which cost $ 5 billion to develop. It can be said that the emergence of System / 360 has epoch-making significance. With many advanced technological innovations, it can meet almost all computing needs at that time, and has become a key to open the door of the information age. Including assisting NASA in the calculation of the path to the moon, supporting the operation of the bank transaction system and the online ticketing system of the airline, the host machine has demonstrated unparalleled value. From System / 360 (1964) to System / 370 (1970) and System / 390 (1990), they are all star products of IBM mainframes in different eras.
In 2000, entering the new century, the IBM mainframe also ushered in its own new era-IBM System changed its name to Z, and entered the Z era. Regarding the reason for choosing this name, according to Xie Dong, "Z is Zero Zero Downtime. When we designed this system, the positioning was very clear from the name-we must make it zero downtime. Machine. Because this system is the supporting environment for some core businesses, the goal after going online is zero downtime, and we hope to allow users to continue using it. "Including z900 (2000) to z9 (2005), z10 (2008) Are all products in the zSeries stage. From the aspect of reliability and quality, it is guaranteed that there will be no failures, and system, software upgrades, and new application deployments will not be down.
Then comes the zEnterprise stage. The relatively well-known z12 (2012), z13 (2015), z14 (2017), and the latest z15 (2019) are all born at this stage. In the upgrade iterations, the IBM mainframe has more and more new features to ensure the critical applications of enterprises and organizations. And this year, with the completion of the acquisition of Red Hat by IBM, IBM's mainframe has also made new progress in the use of open source technology.
For the "long" evolution of IBM mainframes, a report released by IDC in September of this year summed up the essentials: from siloed to connected, to transformative. IDC refers to the IBM mainframe as a "mainframe capable of transformation", that is, the IBM mainframe can fully participate in the transformation and upgrading of enterprises and empower digital transformation.
Hybrid multi-cloud era,How IBM mainframes continue to create
According to Forrester's survey report, 78% of Asia-Pacific enterprises have formulated corresponding strategies for mixed multi-cloud, and this proportion is 74% globally. Xie Dong also mentioned in a signed blog post published by him: "In the second chapter of the transition to the cloud, the critical load of enterprises from the supply chain to the core banking system will be migrated and optimized to the cloud.
IBM z mainframe on display at IBM China System Center
Key applications on the cloud will place higher requirements on the security, reliability, and agility of the IT infrastructure, and the latest IBM z15 may be the best choice to solve these problems and embrace hybrid multi-cloud-given the z15 Outstanding innovative features:
Encryption anytime, anywhere--Based on the existing universal encryption technology, IBM has also introduced a new Data Privacy Passports technology to help users achieve control over data storage and sharing. Not only can it protect local data at the infrastructure level, but it also allows the setting of data usage rules to uniformly manage data access of individual users across private, public and hybrid clouds, thereby improving the company's data privacy protection capabilities.
· Cloud-native application agile development--IBM and Red Hat have announced plans to support the Red Hat OpenShift platform on the IBM Z. The goal is to leverage the scalability and security of IBM Z and the flexibility to run, build, manage, and modernize cloud-native application workloads on selected architectures. Bring cloud-native application development to IBM Z to help users modernize existing applications, build new cloud-native applications, and securely integrate the most important workloads across clouds to gain greater competitive advantage
· New instant recovery function--It can reduce the cost and impact of planned and unplanned downtime, and meet rapidly changing market demands in a timely manner. Whether encountering planned or unplanned outages, the instant recovery feature can help customers release the full capabilities of the z15. By enabling the built-in kernel to recover service level agreements (SLAs) before the outage, the fastest speed is 2.5 times as fast as Processing transactions that could not be processed during downtime.
Looking back on the entire development process of mainframes, under different era backgrounds, IBM gave different meanings to mainframes. But in general, the development of the mainframe has always originated from IBM's profound insight and grasp of user needs. Based on this, with advanced technological strength, IBM continues to innovate, injecting a steady stream of vitality into the mainframe.