IBM debuts mobile, storage and Hadoop offerings for the mainframe

With three times the number of mobile phones in the world as computers, it is essential that businesses have an IT infrastructure that can enhance their ability to deliver new mobile and cloud services. Combined with trends showing that by 2015, there will be twenty times more content, fifteen times more applications and four times the number of mobile transactions as there were in 2011, it is clear why many organizations are turning to the mainframe to manage their enterprises.
The growth in the number of mobile transactions is challenging businesses that are seeing a concurrent rise in their costs related to integrating new mobile applications. The IBM System z Solution for Mobile Computing can help these businesses to rapidly integrate and deliver new mobile and cloud services leading to a better experience for their customers. Today’s news expands this offering by announcing new pricing for mobile workloads on z/OS which can improve the cost of growth for mobile transaction volumes that can cause a spike in software charges. This new pricing will provide up to a 60 percent reduction on the processor capacity reported for Mobile transactions, which can help normalize the rate of transaction growth used for software charges.

In Africa, most of the population has a cell phone – First National Bank (FNB) was looking for an opportunity to transform an entire continent through its most popular channel: the mobile device. Creating a series of mobile banking tools, FNB increased its transactions to more than 230 million a month. With their increasingly popular new banking tools, FNB needed infrastructure that could support the swell of transactions and new users. FNB looked to IBM System z to handle the load and provide insights on its services, improve its business and provide a better overall customer experience.

“Mobile transactions have grown at an exponential rate as we expand our range of services, client experience and reach, far outpacing growth in traditional transactions” said Jay Prag, Chief Information Officer, Hogan Channel Integration, FNB “The mainframe environment allows us to dynamically scale and grow in a cost efficient manner”

Better data management and faster insights with new storage and Hadoop offerings
Throughout the past five decades, the mainframe has evolved, with a steady stream of technical innovations that have helped businesses to continuously adapt to changing market demands. In addition to the mobile solutions, today’s announcement continues this evolution with a series of offerings to help clients gain even more insight into their data, including:
· zDoop software – Working with IBM, Veristorm is providing the industry’s first commercial Hadoop for Linux on System z. This will help clients to avoid staging and offloading of mainframe data to maintain existing security and governance controls;
· Flash for mainframe – The next generation of flash storage on IBM DS8870 can provide faster time to insight with up to 30X the performance over HDD;
· Continuous Integration for System z – Compresses the application delivery cycle from months to weeks or days.
· New version of IBM CICS Transaction Server – Delivers enhanced mobile and cloud support for CICS, trusted by businesses running more than 1 billion transactions per day
· IBM WebSphere Liberty z/OS Connect - Rapid and secure enablement of web, cloud and mobile access to z/OS assets;
· IBM Security zSecure SSE – Helps prevent malicious computer attacks with enhanced security intelligence and compliance reporting. zSecure can direct security events to QRadar SIEM to provide integrated enterprise wide security intelligence dashboard reporting.

IBM Global Financing can help clients acquire z Mainframe systems, with a single financing solution to better manage their cloud and analytics infrastructure, and accelerate business transformation including the new Mobile, Storage and Hadoop Offerings. Our financing programs and offerings can help clients match the benefits of reduced upfront costs and faster return on investment over time with existing mainframe budget commitments. Credit-qualified clients can obtain Fair Market Value leasing and loans with customized payment plans when acquiring mainframe solutions. Additionally, IBM Global Asset Recovery Services can provide buyback and disposal services for removal of older IT equipment.

Training the next generation of Mainframe users
The IBM Academic Initiative helps to provide schools with the education resources they need to introduce and develop enterprise-computing skills to students to help them gain exposure to job opportunities and careers. The program helps to facilitate student learning in high demand IT skills and links employers to available students and professional talent. For more than seven years, IBM has worked with students, professors, businesses and universities to provide mainframe training and curriculum resources to more than 180,000 students at over 1,000 schools in 70 countries.

As part of this continuing commitment to the growth and development of the mainframe ecosystem, IBM is also announcing three new on-line educational offerings. These Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOCs) are being provided through partnerships with Syracuse University, Marist College, and the Linux Foundation and will be made available in stages throughout the year. All courses are no cost and available to anyone, anywhere, at any time.