Stan Beer
Friday, 17 October 2008 15:55
IT Industry -
Market
Page 1 of 2
While the likes of VMware and others talk up the benefits of virtualisation in server consolidation, this is really old news, according to Christopher O'Malley - in fact 37 years old. That's how long ago IBM first released VM on its mainframes says the GM of the mainframe business unit of CA.
CA is the sixth largest software company in the
world and the mainframe sector comprises about 60% of its business. In
an era when many consider the mainframe somewhat of a dinosaur, a sort
of necessary evil used to run a plethora of unwieldy legacy
applications, it may come as a surprise to find out that the mainframe
market is as healthy as its ever been and still growing.
Cost cutting and carbon reduction targets have made virtualisation as a
means of reducing the number of servers in enterprises all the rage
these days among CIOs, CFOs and CEOs.
However, CA, which is in the performance management and security
software business, believes that what organisations are trying to
achieve today with servers has been standard practice for decades in
the mainframe world. What's more, the traditional base of mainframes,
large enterprisesare realising this more than ever.
"The mainframe market has had 20% compound growth over the past 8
years, from 3.5 million in the market to 14 million. The revival of the
mainframe is bigger than anyone thought," says O'Malley.
"Another interesting fact is that the market share of IBM for the
mainframe which, as IDC measures it, is any server that is greater than
$100,000 in price, is larger now than it has ever been.
"We understand how clients use technology and how it relates to
software. In the 1990s it was assumed that distributed computing was
cheaper. In 2008 they know different. Many top 1000 companies, such as
banks, say the mainframe is cheaper."
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