Marketplace Trends in IBM zSeries

The refurbished mainframe market has been, in the past, a common target of the manufacturer's sales representatives. The fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) they have been telling data center professionals becomes more and more ludicrous each year.

The reality is: z800s, z900s, z990s, z890s and z9s are readily available in the refurbished marketplace. Additionally, parts, features and add-ons are also available to any user looking to save significant budget dollars.

That said, if you're open to the savings that the refurbished market can offer, you will want to make certain that the equipment you buy has been refurbished by a "Top Gun" level zSeries engineer and that the equipment has been certified and banded by IBM as 100 percent eligible for their maintenance. There are very few in the used marketplace who can offer the depth of inventory, the depth of expertise and a good working relationship with IBM. By the way, talk is cheap.

IBM is staying on track with its goals to update the mainframe product lines every three years. Their current z9 technology is going to be upgraded shortly and we expect the new technology to provide more MIPs per engine with a reduced $/MSU cost. Additionally, we know that IBM has integrated several features to help clients stay compliant with federal regulations for data security.

In other news, the new z6 mainframes are now going to be called z10 mainframes. These new z10 mainframes are expected to be available later this year and will contain p6 RISC technologies. IBM's primary reason for this new line is to help reduce costs to operate mainframe technology and further speed development. It is important to note that this is a dramatic shift in architecture and many long-time IBM clients are concerned about the risk involved. IBM will need to directly address these concerns before bringing anything to market.

Expected improvements offered by the z10:

• 900 plus MIPs per single engine
• 30,000 MIPs at top end
• Up to 64 engines
• Security improvements
• Improvements in the parallel sysplex technology
• Users will no longer give up memory for HSA (hardware storage area)

For those strongly considering upgrading to z9 technology, your awareness of IBM's z10 launch can provide you a great deal of leverage. For example, the z9 technology will become older technology to IBM once the z10 arrives and you may use that to improve your pricing. If need be, you can wait on the z9 technology until the z10 comes out or you can simply buy the z9 technology in the used marketplace right now. Either way, these announcements about new platforms are always a great opportunity to leverage better pricing.

On another note, specialty engines have been very popular with mainframe users when they have been able to use them. More recently, zIIP engines have not been permitted to be as effective as the zAAP engines. zAAPs are used to help the internal CPU with 100 percent of the JAVA workload. The zIIP, on the other hand, is designed to help external, remote database calls to the mainframe. IBM, unfortunately, has throttled back the zIIP to allow only a minimum amount of work to be off-loaded to the zIIP processor. Many customers are not seeing the return of the zIIP due to these restrictions.

Current zSeries Market Pricing per MIP:

z9 BC (IBM 2096)
New Market Average: < $2,500
Used Market Average: < $1,000

z9 EC (IBM 2094)
New Market Average: < $2,500
Used Market Average: < $1,000

z890 (IBM 2086)
New Market Average: < $2,000
Used Market Average: < $500

z990 (IBM 2084)
New Market Average: < $2,000
Used Market Average: < $500