Tim and all, please don't get me wrong. I'm not an IBM-basher or an IBM doomsayer. I'm glad IBM is doing well and wish them nothing but the best. The mainframe has been very, very good to me.
I'm not a stock analyst and I'm not a chip engineering cost expert. My point was this: it must be incredibly expensive engineering the Z chips, and the MVS market is something of a -- what's a word you would not object to? narrow? -- market. IBM does not invite me to their strategic planning meetings but my guess was that the LinuxONE was an attempt to turn the mainframe hardware into more of a mass-market machine -- Linux being the most popular OS in the world -- or as I said below "sell a warehouse full of them" and amortize current and future z hardware development over a much greater number of sales. Which would be good news for the relatively -- what's the right word, Tim? specialized? -- MVS market. I'm not sure that anything anyone has posted answers the question "has IBM been successful with that initiative?" I was wondering not as a doomsayer, but wishing for the best, and curious about the reality. One swallow does not make a spring, and 8 new customers do not a mass market make. I was curious especially about "culture," whether anyone with more of a presence on slash-dot and the like had a feeling whether the LinuxONE was being perceived by that community as one helluva cool Linux server, or as just some weird IBM box. To success! Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of Timothy Sipples Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2017 4:51 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Re: IBM LinuxONE Rockhopper Charles Mills wrote: >Anyone have any idea how successful it has been? ....The answer matters >to the MVS community because if IBM can sell a warehouse full of them >it will support further mainframe hardware development, which must >currently seem to IBM to be a small niche market. Where do you get your "must" from? IBM often reports IBM z System/LinuxONE hardware revenues in its quarterly earnings reports. Even with a "tough compare," in the latest quarter (4Q2016 as I write this) mainframe hardware revenues were up, capacity deliveries up more, and margins up, too. Of course that's not counting other, related revenue and profit. IBM's CFO also reported 8 new customers in the quarter, 29 in 2016, and 80 since introduction of the IBM z13. https://www.ibm.com/investor/events/earnings/4q16.html So, successful, very. Thank you! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
