Thursday, 08 Jul 2010

z11, zNext, zEnterprise System, zWOW!

Even though everyone's signed non-disclosure agreements, there's lots of buzz about IBM's latest mainframe announcement. We thought it would be called the z11, but now we think it will be zNext or zEnterprise System, but whatever it's called, when it's announced on the 22 July (the date everyone's guessing), people are going to say, "Wow!"

Why wow? Well the rumours suggest that this new "mainframe" is going to be a giant step into the future. Not only will the box run z/OS on its 5.2GHz quad-core z processor, but also AIX on Power 7 blades and Linux on x86 blades - all in the same box, and all sharing memory and disk space. Have you said "wow" yet? Well how about this? The multiple OSes will, allegedly, function as one single, logical, virtualized system!

So, although everything is more secretive than a new iPhone launch (although no-one has left a mainframe behind them in a public toilet!), we'll publish more information as it becomes available.

If you need anything written, contact Trevor Eddolls at iTech-Ed.
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