IBM zEnterprise solutions now available in South Africa

IBM’s latest zEnterprise enhancements, including the zEnterprise BC12 (zBC12) mainframe now available in SA, look set to address some critical challenges and priorities in South African enterprises.

IBM’s extended zEnterprise portfolio also including new innovations for the IBM zEnterprise EC12, new releases of z/OS and z/VM, and new industry solutions and capabilities supporting cloud, analytics, mobile and security, were showcased at the IBM zEnterprise Executive Forum staged in Johannesburg and Cape Town this week.

With mobile, social, analytics and cloud computing driving the way in which enterprises engage with customers, the need for enterprises to address these priorities in an efficient and cost-effective way has increased significantly. IBM’s $1 billion investment in developing the latest zEnterprise System innovations, which extends the mainframe platform to help large enterprises reshape the IT experience for their customers. zEnterprise also enables enterprises to drive intelligent insights, in near real time, to improve business performance and reduce risk.

Deon Newman, Vice President of IBM System z Marketing, says among the key concerns of local CIOs are security and availability. The new zEnterprise solutions are intended to be “bulletproof”, says Newman, to address this concern. “In addition, zEnterprise takes on the total cost of ownership challenge,” says Newman. “There are significant savings to be realised through a consolidated, efficient data centre system that reduces the cost of resources, power and maintenance,” he says.

IBM is also delivering a new Linux-only based version of the zBC12, the Enterprise Linux Server (ELS), to help clients that are rapidly growing their businesses, especially in growth markets. The ELS includes hardware, a z/VM Hypervisor and three years of maintenance. The system can run a portfolio of over 3,000 Linux applications, and clients can extend it with two new solutions, ELS for Analytics and Cloud-Ready for Linux on System z, as an onramp for analytics and cloud computing.

Maurice Blackwood, IBM Systems & Technology Group Director for South Africa; says the new zBC12 mainframe, which runs on Linux, is aggressively priced to put advanced computing capability in the hands of South African enterprises at a lower price point, allowing to cost-effectively, securely and efficiently run their systems while also positioning themselves to take advantage of new technologies. “It hits a critical sweet spot for the market in South Africa, as many emerging market and new clients are looking for the resiliency of the mainframe.”

IBM zEnterprise has long been the IT industry’s leading platform for transaction processing, consolidation and secure data, but the latest announcements enable more customers to leverage the system and enhance their enterprise computing capabilities, says IBM.

Development of the zEnterprise suite is continuing, and IBM says a series of new announcements can be expected in the coming months.