Timothy,
a) You need to quote references, if you want to talk about market trends..
b) Growth and emerging markets ? The news briefs did mention that and
gave reasons why etc. etc.
c) "Why on earth wouldn't you choose System z. Any rational business
would: it's far lower risk and cost-efficient."
Sounds, like you are sitting in a dark office in Japan for the last FIVE
years, with your IBM suit on and that you have lost touch with what is
happening in the "real" World.
Anton
Timothy Sipples wrote:
Speaking for myself....
Computerworld's comment was incredibly overwrought and not especially
insightful. As a general pattern, server hardware vendors have gotten
hammered for several quarters, most especially in the Intel/AMD
marketplace. (I wonder if Computerworld has reported "the death of the
Intel/AMD server market." :-)) System z hardware was perhaps the lone
server product to buck that trend for several quarters and has been gaining
share. It finally had a down revenue quarter after bucking that sustained
global economic headwind for so long, although interestingly IBM reported
that mainframe hardware revenues were still up 17% in its growth and
emerging markets. (That's an atypical result for hardware vendors and
portends well for the future.) There was also some evidence in IBM's
announcement that hardware profitability was holding up well, even with
declining unit prices.
Also, everybody knew that 2Q2009 was going to be what's called a "tough
compare." If you recall, IBM said that it had all its mainframe factories
running flat out in 2Q2008 to manufacture System z10 machines. IBM couldn't
keep up with demand. That year ago quarter was the first full quarter of
System z10 EC availability.
It's also worth noting that IBM does not break out System z-related
software and services revenue separately. While hardware is important, it
is certainly not the only part of IBM's revenues -- even System z-related
revenues. All that said, I assume IBM would prefer never-ending quarters of
increasing revenue and profit in every one of its businesses.
With respect to the new System z Solution Edition offerings, they're
unambiguously good news for customers. Price is no longer an excuse to
avoid hosting a wide variety of new applications on System z and z/OS --
IBM just plain got rid of that excuse in this announcement. The
announcement has been very well received and adopted many times already,
from what I am hearing. I'm not surprised: if you can get mainframe
qualities of service and mainframe-related significant cost savings (such
as lower administrative costs, lower networking costs, lower facilities
costs, etc.) for an industry-competitive multi-year predictable acquisition
price, why on earth wouldn't you choose System z? Any rational business
would: it's far lower risk and cost-efficient.
- - - - -
Timothy Sipples
IBM Consulting Enterprise Software Architect
Based in Tokyo, Serving IBM Japan / Asia-Pacific
E-Mail: timothy.sipp...@us.ibm.com
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